Various carping about Mitt Romney's "47%" remark

[jessm78.livejournal.com]

Anyone have any flisters mentioning/bitching about this?

I have a liberal flister who is usually a very respectful person. We've agreed to disagree on a bit. But she wrote a long rant in her LJ yesterday about it. She thought it was "cruel" of Romney to say that remark about 47% of Americans wanting to be treated like victims, etc. To be honest, I scrolled right past it because I didn't feel like getting into an argument. I'd had a long day and wasn't in the mood.

Last night a British friend-of-a-friend had to make a snide remark about it though. One of my British flisters was complaining about fanfiction, and how it's annoying when people "Americanise" their characters, and what's the big deal if someone writes a fic using British spelling or colloquialisms. Her friend commented:

"And criticism because someone isn't using the proper "American" words. Well, newsflash all Americans, your language is just a worse version of "proper English" i.e BRITISH ENGLISH. So shut up!"

I seriously hate when they throw that card around, that our English is a "dumbed-down" version of their "proper" English. My friend herself challenged her a little, saying it wasn't just Americans who do it. I finally had to say something and asked her not to generalize like that. I personally don't care if I'm reading fic and it's in British English. I mean, yeah, if you're reading a published novel about American characters *in* America getting something out of the boot of their car, or giving someone a "five note", it might feel a little out of place, but that's just me. My friend later assured me that this girl was just kidding. Maybe I'm clueless, but usually when people kid on the net, they'll put something like "LOL" or ";)" or whatever.

Anyway, to get back to the whole thing about Romney's statement, that friend-of-a-friend replies to my comment with:

"Okay... I'm not doing a Mitt Romney "47% of all Americans" if that's what you're referring to, no."

Is this not a big deal at all and she's just trying to tell me she's not generalizing? Was Romney really generalizing when he made this statement? Personally I didn't really find anything wrong with it, although a few people told me there are people who are actually struggling and are part of that percentage. It's obvious what she thinks of him, but I could have done without that I think.