“Single mother”: Newspeak for “widow”

After seeing repeated references to Justice Janet Rogers Brown as a “single mother,” including praise from Republican senators for her accomplishments as a “single mother,” a friend and I noted that it was unlikely that Rogers had had children out of wedlock, as the phrase “single mother” implies, or, rather, used to imply. The problem is that the Orwellian umbrella term “single mother,” which has been adopted by almost everyone today including Republicans and conservatives, wipes out the important social distinctions between a widowed mother, a divorced mother, and a mother who never married the father of her childen. So what was the truth about Brown’s marital status? It wasn’t easy to find, even with Google, but then a website called Brainwash came to the rescue:

The selection of Justice Brown would be salutary as a matter of personality, policy, and politics. Although she remains fairly guarded about her personal life, her biography is a compelling one, marked by overcoming social, personal, and professional obstacles. Raised in Jim Crow-era Alabama, she went to California after her first husband died of cancer and left her a young widowed mother.

So, why did it not occur to a single Republican senator to congratulate Brown for the adversities she overcame as a widowed mother? (After all, since the Republicans are so into victimhood, isn’t a mother who lost her young husband to cancer more of a victim than a woman who simply didn’t wait to get married?) What is wrong with these Republicans and conservatives that they so readily adopt the leveling and dishonest jargon of the left, along with its fashions in clothing (e.g., conservative women wearing pants at formal events) and its tastes in popular culture and entertainment?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 25, 2003 09:55 PM | Send