Mitt-staken

In Mitt Romney's Gettysburg Address for Jesus he evoked a memory designed to make him seem not quite like all the other white, millionaire Republicans... “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.”

What a swell, inclusive, socially-aware guy. Whatever. That line did little to impress me at the time, because a college-age Mitt Romney was certainly old enough to march with King alongside his father if it meant anything to him.

Or, maybe he couldn't. Because it never happened.

That might be the case... Historians in Michigan can find no evidence of Governor (at the time) George Romney attending or marching in a MLK event. Notorious old fool David Broder seems to have conflated different events and linked the two in a book he wrote—perhaps that's were Mitt got his "memory."

If events transpired as Romney and Broder claim, at least Mitt has a good excuse why he missed out on King himself—he was spending 30 months abroad on his Morman mission and would never have "seen" his father or Martin Luther King do anything.

By all accounts George Romney was an active leader on civil rights at the time, and did attend marches, just not with King. And while young Mitt may well have been impressed, even influenced, by his father's activism, Presidential Candidate Mitt, in his self-defining speech, drew upon a memory that exists only in his imagination.

Joe Biden and Al Gore were ridiculed for far less. What will happen to Mitt? Let me know if you see this story dominating any headlines. I won't be holding my breath.