It looks like a family holiday card except that the woman and children posing with Republican Derrick Anderson are not his wife or his offspring.
Anderson, who running in a close race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, was seen in another image seated around the dining table with the same woman and three girls.
The images came to light in an article by The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” which reported how “male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”
However Anderson, who is childless, engaged to be married and lives alone with his dog, sought to borrow the wife and children from a longtime friend in an apparent effort to appear as a family man.
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The perpetuation of the myth that you are less of a person for not having a family or children is absolutely fucking disgusting
But it is hilarious when the person perpetrating it does not have a family or children
I should preface this by saying this whole idea of renting a family for a photoshoot is just nuts and wrong and wtf on many levels, I’m not defending that.
I will say though this isn’t necessarily about being “less of a person”, I think that’s kind of reductive and may not really describe the guy’s intention.
I recently started a family at 42, so I’ve lived 20 some years as an adult without a partner and children and it’s true that I’ve felt somewhat excluded in some ways not having a partner and children. More-so than anything social, in 2024 it seems like it’s very very expensive to be single. Like there’s a very very narrow line you have to walk if you want to navigate life and be able to retire above the poverty line, and having a spouse is a requirement.
Another aspect is simply that my priorities have changed since having children. I mean I always knew logically or understood academically the issues relevant to families, but now I grok them, I really feel them in a way that I just couldn’t before. That doesn’t make me better or “more of a person”, it just makes my experience different.
Maybe it’s a bit like, as a white hetero male I can imagine what it might be like to belong to a minority, or understand the relevant issues logically, but I can never feel how that would feel.
With all that in mind I can understand how a childless person trying to get elected might think that being perceived as “childful” might make them more electable, but aside from being just weird and wrong it’s unethical and manipulative and naive.
You must be new here 🤩
Someone said “people treat childless people as less-than”, and I rebutted them. It doesn’t matter that I may have made some valid points, I didn’t explicitly and breathlessly agree that childless people are treated unfairly, so it’s going to be unpopular.
Seriously though, almost all of my posts get at least 2 downvotes within 5 minutes. I’ve often wondered if I have a bot following.
These idiots don’t understand that the internet is a thing that exists despite using it constantly.
“No one will ever find out that I don’t actually have a family.”
The problem isn’t that people will find out. It’s that 99% of their voters are too stupid to think critically about the people they vote for.
He was breathing fairly easily. It occurred to Ford that he might breathe more easily yet without the weight of his wallet bearing down on his chest, so he slipped it out of Harl’s breast pocket and flipped through it. Fair amount of cash. 55 Credit tokens. Ultragolf club membership. Other club memberships. Photos of someone’s wife and family - presumably Harl’s, but it was hard to be sure these days. Busy executives often didn’t have time for a full-time wife and family and would just rent them for weekends.
-Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Wait, WTF? He’s engaged but the woman he’s misrepresenting as his wife in the photo is somebody other than his fiance? What, did she get creeped out and refuse to do it or something?
Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing is a big WTF, but that aspect of it is even more WTF-ish than the rest!
That or nobody would lend him their kids, without the wife going along as well.
Would you rent your kids to a Republican? Seems dangerous.
Would you rent your kids to a Republican? Seems dangerous.
Only if they rent my wife as part of the package? What kind of logic is that.
Talk about an awkward conversation with the fiancee, or a short time before it’s called off. Unless their partner is as scummy as the candidate, I see a big future in the GOP for them, assuming they get that seat. Party of family values for sure heh. Nothing like showing lies to show how highly you consider those values.
Because women and children are just props – objects you borrow, like a carpet steamer. I just need it for a day, I’ll give it right back.
