This has been much talked about:
You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry. But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.
I wore bread bags on my feet, too, but we wore them inside the fucking shoe to keep your socks dry. This was before you could pick up goretex or all the new water resistant shoes at any walmart for 20 bucks a pair. It didn’t mean you were poor. It meant you didn’t like wet feet.
Meanwhile, Joni Ernst is the same age as me- 44, which means that while she was living through this crushing poverty, you’ll never guess who was President.
St. Ronaldus Reaganicus, whose trickle down done trickled all over Joni’s boots. Have no fear, though, because Uncle Sugar was happy to give this strong, independent pulled her-own-damned-self up by her own bread bag boots, tea party pioneer a helping hand:
Despite Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) rhetoric about growing up poor on Tuesday night, her family actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government aid between 1995 and 2009, the District Sentinel news co-op reported.
Farm subsidy records indicate that the freshman senator’s father, Richard Culver, has received $38,395 in commodity subsidies and conservation payments, with all but $12 of the money being used for support of his corn crops. Ernst’s uncle, Dallas Culver, has reportedly received $250,000 in federal corn subsidies and $117,141 in additional aid. And her paternal grandfather, Harold Culver, got an additional $57,479 in aid between 1995 and 2001.
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in free market doctrine about the government paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to pig ignorant rednecks to not grow shit.
Shut up, crazy lady.
Snarki, child of Loki
Bread bags? You had bread bags?!?
We DREAMED of having bread bags.
schrodinger's cat
I commented on this yesterday, but she looks like a church lady in her 50s at the very least. And those camo pumps she wore during the rebuttal speech were hideous, may be she should have stuck to the bread bags.
jharp
I am in my early fifties and we used to use bread bags to keep our socks dry. Inside our shoes of course.
And I did not grow up poor. I grew up upper middle class in a little hick town in the midwest.
beth
Growing up, we were lower middle class. Not poor, not rich but we always had plenty of toys and food to eat and a nice house to live in. Even then, I only had one pair of “nice” shoes. We wore sneakers or cheap loafers to school and wore our nice shoes to church or parties. Back in those days, you just didn’t buy more than one pair of nice shoes – why would you? We weren’t the avid consumers we are now.
JPL
It’s more likely that she used plastic kroger bags to cover that glued down hair, during a rain storm. During the Reagan years, I lived outside of Springfield, IL and I never heard of the farmers children wearing bread bags.
jonas
Hey, but it’s welfare for salt-of-the-earth white folks with chin stubble and faded tractor hats. So, you know, totally ok.
srv
MIND FUCKING BLOWN.
terraformer
Not that it would have mattered (probably), but it may have been nice for some enterprising soul to have brought up this kind of thing during the race. But then again, Braley–Ernst’s Dem opponent–is kind of dull like oatmeal.
I live in Iowa (fortunately, not much longer), and I see these Ernst bumperstickers everywhere “Mother, Soldier, Leader” – would that there were a counterpoint, something like “Liar. Obfuscator. Nutbag.”
Turgidson
Farm subsidies aren’t welfare, you silly goose. They’re just a little token of recognition of the hard work these real ‘mericans do every day to put food on the tables of a grateful nation.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I want to see a bill ending farm subsidies introduced just to see who’s really on the side of big government.
Ernst will be.
Belafon
IGMFY
constitutional mistermix
Boots in the 70’s were cold and leaky. We all put breadbags over our socks inside our boots, rich or poor.
At least where I grew up, the moral of the story is that Canadian technology is better than US technology. Once Sorels became available at local stores, our feet got warmer in the Winter.
Gin & Tonic
Plastic bread bags did not come into widespread use until the mid- to late-1960’s.
kindness
I grew up in the 60’s. Ma used to make us wear rubbers (not condoms you sickos). You know, the rubber bootie that covered shoes and costs $5 max.
I’m going out on a limb and calling our newest ball cutting Senator a liar.
SatanicPanic
I grew up in the desert and I remember wondering why some kids wore jeans during the summer. Then I realized they wore the same pair every day, all year and it was because they couldn’t afford shorts. Living in the desert and not being able to afford shorts is a real sob story, not this crap
Paul in KY
It’s a shame that her relatively well-off parents were such tightwads.
Elizabelle
I agree, Joni Ernst is horrible. She should be unelectable.
However: wouldn’t the maths show that she was 25 — an adult — in 1995, when her family jumped on the “we’re paying you not to grow/work/breed pigs” farm wagon?
That says a lot about her rugged, independent family, and indicates that she is yet again full of sh*t, but it doesn’t say much about their situation in the 1970s and 1980s, when lil’ Joni was schlepping to school in bread bags.
If I were an Iowa reporter, I’d grab some of Joni’s school yearbooks and start following what people who knew her then had to say.
Mnemosyne thinks the real story is that Joni and family were pretty comfortable, and she seized on the bread bags story as a prop.
Big ole hound
Maybe she mixed up her feet and hands, then the bags could be used to cradle boars balls while she was cutting, or did she chew them off. Rural legends abound.
balconesfault
Wouldn’t plastic bags over your shoes make it really hard to keep from slipping on ice and snow?
Paul in KY
I’ll tell y’all a real sad story. My father grew up in the depression, in Pike County, KY. Had 10 siblings. Was asking him recently about how much it used to snow there in Winter. He said a lot & I said ‘Gee, dad, you must have had a lot of fun as a kid playing in all that snow’. He looked at me & said that they couldn’t go out & play, as their only pair of shoes had cardboard soles & they couldn’t get them needlessly wet.
Sen. Ernst is a Rockefeller, compared to my dad’s family.
Calouste
So I’m about the same age as Senator Ernst and growing up working class in a socialist hellhole in Europe my parents could afford to buy me more than one pair of shoes. Even ones that kept my feet dry and warm in the winter. America #1, eh?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Its worth pointing out that under Saint Ronaldus, there were a record number of family farms lost.
Chris
It’s been said that Newt Gingrich is a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like, and this lady similarly struck me as a comfortable person’s idea of what a poor person sounds like. The entire speech came off like a self-parody. I’m surprised she didn’t talk about having to walk to school uphill both ways.
NorthLeft12
I grew up in Ontario during the sixties and never wore plastic bags on my feet. We were middle class and had rubber boots for wet weather and insulated snow boots for the winter. My parents taught us to avoid large puddles of water when wearing our snow boots. I still got a few “soakers” though.
How long does anyone think a plastic bag would last outside your shoe? I mean before it is ripped to shreds?
Good golly, the stupidity of some people. Although recalling George Carlin’s rule of stupid people makes me believe that there were undoubtedly lots of people doing that.
Carlin’s rule? ” Think about how stupid the average person is, then imagine that half of the people are stupider than that.”
JPL
@balconesfault: I would assume that they would tear, if worn on the outside of the shoe. As a family, you’d have to eat a lot of bread.
edit… North left mentioned the same thing about the durability of bread bags.
gogol's wife
Born and bred Midwesterner from a humble background, but I have to say I never put bags on my feet.
Betty Cracker
@Snarki, child of Loki: Luxury! The best we could manage was to cobble together old wads of chewing gum mined from the underside of lunchroom tables to form a waterproof seal!
gogol's wife
Way OT, but where has the movie Hot Fuzz been all my life? I saw it last night and have been laughing all day as I recall various moments.
Hal
Kirsten Gillibrand (48) shoulder give Ernst some style tips. I thought she was mid 50s.
constitutional mistermix
@NorthLeft12:
Thus validating my theory that Canadian technology is superior. Unfortunately, our inferior US technology required a kludge like bread sacks, on the inside (not outside).
raven
And, she’s a fucking officer.
raven
@balconesfault: Um, a plastic bag covering the sole would last about three steps.
mdblanche
I finally remembered where I’d seen Joni Ernst before.
Doug r
We tried bread bags but they suck because your feet sweat inside them. So my mom bought me a pair of boots at Woolco and told me to stay out of the big puddles. The game then became how big a puddle can you step in without it overtoping your boots. Hopefully that puddle wasn’t too far from home.
schrodinger's cat
@Hal: Helmet hair, panty hose, ugly ass shoes, many of these Republican women politicians have a style that ages them. See also, the latest Mrs. Gingrich.
ETA: Nancy Pelosi is in her 70s but is always sharply dressed.
Doug r
@gogol’s wife: they’ve got two more Shaun of the Dead and World’s End
Redshift
As a Midwestern friend on Twitter said, “Maybe I’m just slow in getting it, but didn’t Jodi Ernst grow up on farm? You don’t wear good shoes to school on muddy days, you BRING THEM. She grew up on a farm and didn’t own a goddamn pair of boots?”
Her conclusion: Ernst is a goddamn liar.
To which I would add, it’s a lie that’s obvious to her constituents, but she thinks will fool the “coastal elites.” Conservatives in “The Heartland” whine about how we look down on them. You know why? It’s because they vote for obviously unprincipled selfish assholes as long as they profess to love Jeebus and hate government and liberals.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: She does have one daughter.
Felixmoronia
@Elizabelle:
The 1995-2009 time period reflects only the records available to ewg.org. You can rest assured that the Ernst/Culver families were at the public teat for years before that. I grew up in Iowa (due north of her on the MN border) in the early 70’s and all the farm kids had cars not the townies. Farmers were doing well.
CanadaGoose
I can’t believe people who could afford store-bought bread are complaining about being poor.
Cervantes
@Paul in KY:
Yes, those cardboard soles were called “Hoover leather” and they were ubiquitous during the Depression. Kids wore them even in Massachusetts, where the shoe-making industry had prospered for decades.
Terrible, terrible years.
Redshift
@NorthLeft12: I remember using plastic bags occasionally to make it easier to get the boots on and off, not for dryness. But those may have been hand-me-down ski boots that were a bit tight.
Gindy51
@gogol’s wife: Mr Skinner to the manager’s office, Mr. Skinner. We watch this one and Shaun of the Dead ALL the time. Try Paul, your sides will split with laughter.
Okay I tried the bread bags on my feet today and they were shredded within 20 yards. Ernst is a fucking liar.
Chris
@Redshift:
I said before (talking about Duck Dynasty, and Sarah Palin’s similar bullshit stories) that this kind of image wasn’t meant to appeal to actual rural types who hunt and farm for a living, so much as the much bigger demographic of middle class suburbanites, who have never lived in that world and wouldn’t have a clue how, but love the fantasy/mythology of how that world supposedly was, back when everything was rural and men were men. (And occasionally go on camping trips, and have their kids join the Boy Scouts, because the once-a-month vacation from suburbia totally makes you like Daniel Boone).
I think the same applies here.
Redshift
@gogol’s wife: It’s awesome. It’s my favorite of the three Simon Pegg ensemble comedies.
Marc
Holy shit, this is brilliant. Somebody with the Dems needs to make an ad out of this, pronto.
(It would be the exact inverse of this brilliant Jerry Brown ad.)
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
!
Felixmoronia
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
That was because of greed. In the middle-late 70’s corn and beans were at all-time high prices and many of the fool farmers went out and bought over-priced land that even the high prices wouldn’t support. When commodity prices fell the bankers(yes them again) were only too happy to repo the farm! It was greed all around.
Redshift
@Chris: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s like when I found out that when you hear a conservative (like O’Reilly) claim they grew up working class, you know they’re lying, because real working people don’t say they’re working class, they say they’re middle class.
JGabriel
So Ernst’s family received more free money from the government in 14 years than most welfare recipients receive in their entire lifetime. The level of hypocrisy here is criminal.
kc
@Elizabelle:
Good point. Perhaps the moral of the story is that Joni and her family lived in severe poverty until the government started giving them lots of money every year.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Felixmoronia: Hey, might be true, I don’t know. But blaming farmers for the failure of family farms is just about the most no-win political stratagem I’ve ever seen, right on up there with blaming kids for getting shot or dying of diseases that they easily could have been vaccinated against.
kc
@Gindy51:
They don’t make bread bags like they used to. Another example of America’s decline under Obummer.
Jamey
@Snarki, child of Loki: You had DREAMS?!? Well excuuuuuse me, Mr Rockefeller.
boatboy_srq
@schrodinger’s cat: Bread-bags-to-camo-pumps simply proves that her pocketbook has grown fatter, not that her taste has improved.
Betty Cracker
@Gindy51: See, that’s the kind of cutting-edge primary research you won’t find on any other blog!
Judge Crater
Keep the goddamn government out of my farm subsidies! And keep Social Security out of Paul Ryan’s family support.
This is the twisted world view of the right wing. They want to “legalize freedom” because they owe nothing to nobody and don’t need no government to tell ’em how to run their lives. They think they live in the 19th century except they don’t have a clue what 19th century life was like. Twelve hour days in a coal mine or factory, 16 hour days on a farm where a failed crop meant starvation, or menial jobs in the Dickensian slums in urban America. They built everything – the dams, the roads, the hospitals, the satellites that tell them where they are, the schools, the universities, the internet, the weather radar, the railroads that the government gave millions of acres of land to, and everything else.
Fuck them.
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Think about being a kid & having to stay in your shack & not be allowed to get outside & have fun in the snow (some of my best kid play experiences were in the snow).
Felixmoronia
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Not using it as a political stratagem, that’s just the reality of it. The sensible farmers at the time just shook their heads at their fool neighbors.
shelley
Looks like Ernst’s bread bags are the new Rubio’s water bottle.
Chris
@Judge Crater:
This.
This is what these fucking idiots pining for “the way things were in the old days” refuse to understand: there’s a reason things aren’t that way anymore. People in the nineteenth century didn’t sit around thinking about how awesome it was to live in the nineteenth century. People in the nineteenth century were too busy working their fucking asses off to ensure that their children wouldn’t have to live in the nineteenth century.
Jamey
The takeaway here is that Joni Ernst’s family was so rich, they could just throw away bread and keep the bags so that their millionaire footwear never had to touch the ground.
Emily68
I have never put bread bags on my feet to keep them dry, but I don’t see how it would work. Wouldn’t your feet get all sweaty inside the bags and get just as wet as when you have no plastic bags on a rainy day? I have used latex gloves on my hands when painting the house during warm weather, and my hands get all wet pretty quickly.
Paul in KY
@Jamey: I like the cut of your jib…
NorthLeft12
@Doug r: Yes, and that is how I got most of my soakers.
Violet
GOP economic plan: a breadbag on every foot.
mai naem mobile
Just one thing about shoes. I don’t remember seeing much beyond black and brown shoes and primarily white sneakers for kids in the 70s. White for girls for some special church event. There wasn’t all this matchy matchy stuff even for women. I remember my older sisters wearing black or brown sandals/pumps with whatever outfit they had on. You even see that in the movies from that era.
rea
I grew up in the desert and I remember wondering why some kids wore jeans during the summer. Then I realized they wore the same pair every day, all year and it was because they couldn’t afford shorts
I grew up in the desert, too, and even kids who could afford to wear shorts didn’t, because, cactuses.
JohnK
I call bullshit on Ernst. I grew up in farm country in the previous epoch, just north in Minnesota where we where so poor we had to live in snow caves half of the year. It is inconceivable that farm kids would not have boots and overshoes to deal with life on the farm in the fall, winter and spring. You need more than bread bags to walk down the driveway to catch the school bus. And then there are “the chores.” I suppose she did chores barefoot in bread bags. Maybe she stayed indoors most of the year and never went outside to play with the other kids. She must be utterly contemptuous of humanity to fling pig shit like that.
NorthLeft12
Looking back on this, was there any questioning at all about Ernst’s ridiculous anecdote? Or do people, including the media, just shrug their shoulders and say “Everyone knows that is bullshit” and move on?
When I first heard this bread bag story I laughed out loud. Now I am laughing for a different reason. Hooo boy!
SiubhanDuinne
A loaf of bread, a jug of whine….
Jeffro
First, last, and only question that ever needs to be asked of Senator Ernst when she inevitably throws her hat into the GOP Veepstakes:
“Senator, could you please tell us one instance, either of government policy or cultural worldview, where you differ from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin?”
Iowa Old Lady
I grew up in Detroit. We had no bread bags. Wearing bread bags was likely to get you beat up.
Iowa Old Lady
@Gindy51: Oh man, I wish I’d been there to see it.
Cervantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
… and how!
Mr. Twister
She’s a goddamned liar. The story doesn’t pass any sniff test known to man. As many have pointed out a) bags on the outside wouldn’t last 2 minutes, b) you’d fall right on your a**. This is like Paul “I have a bad back” Ryan doing P90X and running fast marathons, bullish*t.
Mike G
Her idiocy is not in itself remarkable in the general population. What is astonishing is millions of Repukes thought this dumb hick was senator material. They have such contempt for the process of governing that they pick candidates on how well those candidates flatter their tribal conceits; their stupidity or poor administration skills are never even given a thought.
Bread bags! Yeah, that’s what a superpower needs, a senator who wore bread bags as a kid! It’s not like there are any more important issues to deal with. Maybe it’s time for another round of flag pins, flag salutes or pledge of allegiance distractions, let’s check in with KKKarl Rove.
Elie
The thing about these Repubs is that they are so blissfully unaware of even how to make stories up. This was so clearly a “made up” story and anyone doing any digging is going to find out the embarrassing details about how 1) she wasn’t all that poor, 2) breadbags don’t work and are unlikely to be cost effective to use regularly. In between, it just calls more attention to her really shitty speech and presentation — something she would want to let drop out of memory. Instead, she is going to wish that she could put a bread bag over her head and seal it with a large twist tie around her neck. Stupid stupid. She aint playing to Iowa any more where the rubes don’t check your shit out.. from now on she is in the bigs where ALL your shit is checked…
Gypsy Howell
This is why I love you, John Cole.
schrodinger's cat
@NorthLeft12: Judy Woodruff did a fawning piece on her for the Snooze Hour just before the midterms, with soft ball questions. Ernst came across as a fake and phony in less than 5 minutes but Judy never challenged any of her BS.
Bread bags worn outside your shoes won’t survive a torrential downpour forget snow or ice.
beejeez
@schrodinger’s cat: Camo pumps? She was wearing camouflage pumps? I didn’t see any — ohhhhhhh.
chopper
what can i say, Joni Loves Cha-ching!
schrodinger's cat
@beejeez: Camo-pumps
Amir Khalid
So Jodi Ernst had to wear bread bags on her feet in winter? Big deal. She’s lucky she didn’t grow up in Hawai’i. Nobody there has winter footwear. Not even the rich folks.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Hawai’i doesn’t count as America, anyway. It has always struck me as being too … foreign … exotic, even.
Linnaeus
Is this where the thread becomes a Four Yorkshiremen sketch?
ETA: I see that’s already happened.
voncey
Like John, we used to put bread bags over our socks but inside our winter boots (what we called skidoo boots) to keep our feet dry. It was especially helpful in the Canadian spring where there was still a lot of snow but also giant melting puddles. We also used bread bags inside our ski boots if they fit a little tight. If you didn’t wear socks your feet would sweat for sure.
We were middle class though and everyone one in our middle class/working class town did it. cry me a river joni.
Alan in SF
It was the radioactive waste and partially-hydrogenated lead in the Wonder Bread bags that gave them their tensile strength, so I think we can lay this one at the feet of job-killing EPA regulations.
Linnaeus
Another use for bags on your feet before the boots go on: if you’re wearing boots over your shoes, it makes it easier to get your feet in and out of the boots.
Gravenstone
@Gindy51: I thought “Shaun..” was decent, but I was deeply disappointed with “Paul”, YMMV, obviously.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@schrodinger’s cat: While fabric shopping today, I stopped at a camo rack.
Camo taffeta.
I just scratched my head and moved on.
Gravenstone
@Felixmoronia: I grew up on a small farm in NW Ohio. My stepdad (now retired) still rants to this day about others who got in over their heads because they bought too much land or needed the absolute newest equipment, then complained when they lost it all when prices bottomed out.
Paul in KY
@chopper: They always claim that, you know, they were poor compared to those Kennedys, and Roosevelt’s, etc.
schrodinger's cat
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Why would any want to wear camo anything when they are not in a war zone? Beats me.
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: What about the Bushes and the Romneys and other GOP money bags that I am forgetting about.
ETA: What matters is their policies and not upbringing. Better to have some one like FDR than a fake poor person.
Buddy H
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) shared more folksy stories of her childhood on Wednesday, telling reporters that she used to wear a bucket on her head for no apparent reason.
“I’d be walking outside our house and see a bucket lying there, and I’d say to myself, ‘That’s a perfectly good bucket, I think I’ll put it on my head,’ ” she said. “It wasn’t because I needed a hat or anything. I must have had, oh gosh, a half-dozen hats or so. I just wanted to wear a bucket.”
Ernst said that during her youth, she was known for poking a hole in a large piece of corrugated cardboard and wearing it as a poncho.
“I can’t for the life of me tell you why I did that,” she said. “I just liked the look of it, I guess. Nobody paid much attention to it. People sure don’t notice your cardboard poncho when you’re wearing a bucket on your head.”
When asked why she was sharing these stories, Sen. Ernst considered her answer carefully. “I think people like to get to know their representatives in Washington as people,” she said. “And it helps to know that one of them used to wear buckets on her head, corrugated cardboard ponchos, and scuba flippers instead of gloves. Did I tell you I used to wear scuba flippers instead of gloves? To this day I’ll be darned if I know why I did that.”
Zach
@schrodinger’s cat: Way to comment on the lady’s looks. Good job.
Peale
First up – the bread bags went over the shoes so that they would slide in and out of the rubber boots more easily. They were practical for that. I don’t remember having a pair of insulated winter boots (Snowmobile boots) until the 5th grade. After I graduated to adult boots (duck boots), I….
Oh, who the hell cares.
I really can’t stand my age group and all their faux “we had it so hard” and “we didn’t get participant ribbons” and “we had to play outside” and “our parents knew when spank us” and “we didn’t have this” and crap. Its all based on some kind of fantasy difficulty that they had to overcome. GenX sucks. A whole generation of thick headed douches who never got over the fact that adults told them what to do, resentful that they weren’t living fashionable 90210 style lives in high school.
schrodinger's cat
@Zach: She is a public figure, her persona is the part of the package, what did I say that was so objectionable?
Barbara
@schrodinger’s cat: Thanks for the link. I’d heard about the camo-pumps but wasn’t going to go out of my way to look for them.
Putting aside the fact that I hate anything camo (the old peacenik in me), those shoes really, really don’t go with the rest of her outfit. I’m not sure what would go with camo-pumps but a royal blue suit ain’t it.
JR in WV
Now I have to apologize for remarks I made in earlier threads. I claimed that the Senator’s nuclear family received nearly $500,000 in agriculture subsidies, which was wrong.
It was her larger family, including her grandfather, her uncle as well as her father. And of course, there was probably even more income from that source in the years prior to the on-line data available quickly to news analysts.
Most of whom did not have any interest in investigating any of the Senator’s claims.
Anyways, here is my plea for forgiveness from other commentors here for mis-stating the Senator’s family’s income from agriculture subsidies. Money from Big Government. Money most folks aren’t eligible for. Money from programs she claims she’s against.
schrodinger's cat
@Barbara: Those shoes are ugly and way too casual to wear with a suit. I think they would go better with skinny jeans and a tee.
ETA: Plus that severe Hitler Youth haircut is not doing her any favors either.
Doug r
So is poking holes in a garbage bag for a rain coat just a purely Northwest rainforest thing?
EriktheRed
What I still wonder is whether this “rising star” will be tapped as the VP nominee next year to be the “anti-Hillary”and if so, will the Dems have the intestinal fortitude to bring this up if she is.
SiubhanDuinne
Drill Sergeant: Private Johnson, I didn’t see you at camouflage drill this morning.
Pvt. Johnson: Thank you, Sir!
John B
@Emily68: It does sound nasty. In the ’50s, we put our feet in our shoes, our shod feet in a (maybe?) bread bag/waxed paper, then you could slide into a pair of rubber boots (“galoshes” ?tm), then get said shod feet out again at school. Wear and tear was ok, it was just a lube layer. Chicago suburbs, Depression-era parents.
hoodie
Ernst looks to be another pathological fabulist in a long line of right wing fabulists:
Yeah, I can just see all those kids on the bus in the 1980’s wearing fucking breadbags on their feet with their Members Only jackets, jelly shoes and leg warmers. God, what bullshit. I grew up in rural N. Ga. the decade before and never saw any fucking bread bags on the bus and we had plenty of rainy days. I also worked my way through school mopping floors at night at Ga. Bapt. Hospital in the 80’s. My tuition at Georgia Tech was $500 per quarter and I was paid a buck less than the current minimum wage – in 1983.
wasabi gasp
You got anybody workin’ your morning biscuit line, John?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@hoodie:
Here’s a big chunk of what bugs me about that anecdote — if every kid on the bus did the same thing, then what was the big fucking deal? Why pretend that a totally normal thing was somehow a sign of her deep poverty?
Marc
@Peale: As a fellow Gen-Xer, let me be the first to say thank you and amen. To hear my age cohort talk about millennials, you’d think we lived through the fucking Depression.
Keith G
I am older than many and grew up in more modest means (in the Midwest farm land) than most here….and we had fucking boots. Boots people….Jesus….Boots.
Our school was built in 1910 and had those old cast metal heat radiators fed by asbestos cover steam pipes. That’s where our mittens (yes mittens) and boots would go. The place smelled……like wet warming boots. Yum.
A difference between GOP leaders and Dem leaders is that GOP leader spent the effort deconstructing, and attacking, the things said by the opposition.
Trentrunner
Such total fucking bullshit:
1) She’s trying to evoke Depression-era self-reliance and bootstrapping (heh), even though she’s 44 years old, so this happened in the 19fucking80s.
2) “Rows and rows” and kids had the same breadbag galoshes? Really?!? What is the point of your story, then? That we were poor, but we were all together and we made do? So today’s poor should be happy with their lot because they have so much company?
3) Why does every Republican SOTU responder address the United States of America like it’s a classroom of 5-year-olds?
4) Camo-pumps. Very Sarah Palin. In every way, meaning every bit as idiotic and empty symbolically.
5) This was the same hypocritical bullshit that fat fuck Mike Huckabee (he lectures about health and weight loss, so I can say that) slings when he tells us the Obama girls are whores and their Dad is a pimp. Do yourself and favor and Google “Mike Huckabee family” and take a look at his sadly morbidly obese children. It’s disgusting. That slick fat Elmer Gantry wannabee fuck has zero room to critique others’ parenting, especially the Obamas, whose daughters’ combined weight doesn’t equal one Huckabee 12-year-old son.
Keith G
@Trentrunner: I hate you for inspiring me to utilize that google search.
RAM
She grew up on a farm? Without boots? I’m calling bullshit on that one.
gocart mozart
Still relevant
Catch 22
Mike G
@Trentrunner:
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, can you picture this bunch as the First Family?
http://www.huckabeefoundation.com/Huck_xmas.jpg
JCT
@Mike G: yup – great family, between the son who tortured and hung a dog at camp and dear old dad who had gastric bypass and then decided to write a book where he attributed his weight loss to diet and exercise- implying that “anyone” could lose weight like that . Assholes.
Jeffro
@EriktheRed: Brought this up about 30 comments ago – 1 quick question about how (if at all, in any way) she’s different from Palin will point out that she isn’t, and she’s done except for the rightest of the righty-right.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: They only rant about rich Democrats. They conveniently forget the 859,472 rich Republicans (of which they are).
Paul in KY
@Barbara: Camo doesn’t go with anything, except camo.
DissidentFish
I’m a decade older than Ernst but I do remember plastic bags on the feet — but as said above, between the socks and the boots. Kept socks dry, feet warm, and also made it so when the little kids came back in they could take their boots off themselves. I still put plastic in when I’d go out to go sledding and weed smoking in snow in high school. But not over the shoes, that’s just made up.
Her parents, like mine, were probably depression babies.