Tonight on "The Rachel Maddow Show," the hostess -- in her once charming but now smug snarky tone -- said that Mitt Romney's tax returns showed some interesting things, like the fact that he makes "$57,ooo a day for . . . not working."
Now, I get the theme that Romney is a 0.0001%er, that he can't understand the problems of the average person, etc. I also get the desire to paint him as a destroyer of jobs from his time at Bain.
But now Maddow is mocking Romney for, what? That he made a lot of money (not inherited, but earned himself) before, and invested it well, and now that he's 64 and able to live very well off his past hard work and wise investments? Under this approach of mocking people for making money while not working, should we also mock the elderly who draw Social Security, on the theory that they get (admittedly, much less) money for doing nothing???
To be clear, I'm not saying there aren't lines of criticism to be leveled against Romney's wealth. But this line of snark just seems pretty lame to me.
I think it all goes back to Romney's joke about being "unemployed." Describing yourself in terms of people who are struggling to survive while raking in 10 figures is worth ridicule. Maddow may not have made this link explicit, but I think she's in line with a lot of the conversation I've seen in other places that does explicitly mention the joke.
Posted by: Jlwoj | January 25, 2012 at 09:58 PM
I think her jokes also pertains to his commenting that he "worked hard for his money" - as if "how hard" he worked explained how much he made.
Posted by: Antaine | January 26, 2012 at 07:08 AM
As Jlwoj said, her snark goes to Romney joking about being unemployed.
In one day of him being unemployed, he makes what a lot of people would love to earn if they WERE working.
Posted by: Jedidiah | January 26, 2012 at 04:26 PM
I imagine how much he would’ve made if he had worked.
Posted by: NYCdwellers | February 23, 2012 at 02:38 AM
in all honesty, Mitt did work hard for his money, but he probably had help and a whole lot of leverage to do that compared to the average American.
Posted by: UWS guy | June 03, 2012 at 02:31 PM