Conservatives are working themselves up into another one of their poutrage lathers because Hilary Rosen said something truthful, and hence, mean about Ann Romney whom Mitt Romney has recently tried to pass off as I’m Every Woman because Mitt has lady problems outside the home and they’re not the buy-your-mistress-a-bauble-to-make-it-go-away kind.

What Rosen said:

“What you have is, Mitt Romney running around the country saying, ‘Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues. And when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.’ Guess what: his wife has never really worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kind of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

By the time you read this in the morning, conservative moms and the usual cast of professional conservative aggrievement mongers will be in high dudgeon proclaiming how stay-at-homedness has been slandered and impugned and maligned and how Hilary Rosen (and therefore all Democrats) might just as well have shit all over little Austin and Madisyn’s after-school Rice Krispie Treats. Because there is no greater calling than to stay at home and raise your children, providing of course that you don’t have to make ends meet by taking a minimum wage job, maybe two if you’re a single mom, and also there are those times when you skip a meal so that your kids can eat because there isn’t enough food in the house for everyone, and also you hope that none of the kids gets sick because you can’t afford health insurance and, oh yes, the car has been making a funny noise lately and … well, you get the idea.

Which was Hilary Rosen’s point.

Ann Romney is a nice lady. I know lots of nice ladies like Ann Romney who, as it so happens, live in the same neighborhood as Ann and Mitt Romney because my daughter went to the same private schools and played soccer with their sons and daughters. They’re the only stay at home moms I know and it’s easy for them to be a stay at home mom because they either came from money or they married into it; most times both.

Ann Romney came from very comfortable circumstances, married into a wealthy family, and has never had to worry about having to leave the house to work precisely because her husband made a career of purchasing businesses, stripping them of their assets, and putting the employees out of work in return for exorbitant fees for a job well done. Ann Romney was diagnosed with MS when her sons were 28, 27, 24, 21, and 16 and she was diagnosed with breast cancer ten years later when the boys had presumably moved out and started families and careers on their own, no doubt trading on the family name and connections. And Ann Romney was afforded the best medical care available for her terrible illnesses because her husband made all of that money putting people out of work and undoubtedly many of those same people who lost their livelihoods also lost whatever meager health benefits they might have had when the plant closed down, the pensions were looted  and, in some cases, the town died.

This is not to say that Ann Romney can’t feel a great deal of empathy for the women whose problems she listens to on the campaign trail. And this is not to say that she doesn’t relay these stories to her husband. But by his words and by his deeds, whatever Ann is telling her husband doesn’t seem to carry much weight. It’s almost as if Mitt doesn’t want to hear it. Or maybe he doesn’t take her seriously; like she’s a common housewife or something…