In the words of Al Gore...

"How DARE they!"

A lot has been made about THK's comments today that Laura Bush has never held a "real job" -- and rightly so. It boggles the mind that Kerry's wife could have "forgotten" that the First Lady was a librarian/teacher for nine years (a period of time lil' Ron-Ron Reagan described as "brief" on his god-awful show on MSNBC -- but that tirade will have to wait); how many times has the President said on the stump that "I like teachers so much that I married one"? But I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on that point.

I'll even take it easy on THK for not including stay-at-home mom as a "real job." While housewife is a demanding role, there is a sense in which it is not a "real job" -- you don't get paid to do it, for example. Perhaps this is what THK meant. So I'll give her that one, too.

But what pisses me off is the underlying assumption in THK's comments: that she can tell --just by looking at Laura Bush, knowing who she married, knowing where she's from and how she talks, and considering her politics -- that she must have been a housewife. (Queue Al again: "How DARE they!")

Pure elitism. Pure snot.

I told The Plaintiff about THK's comments this evening, and she picked up on this immediately. She reminded me of JK's comment during the second debate that there were only "three people in this room" who would pay more taxes in a Kerry Presidency: JK could tell, just by looking around the room of 150 voters, that only he, Bush, and Charlie Gibson earned more than $200,000 a year (or maybe I should say, Kerry + wife = more than 200K).

And this -- not the forgetfulness about LB's former occupation as teacher, not the omission of housewife in the definition of "real job" -- is what really just sets me off. It's the feeling I get when classmates assume that I must not have made good grades because I have decided to go back down South after law school. (Not true -- not to toot the horn, but top 20% -- pretty good for a kid from the 49th best public school system in the country.) Or the outrage I felt when one of my classmates, a Harvard College grad, crashed the interview session of one of the Birmingham firms and stated that they must be happy to get anyone from UVa. (He was then informed by one of the interviewing attorneys that he graduated, ahem, first in his class at UVa and clerked for CJ Rehnquist. Last I heard, the kid still hadn't found a job for next summer, despite interviewing with firms in just about every major city.)

Such enlightenment. Such tolerance. Such open-mindedness. Such BS.