Mitt Romney says John McCain earned his homes. All 14 of them, presumably, including the 12 he couldn’t find on a map if his life depended on it.

Speaking to reporters at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, Romney said that while McCain deserved his houses because of the “hard work” of himself and his family, “Barack Obama got a special deal from a convicted felon.”

As the article linked here explains, there’s all kinds of nuance and context to Mitt’s comments. I’d like to poke at the whole “earned/deserved” meme a little, though.

To review:

McCain had the good sense to be born to the right people.

He married a woman with more money than God. (Okay, technically he re-married here after ditching Wife 1.0; I mean, how many houses are you going to earn by schlepping around with an under-producing disfigured chick, right?)

He’s worked his butt off in the Senate, if you call that work. That’s a pretty impressive leap in income, huh?

I’m personally not going to get twisted about how many houses Johnny McSame owns, and while there’s a certain obscenity to owning more houses than you can remember, I’m fine with the idea that people get rich and I like the idea that when they do they spend it. I mean, somewhere out there real working people were employed and made money off all that house building and decorating, right?

But I think it’s time we all called bullshit on the “earn/deserve” rhetoric. When you bust your ass 12 hours a day at a job that takes years off your life, then you’ve earned something. When you start with nothing and make it up the ladder through hard work and ingenuity, then you deserve what you have.

When you’re born into the right family and get to the top because, well, you started out there, please, with all due respect, shut the fuck up.

Of course, we live in an era of pathological doublespeak and all too often we’re not educated enough to call the purveyors on their fork-tonguery. Obama’s an elitist. Kerry is an elitist. Hell, I grew up working class in the South, mortgaged my future with student loans that I may get paid off in a few more years, and I’ve been called an elitist. But our president, a halfwit who was born into one of America’s most powerful political and financial dynasties, has never been called an elitist despite being the closest thing the nation has to a dynastic aristocrat. Because he’s the sort of guy you could have a beer with.

Then again, Mitt’s not exactly Mr. Everyman, either. So maybe his perspective is a little skewed.

But at least he isn’t an elitist, right?