After reading this post at the Ohio-based blog, Plunderbund, about House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s attempt to offer online answers to (his notion of) constituent concerns, here’s what I wrote in a comment there:
What is most obviously out of touch about Cantor’s site is that it is geared ONLY toward people who:
-already have a job
-already have a house
-already have savingsas opposed to the more than 22 million who are either out of work or are underemployed, the millions who’ve lost their home already, the millions who are tenants whose landlords have been foreclosed on and therefore the tenants are evicted and the people who have no savings AND no job that will bring them a chance to save.
I abhor namecalling, but if ever I were to break my rule on that…
Seriously. It’s not only that the images on the site are of a white married couple with a young boy and a baby standing in front of a stereotypical home that cued me into the website creator’s vision of who would need this site. Or that when you click for answers, one of the nice white people with perfect hair and a perfect body offers you the answer.
It’s that the site is created for the haves. And Cantor, on behalf of the GOP membership in the House of Representatives, is now outfront and center demonstrating how little the Congressional members from his party care or think about the have-nots.
Unless he’s planning on creating a mirror image website for them.
I wonder what the cartoons and characters would look like on that one…
Foreclosed home, stack of unpaid bills, food stamps, unemployment line, insurance denials, single parents…
And, oh – people of color, perhaps?
Sigh. I don’t use this phrase much but if anything deserves to be called an epic fail, Cantor’s attempt at offering solutions is it.
These observations about how out of touch Cantor’s ideas of what Americans need and what would help Americans are is supported by the Politico poll just out today that Joe Gandelman discusses here.
Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.