Poverty Snobs and 'Bread Bag' Politics
During her live, nationally televised Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, Sen. Joni Ernst inserted a cute story from her childhood that seemed to offer everything a homespun narrative should offer -- except a point.
"You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes," the 44-year-old former Iowa state senator recalled. "So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry."
Was that embarrassing? No, said Ernst, "because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet."
A heartwarming story, I thought, but why was she telling it? If childhood poverty is a qualification for office, I should run for president.
I turned to Twitter and, sure enough, a new meme was born in the Twitterverse:
"For every kid to wear bread bags on their feet," quipped @loudspike, "we first gotta make sure families can afford 2 loaves of bread." I liked that one.
"Now that she is a senator," tweeted @brewergreg, "she can finally afford 'loafers.' " Good one.
"I might be wearing breadbags on my feet right now, for all you people know," typed @tomtomorrow. In fact, Ernst wasn't. Her feet wore light-brown camouflage-patterned pumps with 2 1/2-inch heels that set off another Twitter storm. The 44-year-old Iraq War vet and lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard was ready for battle.
Ernst's bread bag story was intended to illustrate how her parents taught her to "live simply, not to waste." That's a softer version of the message in her now-famous 2014 campaign ad in which she strolls through a hog barn to tell us that she grew up castrating hogs on a farm. "So when I get to Washington," she says, "I'll know how to cut pork."
Blammo! The ad went viral and established Ernst as a rising star in the Grand Old Party's tea party wing. She also became the leading example of what The New York Times' Mark Leibovich called the "bumpkinification" of the midterm elections.
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