Mitt Romney shouldn’t quit his day job. The Republican White House hopeful, perhaps inspired by President Obama’s rousing rendition of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” broke into song at a Florida campaign rally last night. So, did he sing some pop song or croon a classic? Well, no. He went with the tried and true patriotic tune “America the Beautiful.” And it is cringe-worthy.
While Romney’s song choice fits his red, white and blue script, little does he — and most people — know, but the song’s creator, Katharine Lee Bates, was most likely lesbian: she lived for 25-years in Wellesley, Massachusetts with a political economy teacher named Katharine Coman, and even wrote what sounds like a bit of a love letter to her long-time roommate in 1891:
It was never very possible to leave Wellesley [for good], because so many love-anchors held me there, and it seemed least of all possible when I had just found the long-desired way to your dearest heart…Of course I want to come to you, very much as I want to come to Heaven.
Though it remains unclear if the women actually got down with one another — and the classification of “homosexuality” had not yet been created — the subtext here seems pretty clear.
Anyway, here’s Romney belting out Bates’ famous song.
Image via Deseret News.
January 31, 2012 at 10:38 am, Jahf said:
Oh wow. Mitt Romney was my 4th grade principal?
January 31, 2012 at 10:40 am, Jp31901cg said:
What is your point? Why does it matter if Kathryn Lee Bates was ‘most likely Lesbian?’ Cheap shot.
January 31, 2012 at 10:41 am, Anonymous said:
Letters of this period were different, very affectionate and moving. The woman may well have been a lesbian, but only a person who’s very ignorant of the style of writing at the time would draw such conclusions. This is like reading one of the letters of Theodore Roosevelt talking about “Pussy,” and not knowing this was a very common nickname for women in the Gilded Age, so you call him crude when he was more Victorian than Victorians.
In any case, why would it matter what a song-writer’s sex was? Are we not all equal?
This is the kind of silliness we get in the political season. You probably think Obama was born in Kenya, too.
January 31, 2012 at 10:41 am, Fariwitsayer said:
Why do you mention the lesbian aspect? How is that significant again? Homophobic much?
Politics aside, liberals are the biggest friggin’ hypocrites on the planet.
January 31, 2012 at 10:43 am, Chas Holman said:
I don’t even know what to say.
January 31, 2012 at 10:44 am, mib said:
Andrew, shut up already!
January 31, 2012 at 10:45 am, Chas Holman said:
Ya’ll are focusing on ‘lesbians’ which is cool because it takes the guilt off me for thinking Romney’s performance sure was ‘white’.