EMPATHY, MITTBOT STYLE

I haven't seen a clip of this, so I don't know how it actually came off if you were there watching it, but, as described here, it just seems, well, peculiar:

PALM BEACH, FL -- Softening somewhat his response to recent Republican criticism of his private sector career, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sought to project sympathy with out-of-work Americans, calling unemployment "not just a statistic."

"Being unemployed for a long period of time means families having a hard time making ends meet," Romney said. "It means in some cases people having trouble in their marriages, losing faith, becoming depressed."

It does? Really, Mitt? Hey, thanks for the clarification!

That's Romney softening? To me he sounds like Hanna, the adolescent heroine of the eponymous 2011 movie, who's lived nearly her entire life in a cabin in the woods with her father, a man devoted to cultivating her rather extraordinary ability to master survival skills and book knowledge, the result being that she's both a kick-ass warrior and a brainiac who recites passages from books verbatim. She decides to leave seclusion and take her chances in the real world, and at one point she meets a young man with whom she's on the verge of sharing her first kiss. Here's what she says to him:

Kissing requires a total of 34 facial muscles, and 112 postural muscles. The most important muscle involved is the orbicularis oris muscle, because it is used to pucker the lips.

That's what Romney's little recitation of poverty facts reminds me of.

Now, it would be amusing if he followed this up the way Hanna follows up her mini-recitaion. (SPOILER ALERT: She body-slams the guy.) But he's not that kind of well-trained automaton.