The Rude Pundit: Mitt Romney Became a Grandfather Eight Times While Running for President ...

[meegbear]

and No One Gave a Damn

Here are the stupidest goddamn couple of sentences that the Rude Pundit's read in a while: &quot A)s anyone who’s had children knows, there’s often nothing like the bond between mother and daughter when the first grandbaby is on the way. If we had to guess, we'd say that Hillary Clinton will be a tad less interested in running for president now that she's about to be a grandmother."

The "we" in this case is not a dimwit. It's Linda Feldmann, the longtime political reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. Yes, earlier in the same paragraph, she wonder if "Perhaps it’s sexist even to ask the question" as to how Chelsea Clinton's uterus providing room and board for a fetus for a few months will affect her mother's presidential ambition. She tries to excuse the question by saying that Bill and Hillary Clinton have said they want grandchildren, as if this means they wish to give up any identity other what's relative to what comes out of Chelsea's vagina. No matter the justification Feldmann gives, it's sexist.

In Washington Monthly, in an article titled, no shit, "Nana for President," Haley Sweetland Edwards offers, "She will also likely provoke a national water-cooler debate, as no male candidate would, over whether she is too involved in her grandchild’s life, or, more likely, not involved enough—'How can she have time to be a good grandmother,' people will ask, 'when she’s out running for president?'" That water cooler is more than likely going to be in the offices of media outlets, at Politico and Time, desperate for something else to talk about that will get hits at the website.

Because, see, out here, no one gives a sad rat fuck about it other than, hey, we wish Chelsea well (except for the assholes who don't).

Here's a recent history lesson: Mitt Romney announced that he was running for president for the first time in 2007. The press noted then, "He and his wife, Ann, high school sweethearts, have 5 children and 10 grandchildren." Hey, groovy. Now tell us about how Romneycare is just a terrible idea for the nation.

Mitt Romney more or less ran for president for the next five and a half years. During that time period, his sons and their wives brought into the family, in various ways, eight new grandchildren. Two of them were born, by way of a surrogate, in May 2012, in the heat of the campaign.

No one asked, at any point, if Mitt Romney might give up on his presidential ambitions because he wanted to spend more time with his litter of grandkids. Fuck, no one even asked in 2012 if Tagg Romney would do less on the campaign trail because he just got two new babies. No one asked because not only did no one care, but because everyone assumed that things would go on as normal because that's what the fuck people do, men, women, grand or otherwise. The only reason anyone is talking about this is because Hillary Clinton has lady parts. And, no matter how you wanna sputter, "But...no," it comes out sexist.

As Rebecca Traister put it in the New Republic, "I tried to look up how many presidents have been grandfathers while serving in office. It’s pretty hard to look up because no one in the history of presidents has ever cared about whether or not they have grandchildren or will ever have grandchildren because it is truly one of the dumbest things to care about in the universe." (Emphasis hers.)

But, well, shit, we live in stupid, stupid times where the press seems to take an active role in making us stupider. So no doubt we'll get the Chelsea truthers, people who believes the Clintons conspired to make sure Chelsea was pregnant in order to make Hillary more sympathetic during an election cycle. When it comes to the Clintons, there is no depth to which the right-wing media will not sink. They won't just scrape the bottom of the barrel; they'll get under the barrel in order to dig in the mud and shit there, coming up filth-encrusted and believing they've found gold.

Hillary Clinton was a lawyer, an active First Lady, a successful senator, a presidential candidate, and an intensely busy Secretary of State. Yeah, her only child is having the first grandchild. And?

If she decides not to run for president this time, it'll have more to do with being exhausted by the very bullshit that she's had to put up with for most of her adult life from debauched media whores looking for the next fake scandal to try to wreck her. It'd be hard to blame her.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/04/mitt-romney-became-grandfather-eight.html

[joeybee12]

1. KNR...and they never asked him about his pants either...

Ingrained sexist bullshit by the "liberal" media.

[Blue Owl]

2. Man, that's like a car elevator load of grandkids...

n/t

[BrotherIvan]

3. This is the best argument for why we need a woman president

Though not necessarily HRC. Because we are one of the last civilized countries to have a female leader--behind places like India and Pakistan with far more cultural restrictions against women--we don't have a reference for women in positions of power. The US is going backwards quickly in its view of women and so we get these kinds of sexist, dumbshit articles that assume that grandma, not grandpa, also wants to stay at home and stare at the baby. Notice how all these writers are women and very reminiscent of the shaming going on right now against mothers who have to work, can't breastfeed for four years, and who don't give up every bit of their identity and goals all while remaining hawt for their husbands. It's so impossible and the only people who can truly cure it is women who refuse to these distortions heaped on them. If you don't like HRC because of her politics, just say so. But leave her fucking gender out of it.

[Lex]

4. I was surprised to see people here at DU actually making the statement that HRC

would stay at home and not run for President now that she's going to be grandmother. What?

[awoke_in_2003]

5. Yep, it is extremely sexist...

Hillary is not my first choice, but this latest meme is just so much BS.

[malaise]

6. Tell them Rudie

The stupid sexism rules.

[3catwoman3]

7. This is as ridiculous...

...as some of the other BS I've read about Chelsea timing her pregnancy to bolster her mother's chances.

[SheilaT]

8. I am not at all a fan of Hillary Clinton,

but I'm beyond annoyed that her status as a grandmother would have anything at all to do with anyone's decision to vote for her.