Don’t claim Mitt Romney doesn’t know or care about garbage men when he devotes a specific mention about them in his book, right down to the line about being invisible:
“During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts. Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant. I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile.”The AFSCME claim isn’t just poor agi-prop, it was directly refuted before it was ever written.
“One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector. I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston. As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me. It was as if I was invisible. Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect. – I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever. Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did…” (251)
Now, if Richard Hayes and the AFSCME union—which has pledged to spend 100 million dollars to reelect Obama instead of providing Richard with the healthcare he needs—wanted to really impress Americans, perhaps they could find an example of where career liberal elitist Barack Obama even pretended to have a service industry job, or spent time volunteering to help people.
Mitt Romney isn’t a perfect candidate, but he is a far better man than the President, which much more depth of character and more genuine empathy for his fellow human beings when the cameras are off than Barack Obama could ever pretend to have.
If this union or other unions want to blow $100 million playing into Romney’s hands like this, I hope the new President is considerate enough to invite them to his inauguration.
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