A lot of attention was focused recently on a speech given by former Republican Presidential Nominee and two time loser, Mitt Romney, that suggested students “Get a Life” that projects the typical condescending tone of Romney that the ‘often gets misunderstood’ narrative supports. It’s typical Sensationalist Media garbage and it isn’t even slightly unsurprising they missed the former Governor, a devout Mormon, and his complete mangling of one of the most important Biblical events to support his own jaded conservative ideals.
Get a Life
Mitt Romney gave this commencement speech at Jacksonville University and no doubt hoped to inspire young folks to higher achievement. He is, at this point, politically, a dead man walking (he will soon be featured in our Political Obituaries), so he gains very little by drawing attention on a dofus line like “Get a Life”. I’ve seen the rest of what he said and it is filled with the same nonsense I heard at my 2 commencements: phoney inspiration and a heartfelt call to join the system and become America’s future mid-level office managers and the future low-level processing manufacturing plant leaders of tomorrow! It seemed to be just as earnest, so the attention to the “Get a Life” bit really only demonstrates how out of touch Romney is though further more, the corporate owned, sensational media, who are always looking for the lazy story, so they don’t have to do their own jobs.
Romney is pretty out of touch to be sure. I think he didn’t know it was a catch phrase meant to deride losers that girls who watched Full House would use. Romney was too busy chopping up American industry for scrap in the 90s to watch TV. Romney also wouldn’t know that comedian Chris Elliot used the phrase for a show title in the 90s of course called “Get a Life” about a loser middle-aged paperboy who manages to succeed at the smallest tasks in life (it was a pioneering show in absurdist comedy that has become the norm today). No, Romney was too busy building Staples in the 90s (which I worked for as a teen) and raping and pillaging the traditional Stationery Stores with warehouse buying power and cheap, underpaid labor, like me! (Remember stationary stores?). Romney also wouldn’t know that the phrase is still in the vernacular of society as something you would say to a loser.
You can’t blame him, the only time he’s met the people he fired his entire adult life was when he went on the campaign trail and made an ass of himself in the process. Remember the time when he tried a local landmark bakery’s cookies (in a swing state he lost, I might add) and said they tasted like they came from 7-11? The local bakery took his flub, and called it “CookieGate” and garnered national attention in the process. It was crisis-management by the bakery any conservative would admire, if it didn’t destroy their pro-corporate, ‘tax-cuts for the elite’ candidate:
I won’t get into all of Mitt’s “human” moments, though this video should take you back a bit:
Mitt the Twit
Ok, so we know Mitt’s an idiot with no command of common language. I mean, he once said he loved “sport” and his wife’s horse was on the US Olympic Dressage Team in London 2012 (oh and remember when he insulted the English Olympic effort so bad that even the Tories were using him as political fodder?). So he has no diplomacy either, causing a widely publicized rift with a staunch political ally that caused even British Conservatives to go after the Romnster. I mean, that’s bad.
Even in the “Get a Life” speech he gives his own challenges as an example. From the transcript, his sole challenge was losing the Presidential election to Obama. I can’t tell if there is a wink and a nod from the transcript at losing to, ya know, one of “them”, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Still, to be handed everything in life and to cite your personal challenges as the loss of a Presidential election will likely draw little sympathy. Though any spoiled brat will see life in narcissistic terms with the world orbiting them. Is Mitt really in a position to suggest to others to get a life?
Alright, so maybe Mitt’s not politically misunderstood, but utterly tactless in real life. It might even be said that he owes his success to his father’s immense wealth. Oh yeah, that’s right, Mitt was born near a billionaire and his only true claim to fame was turning many multiple millions into billions by selling off American companies to China and elsewhere with Bain Capital, while corporatizing entire industries that small business occupied for generations. Though he is a small business champion, right? His evil hands even reached into pizza, bringing inferior pies to the masses through several investments.
Also: AMC Theatres, Aspen Education Group, Brookstone, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory,Canada Goose, Domino’s Pizza, DoubleClick, Dunkin’ Donuts, D&M Holdings, Guitar Center, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA),iHeartMedia, Sealy, Sports Authority, Staples, Toys “R” Us, Warner Music Group and The Weather Channel.[3]
Everything you hate about America has been touched by Mitt Romney! However, his heart belongs to Mormon Jesus right? So how could be be so evil?
Now we’re ready for the other big thing he said at the “Get a Life” speech.
Blame Eve for Having to Work
According to CBS Miami, Romney said even Adam and Eve would have been bored to tears if they’d remained in the Garden of Eden with no job, no kids and no challenges.”
That must be the sensationalist media again right? Here is the direct quote:
There’s a burger joint in Salt Lake City that’s one of my favorites. Its founder, Don Hales, put out a little book of his homespun wisdom. He says that to be happy requires three things: someone to love, something to look forward to, and something to do. In other words, work. You might be inclined to think that a Garden of Eden life would be preferable to working at a job, but you’d be wrong. I’m convinced that Adam and Eve would have been bored to tears if they’d stayed in the garden: no kids, no challenges, and no job. I think that Adam being made to grow food “by the sweat of his brow” was a blessing, not a curse.
Sounds innocent and religiously sweet (saccharin?) but think about it!
For the religious and non-religious alike, I will be attacking this from a debate stance (non-theological and non-atheist) though quoting Scripture.
Eve was lured to the Forbidden Fruit by a serpent who told her “your eyes will be opened, and you be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5 and all further quotes come from the International Standard Version of the Bible, a favorite of the Religious Right) Eve saw the fruit as desirable for gaining wisdom and a source of food. Adam happened to be with her at the time so he blindly just eats it. An entirely silly notion. Anyway they then wake up with the realization of their nakedness and cover themselves in fig leaves sown together (my folks have a fig tree so the fig leaves must have grown quite big in those days as I imagine with all the wonderful trees in God’s Creation there are so many choices that would have been better). However, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3:7).
So when God hears this he finds “the woman” (whom Adam did not name yet apparently even after naming every animal) and says:
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Then he says to Adam:
“Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
I am oft reminded of George Carlin here (see Carlin on Religion), “but he loves you!”
…
Adam remembers to name his wife Eve and they are cast into the horrors of the world God created without the pleasures they were once afforded. How sad! Now the innocence of being forced into life without question is gone and from then on, life will be toil.
Now let’s return to Romney’s version of how Adam and Eve transpired. He suggests that defying God was a good thing because life needs work to be happy. Sure, hedonism is empty, but if you read the Scripture above, defying God directly is not the kind of thing God takes lightly. That seems to suggest that conservative principles of people working for wealthy elites like him is justified because when you work it sets you free of the horrors of enjoying life.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a better bastardization of the Bible, but since he is conservative, he gets away with it. He basically says Original Sin (Eve’s bite into the Forbidden Fruit) is justified because they needed work to find the purpose of life? Huh?
Not sure Old Testament God would agree (see above). It may very well be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about Genesis and Adam and Eve.
Mitt should visit one of his multiple car elevators and read the Gospels once in a while:
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
-Matthew 19:24
Conservatism
It really gets to the core of Conservative thinking, which justifies everything they do in some way. Romney’s ruining of American industry and selling off American assets to foreign companies in China is justified because life is supposed to be toil? They seem to think that their entitled lifestyles (Romney owns car elevators, yes plural, and in so-called [by cons] anti-business California to boot, which implies so much hypocrisy). It also shows how out of touch the Romster is when he, a spoiled 1% kid, who’s greatest life challenge came from losing an election (as it was his example) doesn’t understand that telling others to “get a life” is like Bill Clinton preaching abstinence. Fair or not.
Conservatives often justify their entitled existence (like say the Koch Brothers who mimic the same story of Mitt) by declaring survival of the fittest, which is Charles Darwin (and still hated by the core Christians). They try to walk both lines of nature and religion by funding lunatics who bolster their own success and, honestly, think the religious people in this country as little more than pawns.
If a Godless Sodomite (heterosexually I might add) like me can learn the Bible, than anyone can, so beware! I just ask the Revelation crazed conservatives of the Religious Right to consider that their current leadership are a bunch of wolves in sheep’s clothing from Romney to Santorum to Cruz to Carson to Robertson to every wannabe preacher who speaks about his fellow Americans as disdainful heathens. The Bible isn’t big on judgement from what I’ve read. It always falls to God to be the judge from Genesis on.
“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
John 8:7
The Bible also does not like those who wear their religion on their sleeves.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
Amazing how much judgement and religious grandstanding comes from the Conservative movement and as Mitt Romney once said, he is a “severe conservative”.
Though the Religious Right would never trust a Mormon, as they seem them as Heretics. So what kind of a mess have we found ourselves here? That is Modern Conservatism. A mess of religious groups that their own rivals going to hell out of fear that the heathen scum will take over the world, all the while selling out their own values. If there ever was a false prophet, look to modern conservatism and entitled pro-business brats like Mitt Romney.
Can I get an Amen!
Stick to what you know Romney, buying American companies and selling them off for scrap to the Chinese. Oh wait, actually, don’t get a life, Romney, don’t get a life! You are better off going to philanthropy and start doing what Jesus would do!