Who says Mittens Romney has a "stepford family thing" going on?

Looks like just another wholesome, "garden variety" American family to me...

Ack!!!

Cheers! :hi:

family photo.

:sarcasm:

They have them for deer, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make them for humans, would it?

To come up with a piratical solution to a growing problem.

Well done.

:sarcasm:

of his family is beyond pathetic

What a bunch of loony toons

Mittens felt it important to trot out his family portrait this election season. That means...it's fair game. You go ahead and celebrate how "beautiful" the Romney clan is. Others may see the picture...through a slightly different lens.

Yes ..the ugly hate for no reason lens

That's right hate the little babies through the small and shallow lens

BTW I am in a fab mood. The fam had a wonderful T Day. Thanks for your "concern"

Someone standing up against pettiness!

Thank you DL :) :applause:

Including Mittens lame attempt to roll out his "beautiful" wholesome extended family unit in hopes of winning votes.

I'll support you in attacking HIM all you want, I think it's kind of lame he used such a contrived picture myself.

The petty part of the previous posts (Can't remember who what when, only the theme) Was attacking the kiddos etc, not cool IMHO is all. :)

:toast:

Hate the playa and his game but leave the kids out of it

The most despicable thugs went after Carter and Clinton's kids

A world-wide one-child policy has its advantages........

The Romney clan appears to be whiter than rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm.

It's like something out of the X-Files.

Religion, race, size, shape, hair color, eye color, style. My family has a bit of this and a bit of that. How in the world do you get a family that looks like Romney's in this day and age? Or am I atypical?

They're all descended from a relatively small group, and because marrying outside the religion is discouraged, you've got the descendants of the same smallish group of Americans and Brits marrying each other over and over again, while the rest of the country has for the most part introduced southern and eastern Europeans to the mix and married around much more widely, so there's more variation.

So there's a definite "mormon look." It's not inbreeding, but the outside of a population bottleneck, so there's a different distribution of some traits (small noses and ginger hair, to name two) than in the general population.

You do realize there are almost 13 million members of the church and a population of less than 2 million in Utah? There are more Mormons in California than Utah - arguably one of the largest melting pots in America. And that Mormon look you are attributing that to is a Utah thing - not a Mormon thing - LDS people outside of Utah are very different because that state has its own bizarre culture.

I've only been to Salt Lake City once, and I was fairly small, so I only know what a good friend, who is also a too-devout-for-her-own-good woman from an old stock LDS family (who pointed out the Mormon look thing, and explained the reasons why for it, as her family were excellent examples- I'd asked if her sisters were identical multiples, and they're not) told me about it.

I went to school with a lot of mormon kids. They all married other kids from mormon families and are making little mormon babies. None of them that I know of, not a one, married a kid who wasn't from another existing mormon family. Can't ruin that temple wedding, or wind up screwing up their status in the ward by marring outside the group. So, for social reasons, it's a small gene pool (hardly unique, a lot of minority groups of one sort or another do the same thing, but degree of the bottleneck, compounded by the number of offspring a relatively small population of powerful men in the early church fathered and the cultural emphasis on fecundity makes the effects more obvious in this case.) Likely made smaller by the emphasis on geneology as status. Unless nattering on about how one's descended from Smith or Young or other early leaders is only a local pasttime, and I doubt that.

Really, how many non-converts do you know who don't have blonde, sandy brown or ginger hair, small noses and fair, freckling skin? Those are recessive traits, but if you look at any American LDS ward you'd think they're dominant. That's what population bottlenecks do, they change allele frequencies. It's basic anthropology.

There are 8 kids in my family. There are 14 grand kids and not all of them are white and not all of them are LDS. In my ward growing up we had about 20% asian families in the ward - in fact once we were the only "white family" in one ward. There have been Hawaiian LDS and Polynesian members of the church since the 1800's. The percentag of LDS in Tonga 32%, Samoa 25%, American Samoa 25% and Niue 15%.

I have several friends who are not white that have been LDS their whole lives. Thats not to say you could not find what your saying if you looked hard enough - but that would be true of almost any religion that originated in the United states in the 1800's. Utah is extremely caucasian so if that and Northern California are you only exposure I can see where your coming from - Im just trying to point out its not universally true and your OP was based on that false Universal Truth.

(I should note even though Im LDS - not practicing - you could not pay me to live in Utah - I went to school there for 8 years and that was long enough;] )

The emphasis on marrying into the group and the degree of population bottleneck are fairly unique, at least in US subcultures. Some established groups maintain homogeneity by discouraging marrying out of the group, but creating it in <150 years is fairly unusual.

edit: fixed tag

...

In one ad, Romney appears at a kitchen table with his wife, Ann, interspersed with quick footage of some of their five sons when they were young. "You teach kids about what TV to watch," the former Massachusetts governor says. "You teach them how to read. It's just essential to have a home where faith, where love of country, where determination, where all these features that are so much a part of American culture are taught to our kids."

On one level, Romney is simply showing off his model family. But Ken Goldstein, a University of Wisconsin political science professor, says Romney is drawing a subtle contrast with his rivals who have been married more than once -- especially Giuliani, who underwent a nasty public divorce while he was New York mayor.

"He's not going to put out an ad saying, 'Rudy has had three wives, and his kids don't talk to him,' " Goldstein said. "Instead, it's, 'I've got lots of cute kids who look really good in khakis.' It's an attack on other people in the GOP primary who don't have as solid a family life as Mitt Romney."

By using the word "faith," Romney is also communicating to voters who may be wary of Mormons -- or simply not know much about the religion -- that he is a down-to-earth family man. "He's clearly making it seem as if he's as mainstream as it gets, and the fact that he's Mormon should not detract from his basic commitment to America and apple pie," Iyengar said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201362.html

the older they get, the more they get that empty phony smiles look.

and with is 5 boys, you would think at least one would be in uniform. but as they say. they are serving their country in other ways.

for many years until she took over the role of mother for her drug addict daughter's four children. The mother is currently in prison . again.

The two oldest girls are half Anglo and half Hispanic/Yaqui Indian, the other girl is Anglo and Hispancic and the grandson is Anglo. They are a beautiful family and I admire my friend for her courage and dedication. She went back to the church and all the children will be raised as Mormons. I'm happy for all of them and support them to the limit. Me, I am an agnostic!

I just wish I had what they spend at the dentist office. Man those teeth can blind you.

nt