WashPost's Miller Slams 'Smug' Romney and Santorum for Their Large Families
Washington Post religion columnist Lisa Miller has one child, and she seems quite smug about it. She thanks God “I live in a time and place where I can get up every morning and go to work, and with the money I earn help feed and educate my child.” But in her Saturday column, the slams the Republican candidates for their “smug fecundity,” that they turned their women into retrograde doormats who make babies.
“There’s nothing wrong with big families, of course,” she says fruitlessly before saying there actually is. “But the smug fecundity of the Republican field this primary season has me worried. Their family photos, with members of their respective broods spilling out to the margins, seem to convey a subliminal message that goes far beyond a father’s pride in being able to field his own basketball team. What the Republican front-runners seem to be saying is this: We are like the biblical patriarchs. As conservative religious believers, we take seriously the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply.”
This is why there’s “something wrong with big families.” It devalues women. “Especially worrisome is the inevitable corollary to that belief: Women should put their natural fertility first — before their brains, before their ability to earn a living, before their independence — because that’s what God wants.”
Miller is absolutely certain that the Republicans don’t want women to have brains or be independent. Mothers of large families (like my mother) are sellouts to the liberated woman. To Miller, each woman’s natural, rightful place is to have one baby, and then quickly go back to shredding the Bible. As in this proto-typical Miller quote:
We’ve come a long way from the days of the Bible, baby, and I don’t want to go back there.
The Bible contains profound truths about faith and love and justice and fidelity, but as a point-by-point guidebook to modern domestic life it’s nearly worthless. It was written at a time when women were men’s property, only slightly more valuable than sheep. Their worth was connected to their fertility. Infertility was a shame, a scandal, a condition the women of the Bible prayed to God to be released from.
This is the real Miller. She doesn’t really “thank God” for anything. The God of the Bible is a patriarchal know-nothing. She's a "literal-minded skeptic" that doesn't really believe in Heaven and Hell, so why not run down everything God might suggest that gets in the way of her liberated womanhood?
Miller continues to miss the point that some Americans choose to have large families, and some religious faiths teach their flock that they should be open to as many childen as God grants them. She, the pro-choice woman, seems to spit on the idea that women should make a choice different from hers. Miller wants to be the provider, which is somehow nobler than the retrograde doormat mom like Ann Romney and Karen Santorum:
Family planning is good for families. In an economy where nearly all mothers work, where their ability to earn money doesn’t merely allow them the occasional splurge at the department store but actually pays the mortgage and the college bills, the romantic idealization of biblically abundant families is a retrograde dream.
Smaller families allow everyone in the family to be healthier and better educated. Healthy, well-educated people live longer and are more prosperous than those who are not.
Larger American families (like the one my mom and dad chose) apparently put out unhealthy and stupid children. And these people find it shocking for them and their favorite president to be accused of snobbery.
Managing Editor's Note: Also of interest is how the Washington Post's digital On Faith section at washingtonpost.com teased the story. Miller's item was headlined "The Republican fertility cult?" [see screencap above]
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Comments
Miller
Submitted by grammajane on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:26am.
like all other liberals, can't stand to see a happy responsible family enjoying life in America. Their happiness is collecting tax payer money to live on
Earth to Lisa......
Submitted by merly1 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:28am.
time for space cadet Lisa to return to earth (reality)
I thought libs were all about
Submitted by CM on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:47am.
I thought libs were all about choice. I guess they only like choice when it's a choice they agree with.
Exactly!
Submitted by JohnP in OK on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:16am.
To the "pro-choice" Leftist feminist, the only choices that should be available to today's women are the ones that the feminists approve. The ironic thing is that they are too blinkered by their ideology to realize that THEY are the ones who treat women as too mentally incompetent to make their own choices, not conservatives!
I wish Miller could have met my mother, God rest her soul. Mom was the epitome of a truly liberated woman. She KNEW she was the equal of any man she ever met. She fixed her own car, loaded her own ammo, carried and shot expert with a .44 magnum handgun (at 5'2" and 90 lbs.), had a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do, and worked as a bouncer in a nightclub. She made the decision that two kids was enough for her and raised us alone after she and Dad divorced. And she had nothing but contempt for NOW and the other feminist groups simply because they DIDN'T think she could make her own decisions or her own way in life without their "help."
I would have paid to see Miller tell my mom that she needed Miller to tell her how to make her decisions. Granted, we'd have been paying for Miller's medical bills after Mom beat the crap out of her, but it would have been worth it.
Lisa
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:52am.
You are concerned because these candidates have family photos? Were you concerned that our President has almost no paper trail from the time he went to college until he became a Chicago rabblerouser?
Yea see..........
Submitted by GregE on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:04am.
.......these smug Republicans with big families spilling out into margins, etc........they should be picking 2 of their children to be in photos, maximum. Gee, the nerve of them having pictures of their whole family.
She has one child. Her choice. But because her choice was to have only one, that's what's correct and what everyone should do.
And this kind of nonsense is "normal," but when anyone on the Right speaks of their church, ohhhhhhhhhhhhh the horror!
They want to tell us the Right is dangerous???
she has one kid...
Submitted by almostacowboy on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:03am.
..cause the guy got sober.
Only-children (they have a
Submitted by CJohnson on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:24am.
Only-children (they have a special label) don't seem as happy. And, how does one verify they have taught an only-child civility under variant unpleasant circumstances? Siblings are our first socializing experiences. I wonder if psychopaths are more often only-children?
THAT is a comment that needs an apology
Submitted by Blonde on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:31am.
Stupid liberal twit.
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
That pesky old bible
Submitted by cocodrie on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 3:30am.
Lets get as far away from the bible as we can so we can worship the god of death along with the muslims. We'll no longer have to honor anyone especially our hated parents. We'll be able to steal, kill and destroy to our hearts content and not be burdened by raising a family. . We can just kill the children so that we'll be able to fornicate, commit adultery and bestiality all we want to. We'll have true freedom of choice.
Jesus Loves You so much He died for you
misogyny
Submitted by MidAmerica on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 4:09am.
Her real beef is not with children but with men. Having too many children forces a woman to be a... well, a mom, which in her mind makes the woman subserviant and dependent to a male. But looked at another way what she hates is being a woman. She wants the traditional life of a male. She is misogynistic.
One and done........
Submitted by Qtaug on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 5:44am.
yea, she looks the type! Who would come back for seconds?
???
Submitted by oldfart on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 7:12am.
Is not deciding to have a large family a life style choice like the young lady from Georgetown University Law School?
So what is the difference?
Perhaps because the woman is a liberal progressive and the two males are conservative?
Or is it because the woman is part of the "me" generation and the males are family orientated?
Or is it because the woman is a Democrat and the males are Republican?
Perhaps it is all of the above.
Rather than allowing people to choose how they want to live Lisa Miller wants to dictate to everyone how we should live.
Get out of my bedroom Lisa - you perv.
Thank GOD she only has one child
Submitted by ChrisNH on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 7:55am.
If there's a 'silver lining' to abortion, it's this: Leftists use it to thin their own herd.
Anything that results in fewer Leftists on this planet is a good thing.
Smug???
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 8:54am.
Just who is it that's being smug???
What IS it with these liberal women at the Post that they have to even include political opponents' FAMILIES in their attacks?
Even their fashion editor Robin Givhan couldn't resist attacking Chief Justice Roberts' family!
Does Miller really think these people have big families to stick it in her face?
She just can't stand anyone acting in a way that is a personal affront to her.
This goes hand-in-hand with liberals' hatred of religion: There's nothing wrong with religion, or big families; just don't shove them in our faces!
Liberals: tolerant only for their ideas
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 9:00am.
She must be ignorant of the phrase: the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
I'm amazed how little respect liberals have for mothers.
Double post
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 9:03am.
.
And they say it with such conviction
Submitted by lrgon on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 9:15am.
Rick Santorum reaches out to his friends on the other side of the anti-family isle and Mitt Romney catches Rick doing it!
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/29/mitt-romn...
http://www.sanctepater.com/2012/02/rick-santorum-endorsed-pro-abortion.html
Rhetorical question
Submitted by QueenMum on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:32am.
Has Pres. Obama called either the Santorums or the Romneys to apologize for Miller's condescending remarks?
“If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." - Mark Twain
Excellent point.
Submitted by brerol on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:04pm.
Excellent point.
I wonder why this prune
Submitted by killa37 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:42am.
I wonder why this prune didn't make any derogitory remarks about all of the inner-city welfare breeders with their multiple numbers of illegitimate kids, possibly from a variety of irresponsible sperm doners??? Oh, I guess it's because that can't really be considered a 'family'.............................it takes a village, huh, or some such crap.
I hate to bang that drum, but
Submitted by seen the light on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:47am.
I hate to bang that drum, but given the radical nature of this comment, why doesn't Santorum make an issue of this? Go on one of the mainstream media ambush shows (because that is what they all really are) and turn the tables. Repeat her comments and demand an apology. SO MANY AMERICANS ARE SO LONG BRAINWASHED BY THE MSM, THEY WONT SEE THE NARRATIVE AT PLAY.
Unless it is pointed out to them. Santorum needs to make a big deal about this. Mothers everywhere will hate her comments. It is apparent to me that the MSM has been so dominant for so long that many American's think along their lines. They don't even consider the other side.Once the American public hears out side, the other side,, we can win many back, as low hanging fruit.
I want to keep banging this drum until they act. If Romney,Santorum, and the general Rupub party won't fight back, they deserve to lose.
Another ignorant progressive
Submitted by almostacowboy on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:08am.
who has no idea what the Bible actually says.
and another thing...
Submitted by seen the light on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:16am.
This hateful writer can't stand seeing large, strong traditional American families. If this was an immigrant family of 12 she would celebrate it and demand we pay for their schooling, healthcare, welfare, clothing, food, etc.
Again, when will our candidates stand up for themselves?
Seen the light
Submitted by 26CX on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:24am.
Welcome to NewsBusters! It's good to have someone with experience on both sides of the argument add to the conversation.
Why...
Submitted by Jim54 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:38am.
Why, after viewing Miller's image does the term "vinegary old prune" come to mind so strongly? Oh well, if she wants to limit her line's chances of survival, who are we to argue? (Sarcasm/on)
Like all pro-abortion
Submitted by celator on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:17pm.
Like all pro-abortion fanatics and professional eugenics enthusiasts, Miller decries those who love large families, and those who insist on raising them to be healthy, productive citizens. There MUST be a limit of the number of children a couple is allowed to have, she argues. We need more government regulations on this issue!
I am just going to throw this
Submitted by MrSnuggles on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:26pm.
I am just going to throw this out there:
Imagine a world in which the majority of women were not in the work force. What would that do for unemployed men who cannot feed their children without government assistance? With a massive reduction in the workforce, there would be MORE jobs than workers, BETTER pay for men, and women would not need to go to work in order to pay the bills. Just like it was before the majority of women worked.
Afterall, when women went back to work it was feminism, not necessity, that drove it. Now, after decades of women working, it is a necessity. Just another unintended consequence of liberal ideology.
Mr. Sunggles
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:45pm.
Can you imagine the effect on children to have a parent home with them? I'm not even saying it has to be the mom, but if our society could see the value in being a parent, we would have better children, and a better society. But then the liberals would lose their opportunity for indoctrination of the young.
What is disturbing is Miller
Submitted by brerol on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:30pm.
What is disturbing is Miller wants society to accept without judgement the "modern family" as visioned by the far left. The traditional large family is to be scorned. Why is it when conservatives issue their family values the left go ballistic with anger? But then turn around and issue their view of family values but demand to be entitled to immunity from any critisizm?
Huffpo
Submitted by brerol on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:48pm.
About three years ago the HuffpPo published the family portrait of Mitt Romeys family. The comments from their liberal readers were disgraceful. Accusations of rascism and questions on whether the Romey family should be permitted to have the number of children they have were common.
Wow! What a BIG word.......
Submitted by Herbster on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 12:50pm.
"Fecundity." Not just "Fecundity," but SMUG fecundity! I'm impressed! Now I know why this creature is one of our "Betters." In one article, she has reinforced two main goals of the communist party - destruction of the family and of religion.
I have never met this person, but let me see if I can list her beliefs from afar, in no special order:
1. Feminist.
2. Pro abortion.
3. Votes straight demo.
4. Anti Catholic, Anti Jewish, anti all religions except the religion of peace.
5. Ban all firearms.
6. Pro (Any) union.
7. Hates the "Rich" - except those who deserve to be rich. (Leftists)
8. Pro homosexual marriage.
9. Pro redistribution of wealth - with one exception - hers!
10. Wants censorship - except for the Left.
11. Anti- military.
12. Pro "Occupy."
13. Anti police - exception is obama's upcoming 100,000 strong.
14. Has a "Workers of the world, unite" bimber sticker on the bumper of her Prius.
I will not take the obvious shot as to why she has only one child.......
Miller
Submitted by mmilesll on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:17pm.
Maybe the bitch hates sex. I'll bet her kid will grow up normal-right. That poor kid will spend most of his life in therapy.
From her Wikipedia entry:
Submitted by ex buff e-dub on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:40pm.
From her Wikipedia entry:
Miller was raised in a secular Jewish home. Miller was married to her husband in an interfaith ceremony performed by an Episcopalian priest who worked with a rabbi on the ceremony. After the birth of her daughter, Miller joined a Jewish Temple for reasons of "blood and history and culture". She describes this religious community as a "progressive, inclusive congregation."
So a woman who was raised with no real religious background, who married outside her faith (just an observation...not a judgement) had no religious calling until after the birth of her child, and then, only because it was like an alumni association, rather than a return to seeking or faith has the temerity (I see your fecundity and raise you a temerity) to lecture others on faith and family?
There's a hugh hole in your theroy, lady.
Submitted by CobraMan on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:24pm.
There's a huge hole in your theory, Lady, and that the fact that the WOMEN are the heads of any large family, for they are the ones who are responsible for the domestic side of the equation, are they not? What is you actually think of the wives of large families? Do you think that they're all submissive chattel, slaves subject to the whims of their husbands? You've never met the mother of large family, have you? They are the most demanding, authoritative women imaginable! They have to be, just for that family to operate together, AS a family. Contrary to what you may have been told, they are The Boss of the family, just as they have been for thousands of years. Even in the "backwards" religious families, or the days of the Roman Empire, the WOMEN run the household, not the men.
Men, traditionally, are the authority when it comes to inter-social interaction, because they spend most of their time in interactions between families, like trade, and commerce.. The women, on the other hand, are the de facto authority when it comes to domestic matters, when it comes to intra-social interactions, like who's job it is to, say, take out the trash or sweep the floor. MEN have very little authority in the matter, as my wife reminds me every time I complain about having to carry out the trash, or paint the wall, or whatever job she decides I must perform. It's called "a division of labor," one inter-social and one intra-social, and it's a VERY successful, VERY effective means of living in groups, whether those groups be a family or a complete society. It's a successful survival strategy, for obvious reasons. We, as a race, wouldn't even exist if it wasn't a successful strategy.
So, Lady, just who's the fool here? Is it the people who follow a strategy that has lead to the marvels that mankind has created over thousands of years, or the people who think that this hugely successful strategy of a division of inter and intra social interactions is, somehow, abhorrent and, therefor, inadvisable? If history is any guide, it's YOU who is the fool. But, go ahead and revel in the thought that you're smarter than the people who have followed the most successful strategy yet devised. They are the ignorant fools, even as they are the ones who build you your cities, you cars, your apartments, your appliances, grow you you food, develop you your medicines, provide FOR YOU the things you need for your very survival. After all, you're a columnist, and a single-child one at that. You're FAR smarter than they are, the ones who built these things for you, the ones who invented them.
By the way, lady how much food have you grown today? How many cars have you produced? How many houses have you built? How much labor have you actually preformed? It must have been a lot, since you're no longer tied down as a mere, helpless, subservient mother, right? Right?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
Cobra
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:40pm.
Wow, you just described my marriage.
It's not just your marriage
Submitted by CobraMan on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:59pm.
It's not just your marriage, it's just about all of them. There's a very good reason for that: IT WORKS!
Here's what these "enlightened" people always seem to forget: While they sit around hypothesizing about the adverse effects on society those "traditional' families produce, with their archaic ideas of a "paternalist" father and a "subservient" mother, together with their "huge" number of ill informed, under educated children, it is these very same families, along with their "smug" ideals and their "backwards" thinking, that are producing the very things families, large and small, need to survive, and prosper. It was, and still is, those "archaic" people that created technology, that created art, that created philosophy, that created the very societies we're supposedly harming. Somehow, and in a way only the "enlightened " people understand, we, the barbarians, are both creating AND destroying society at the same time. Don't ask me how this obvious contradiction is possible. I don't have a college degree, so I'm not "educated" enough to dismiss it from consideration. I'm too stupid to understand the definition of a paradox, I guess, to dismiss one when it is inherent in my "educated" conclusions.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
~Nancy Pelosi has five kids
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:18pm.
.
A friend of mine is very
Submitted by Ken Shepherd on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 2:46pm.
A friend of mine is very liberal, as is her mom and her siblings. Her dad is a squishy moderate Republican who voted for John Kerry (but I think voted for John McCain over Barack Obama). She has four other siblings. I asked her once why such a large family given how liberal and pro-choice her mom is, and she said her parents always wanted to have a lot of kids.
Both her parents are well-educated and they didn't lack for educational and economic opportunities, with some going into the military and others going through college. And they're Episcopalian.
So they break the stereotypes in a few different ways, but fundamentally, Lisa Miller is wrong. While perhaps conservatives tend to have larger families or those with large families tend to be conservative, it's entirely possible that you can have a liberal brood and raise, aside from the political liberalness of the kids, well-adjusted children.
~Some people just like babies/children
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 3:13pm.
I would know, being pregnant with number 5. People do a double take and ask "Are all those yours?!" and then assume we're Catholic, since I don't dress like a Protestant religious fundie.
My point in bringing up Pelosi is that I'm sure this woman wouldn't refer to her as "smug" for having five kids. It's the liberal double standard in operation again.
It's an undertsandable "want."
Submitted by CobraMan on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 3:29pm.
It's an understandable "want," having a large family, that is. After all, a species can't propagate when the total sum of their children is less than the sum of the parents themselves.
But, hay, let the "enlightened" people restrict themselves to one child per couple. After about 5 generations, they're breed themselves right out of existence! That's just how "smart" they really are.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
~And one day our children's grandchildren
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 7:27pm.
will look up at them and say, "What's a 'liberal'?".
As long as they don't ask it in Arabic!
Submitted by GW on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 1:33pm.
.
The liberal mind
Submitted by squirefld on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 5:30pm.
This is the perfect example of "liberalism is a mental disease". A mind such as her's is so devoid of a normal thought process that she is incapible of knowing just how dumb she truly is. I'll bet she was so proud of her excellent column (in her mind) that she does deserve some pitty along with her only child.
Too many children in a family?
Submitted by TSM on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 6:15pm.
Of course everyone has a right to have as many children as they want. It's a stupid debate. We don't live in China. The only thing I personally question is when people are struggling financially or on the verge of losing their home; why would they have more children?
For the religions that believe God tells them to have as many children as they possibly can; I argue God tells us all to have a little common sense.