[Paraphrased from here.]
In an interview about Romney on CNN, Rosen said, “His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.”
Minutes later, Ann Romney posted her first tweet: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.” She had plenty of room to add “count me privileged,” but she didn’t.
Republicans immediately accused Rosen of disrespecting all stay-at-home moms. Rosen soon apologized, but by then, mothers were on trial in the court of public opinion. Or so Republicans wanted us to believe. However, neither Ann Romney nor stay-at-home moms were ever the point of Rosen’s comments.
The media have a habit of ignoring virtually all women who are hourly wage earners, except to relegate them to a voter demographic. Thus, we know little about the lives of mothers who work on assembly lines or who mind our babies in day care facilities or who add up our purchases at the local Target.
The men who stoke this imaginary fight believe women are put on this earth to marry and reproduce. They insist that mothers belong in the home, not in the workplace. Nothing sets their teeth to grinding faster than an unwed mother getting assistance from the government.
Which brings us to a speech Romney delivered in January, in which he said, “Even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well, that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that day care, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.'”
The “dignity of work” is now the euphemism for the neo-conservative hate for Regan’s imaginary “welfare queens.”