Romney not only put a dog in a carrier on his car roof for 12 hours, but he made his wife and sons complicit in the act.
A good Monday to you all. Here’s a little something to set the mood.
Someone has made a video with about 100 seconds of a dog (actually a fake model of a dog, with lifelike floppy ears) riding in a carrier on top of a car. This is a re-enactment, of course, of Mitt Romney’s 2007 story of how he drove his family to a vacation cottage in Ontario, Canada with his Irish Setter, Seamus, in the summer 1983.
Here’s a question for you all — and it’s not the standard “what sort of empathy-challenged person would do this?” question. It’s about Romney’s wife and sons, the non-canine passengers in that station wagon.
The oldest of them, Tagg, would have been about 13. Matthew would have been about 12; Joshua 8, Benjamin 5. (Craig, at 2 or so, would probably have been riding in mom’s lap in those pre-car carried days.) At least the two oldest sons, and probably one or two more — as well, of course, as his wife Ann — would have been old enough to exhibit some empathy and moral reasoning.
I have come to believe that Romney is seriously damaged, lacking in empathy, in a way that so far as I know neither of his parents seem to have been. (I won’t bother trying to prove this to anyone; you probably understand without my doing so.) But let’s say that it’s genetic. The chances are that at least one of these older boys would have been spared the anti-empathy mutation.
Did any of them say “Dad, it’s OK — let Seamus ride in the car with us. He can sit on my lap.”
Now maybe they did ask him and he said “no”; maybe they were too cowed to ask. I can’t imagine being even eight years old and not objecting to this. So the question is not merely what kind of animal owner Romney was. It’s what kind of parent was Romney, that he could have kept a dog on a roof for a twelve hour highway drive and no one tried to stop him (or the tried and he didn’t care)?
Romney seems to have lived a life without consequences. That’s not what I want in a President. Until today, when I saw this video, the “Seamus on the Roof” story led me to roll my eyes at Romney. Now, helped along by this visual aid, it seems darker and more serious.
(By the way, for those who didn’t click the link, Romney supposedly gave Seamus to his sister while in Canada, but two of his sons have leaked word that Seamus ran away — though it could of course be worse. Good doggie.)
It doesn’t take a genius to know that putting a dog in a carrier on the top of the car (BTW, Romney claims he didn’t know it was illegal AND said he made a wind-proof screen for the thing) is a really stupid idea and a potentially dangerous one, as well.
As one that rescues both dogs/cats and being employed by a vet, I can tell you that regardless of breed, there are some dogs that cannot even tolerate a small increase in ambient noise let alone the huge amount of road and wind noise experienced here which is less than in a pickup bed (which is incredibly unwise).
So my thinking goes like this…
Dad says they are going to put the dog on the roof of the car because (as he has explained) the dog spends a LOT of time in the crate and “likes it” (of course, the crate isn’t on the top of the car, right?). The youngest kids don’t get it. The older child may and if that childe objects, dad, and particularly THIS dad, invokes dadness and wisdom and that’s the end of that.
What I worry about more is why his damn wife, an adult, didn’t have the damn gall to do a think about it. THAT is the real issue.
Maybe Mitt was so insufferable that riding on the roof of the car seemed like a better option than having to listen to his stories of his missionary work in France, and how everybody loved him over there.
If I were trapped in a car with him for twelve hours, I wouldn’t be thinking rationally, let alone humanely.
did you know the native americans called the mormons,dogcoats?when the mormons first showed up the natives were surprised to see men wearing dog fur.bad hunters?maybe a insight into to their treatment of other living things, including people.yikes!
Bad hunters? Don’t you know that Mormons are quite handy at picking off the odd varmint, if you will?
It’s really very simple, You make the Kids take turns riding in the Pet Carrier on the Roof. Anyone who bangs on the Roof without needing to go to the Bathroom gets at least an Extra Hour up top! Mom can go up there too! Padlocked from the outside for their safety, of course! The Dog Rides Up Front, next to Me! I’d never put My Dog on the Roof of a Car? What, are You Crazy?