Opinion: Author Tries To Get 15 Of Romney's Minutes And 25,000 Of His Dollars
Some people never quit when it comes to trying to make easy money. They expect people who are currently alive and otherwise well to pay them for debts owed to their ancestors from generations past. As ridiculous as it is, it’s happening again – and this time it’s happening to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Judith Freeman is apparently looking for her 15 minutes of fame that she likely believes she could not otherwise have if she didn’t come up with the notion that Mitt Romney owes her $25,000. Freeman, a novelist from California, claims to have traced her family tree back to the roots and found a group of polygamist families living in the northern Arizona wilderness.
In her book “The Mormon Chronicles: A Meditation In Four Parts”, Freeman claims that Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather Miles P. Romney and her great-grandfather William Jordan Flake were patriarchs of nearby Mormon communities in the middle of the 19th century. Freeman alleges that Romney’s great grandfather was indebted to her great-grandfather to the tune of $1,000.
Like anyone looking for a headline, Judith Freeman has taken her claim to the media. Besides her 15 minutes of fame, she wants to be reimbursed for the nearly 150-year-old debt.
Though Freeman is going to have a heck of a time proving any of this since everybody involved with the story is long gone – make that long, long gone – she says that federal marshalls went after Mormons back then and arrested her and Mitt Romney’s great-grandfathers under an anti-polygamy law. While that charge never held up for a variety of reasons which included Romney’s great-grandfather allegedly sending two of his three wives away – never to be seen again – some altercation regarding land ownership did hold up.
According to Freeman, Flake had more money that Romney and paid the bail to get Romney out of jail. The bail, says Freeman, was $1,000. By calculating and adding her own interest over nearly 150 years, she came up with the $25,000 amount she wants Mitt Romney to pay her.
Judith Freeman says that Romney is more than able to pay for the 19th Century Romney debt from generations ago, and she says that she will distribute the $25,000 fairly among Flake’s nearly 15,000 living descendants.
Right… So every one of the 15,000 descendants gets $1.66.
Though it may be an interesting story, the Judith Freemans of the world in search of their “15 minutes” are pretty disgusting. If she and others like her can’t write well enough to get noticed, they ought to find another profession – one that doesn’t abuse and embarrass the writing profession.
About Scott Paulson
Scott Paulson writes political commentary for Examiner.com and teaches English at a community college in the Chicago area. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
