Once again we Democrats are going all defensive, apologizing for insensitivity after one Democrat, Hilary Rosen, made a statement that the Banana Republicans turned against us.
This has to stop. It's bullshit. If the Banana Republicans had said some something similar, which come to think of it is their normal behavior, they never, ever apologize. They stand up for their nutty principles and let their voters know that they consider themselves infallible. Such behavior wins support.
But in this case Rosen actually was right. We really blew the reaction. It's a dirty trick they pulled over the word "work".
And it's funny that I have to defend Hilary Rosen, but some of us remember who she was before she switched over to the light side. She was the RIAA lawyer who led the anti-"piracy" music enforcement efforts a decade ago. She took hard-core anti-consumer positions. Then she left RIAA and sincerely repented.
The word "work" has many meanings. It can mean "functions", as in "my computer doesn't work". In physics, "work" means the exertion of force. "Work" is a common translation of the Hebrew word melacha, which in Jewish law (halacha) refers to the broad set of things that one is not supposed to do on Shabbat. That actually refers to the activities (traditionally enumerated as 39 of them) that went into the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is not the only word translated as "work", just the ones that Shabbat is all about.
In Ms. Rosen's case, she was referring to "work" as the exchange of one's labor for renumeration. Merriam-Webster has many meanings, one being "the labor, task, or duty that is one's accustomed means of livelihood". And from that the phrase "out of work" means "without regular employment". The Oxford dictionary is even more specific about renumerative employment, with this among its semantics: "mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; employment".
When Ms. Rosen used the word, she most obviously did not mean "a literary or musical composition or other piece of fine art". Nor did she mean "bring (a material or mixture) to a desired shape or consistency by hammering, kneading, or some other method", as in working dough. Perhaps Mrs. Romney has worked dough into bread. It's irrelevant. The context of "work a day in her life" was obviously not simply any "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result". Raising children involves a lot of that work (been there, done that) even if you have nannies (as Ann Romney probably did). What Ann Romney did not do was "go to work" for money. I'm not making a value judgment about that; it's just that a full-time housewife who hasn't dealt with employers or customers is not going to be much of an expert on the problems facing "working" people.
The purpose of language is to help people communicate. When a word has multiple semantics (as most do), the one that the speaker used should be inferred from context. Sometimes the word has other semantics which are not what the speaker intended. To take the speaker's words and apply those semantics to it is essentially to misquote. It is deceptive.
One can do this with other words too. Do you want to arrest someone for canola? That's a modern coinage for the oil of the rape seed. Rape is a plant. Now in English, it is a rather unfortunate word, though it has nothing to do with the violent act. So the people who sell the oil had to make up a new word. But growing rape (for its oil) is not a crime.
What Hilary Rosen said was true, and it was an appropriate comment. It was distorted by those who changed the meaning of her words. We should not apologize for what wasn't said. We know what she meant. They know what she meant. Everybody knows what she meant. We should stick with that. Letting them argue about what she didn't mean is to surrender to fraud. Which is a game you can't win. And I, for one, am sick of it.