Myth and most middle school history textbooks have it that when Marie Antoinette heard that her starving subjects had no bread, the French queen sneered “let them eat cake.” Though pithy, the phrase is not remotely accurate.
“It was said 100 years before her by Marie-Therese, the wife of Louis XIV,” explains the authoritative historian on the matter, Lady Antonia Fraser. “It was a callous and ignorant statement and Marie Antoinette was neither.” Unfortunately for that French queen, the quote stuck and history remembers her as the poster child of unfeeling and out of touch monarchs.
The House minority leader should really take notice because, unlike Antoinette, Nancy Pelosi actually repeats the unfeeling sentiment. Again and again and again, Pelosi has slammed Republican tax reform and dismissed the resulting bonuses given to workers as “crumbs.”
When Home Depot announced a onetime $1,000 bonus in the fourth quarter, Pelosi wasn’t impressed. “There’s a little mouse trap who’s got a little piece of cheese on there and there’s a mouse about to take it,” Pelosi said Thursday, bizarrely describing her favorite cartoon, “and that’s called the middle class.”
“And around it are fat cats, they look a lot like elephants but anyway,” Pelosi continued. “And that’s the thing. Get this little thing and we get this big bonanza. You get the crumb, we get the banquet.”
What Pelosi doesn’t understand, is that for a middle class family, $1,000 can balance a check book, make a mortgage payment, or put a dent in a semester’s tuition. What Pelosi dismisses as crumbs, normal people see as welcome windfall. What Pelosi risks with that line is a permanent rebranding that bumps Marie Antoinette off of history’s list of the most unfeeling leaders.
