The Duchess of Romney and "You People"

The Duchess of Romney

Mitt Romney really, really wants to win the presidency this November. And so does his loyal wife Ann, already a potential First Lady. But neither one of them wants to deal with average working Americans who have a few questions for them.

Reasonable questions for a potential White House occupant like, "how much money have you made, and how much tax have you paid on it over the years?" President Obama started the call for that basic information and was immediately assailed by Mr. Romney who huffily asked for a "public apology" for even suggesting such a thing. 

But Mr. Obama not only didn't apologize, he turned up the heat and has been joined by a growing chorus of demands to see the tax returns from both sides of the aisle. Several have suggested that Romney simply show us the same 20+ years of IRS returns he showed when he was being vetted for Vice President by the McCain Campaign in 2008.

Wife Ann really threw down the gauntlet recently on ABC news when Robin Roberts asked her about releasing the tax returns. Ms. Romney sidestepped answering the question, instead she glowingly reported on how fair her husband is. Robin followed up asking "Why not show that, then?" suggesting that we could all "move on" if her husband would simply make his returns public.

Sweet Ann lost her cool, shooting back, "Because there are so many things that will be open again for more attack... and that's really, that's just the answer! And we've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life." 

The Duchess, in Chapter 9 of Alice in Wonderland, speaking to Alice, could be explaining how Romney and his lovely wife want to be seen by ordinary wage earning commoners in America:

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or if you'd like it put more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been, would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

The Romneys' labyrinthian verbal escape chute is not going to lose many Americans in the twists and turns of his misdirection and obfuscation. The average working American may not be able to quote Hamlet, but he or she sure as shootin' can tell you what "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" means, even if they occasionally misquote it! 

Phony and snobby aloofness doesn't play well with Americans. And political affiliations aside, few find Mitt Romney to be a relaxed down to earth kind of person. His almost manic smile and disingenuous interaction with people at his campaign stops has been dubbed "the uncanny valley" from robotic studies showing that when human replicas look amazingly real, but not exactly like actual human beings, it causes a response of unease and revulsion among human observers. This was addressed by Andrew Sullivan in 'The Daily Beast' recently:

 "I was chatting with a Mormon friend the other day and asking him what Mormons make of Mitt on this 'uncanny valley' question. The phrase he came up with is “the Mormon mask.” It's the kind of public presentation that a Mormon with real church authority deploys when dealing with less elevated believers, talking to them, and advising them. The cheery aw-shucks fake niceness in person is a function in part, some believe, of the role he has long played in the church: always a leader."

Mitt is counting on not only the "Mormon Mask" as a shield to take with him to election day, he also has the broad donor base of big buck Mormon families who share his "common values." Bloomberg Businessweek just reported on the Mormon Church's recent opening of a $2 Billion mega-mall right across the street from their vaulting temple in Salt Lake City. Its 100 stores includes a Tiffany's. 

But it seems that ordinary tithing members of the church, who give 10% of their earnings, can not find out how much money the church has, or what it spends on what. Only its appointed president, Thomas S. Monson, whom Mormons believe to be a living prophet, really knows the bottom line figure. But Romney, a former Mormon Bishop, knows much more than common church members whom he greets with his "Mormon Mask." That may explain the cavalier air of superiority he and his wife exhibit publicly.

Combine that divine secrecy with Mitt Romney's wooden personality and try to picture him and his feisty elitist wife in the White House facing international press scrutiny. This would not be a brief titular undertaking like  his work "saving" the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. 

And today he is frantically distancing himself from his signature achievement as a State Governor in Massachusetts: the implementing his his universal health care reform plan. He is shamefully attempting to escape the "Romneycare" tag. 

Perhaps more appropriately, "political prostitute" as a tag from his long history of flip-flopping on earlier support for major issues like abortion rights might stick. Consider his quote from his 1994 campaigning against Ted Kennedy regarding the Kennedy fortune:  "The blind trust is an age-old ruse."

Recent reports of Romney's money sheltered in the Cayman Islands, his Swiss bank account, and who knows what else, makes many wonder if Romney's supposed blind trust is, indeed, the age-old ruse he seems to know so much about.

Folks must realize Romney would be the new face of America in these globally uncertain times. Last time the GOP won they put a genial dolt at the helm of our ship of state for eight long years, and he ran America up on the rocks with his two unfunded wars, and his embarrassingly profound lack of leadership ability.

With a clearer picture of the "Real Romney" emerging every day, we can only hope that America sees through his thick fog of untruth and misrepresentation when they vote in November. Mark Twain is credited with the quote "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

In that regard, Mitt Romney becomes more convincing every day.





Graphic by Larry Ray with apologies to Quentin Matsys

Oil spill: Best suggestion for Biloxi fishermen? BP: Better Pray

Time warp photo montage by Larry Ray

The uncertainty of the huge BP oil spill out offshore from Biloxi, Mississippi has not stopped this old world fishing community from holding its annual "Blessing of the fleet" this coming weekend as it has every year since 1929. But it will not be quite the same. This year there is a palpable anxiety from the threat of the looming offshore disaster which will quietly mix in with the Cajun music, boiled shrimp and deep fried mullet better known as "Biloxi bacon."

The festival really gets rolling on a Saturday after Catholic masses for fishermen lost at sea and other recognitions starting on Thursday. But on Saturday the town turns out for a rollicking all day Cajun fais do do street party with lots of delicious seafood and culminates that evening with the coronation of the Shrimp Queen and King on the Biloxi Town Green. The blessing of the fleet takes place early afternoon on Sunday.

Eighty one years ago the fishing boats all rafted up side by side, with the priest climbing from boat to boat to sprinkle holy water and offer blessings for protection from the sea and bountiful catches. More recent blessings of the fleet have taken place with a special dockside altar for the priest who blesses a long and colorfully decorated parade of boats both large and small as they motor past.

This year, the devoutly Catholic ritual of blessing and protecting the fishing fleet and its largely immigrant boat owners and seafood workers should include a new definition of "BP" which now would now seem to mean, "Better Pray."

For almost a month and a half, all of the oil exploration industry's best efforts to staunch a high pressure gusher of thick oil and methane gas from a well blowout 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico have come to naught. Oil giant BP's efforts to crank up their public relations machinery to a loud and preposterous level has served only to offer false hope to an anxiously watching world. Quickly stopping this disaster seems akin to stopping an erupting volcano. The maelstrom beneath the earth's mantel, especially on the barely understood deep sea floor invites disaster if provoked. The rage of unstoppable oil seems to prove the point.

Yet, like wind-up talking toys, well groomed and slickly rehearsed BP top dogs continue to tell all who will listen that none of this is as bad as it seems and that great progress is being made in rounding up the miles of floating oil by either burning it or "collecting" it. Their promises to clean up every drop of oily sludge that has filled sensitive Louisiana marshes and estuaries have not produced any sort of energetic or effective results. Undeterred, BP spews forth statistics and more promises while being careful to first run everything by their lawyers.

BP spokespersons tell one particular story at every possible opportunity as if all listeners were third graders. With confident, and concerned expressions they tell the tale of the hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil dispersant, "like dish washing liquid" that are breaking the oil up into teensie little droplets so that starving bacterial can ravenously eat up all the oil. The BP bacterial buffet is really a wonderful thing, boys and girls!

However, BP denies the recent findings of a half dozen major universities whose marine exploration efforts now suggest that the dispersant being shot directly into the source of the gusher on the sea floor is merely keeping the oil out of sight on the surface. They are finding miles long areas of the broken-up oil hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface, being moved and swept about like huge dark tendrils by currents at the water column at different depths. The new data suggests that bacteria won't make a dent in this movable feast.

Strong currents may move these thick oil ribbons onshore at some point way in the future, or even into the "loop current" in the gulf. This would pull some of the tens of millions of gallons of oil between the tip of Florida and Cuba, and then on up the Atlantic coast.

Oil company big shots don't like to be ordered around. After eight years of basically no meaningful regulation by the Bush-Cheney Minerals Management staff, and having helped formulate Cheney's secret energy policy, BP and all the other big oil companies has learned that it is easy to outwit and out-wait the bureaucrats and that it is also much better for the bottom line. A steady flow of campaign money to state and national politicians also greases things nicely.

Smellier and dirtier than the oil slicks are the shameless political attacks from the nay-saying, do-nothing Republicans intent upon tearing down President Obama. Their first order of business is to blame it all on Obama. And the crass move is playing well because people want something done, anything, and aren't capable of grasping the fact that this disaster may be uncontrollable by Obama, or any other mortal. Again, clear and honest explanations of the difficulty of stopping the oil flow, and the reasons why don't satisfy three year olds.

BP was not required to undertake a detailed worst-case scenario environmental study because of their cozy relationship with Bush-Cheney era Mineral Management employees. Angry Americans should be screaming loudly at the drill baby drill Republicans still in office who, in effect, were in lock step with the Bush no regulation approach to environmental protection.

Meanwhile, the Priest and Catholic Bishop on hand this coming weekend better have plenty of holy water on hand for this year's blessing of fleet, which includes many boats that have just rejoined the fleet after being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

This year's hurricane season starts just a few days before BP ... Biloxi's Prayers.