doubleplusundead

Are you sitting down? If not, please sit down. And if you’re already sitting down, you might want to consider reclining or just balling yourself right the fuck up into the fetal position because the Los Angeles Times is about to knock you right the hell on your ass with the following scoop:

(Have you situated yourself appropriately yet? Because, seriously, I will not be held liable for any bruised coccyges.)

Okay, so it turns out that (seriously, I simply cannot stress enough that you should NOT be in any sort of standing position as you read this) Mitt Romney used to live in a pretty nice neighborhood of a town called Belmont in the Boston suburbs.

Okay, that alone is damning enough, but get this: other parts of this “sleepy Boston suburb” aren’t quite as nice…

There are 4,517 single-family homes, 1,638 two-family homes, 143 three-family homes and a handful of apartment buildings in Belmont, according to the town assessor.

Their quality varies: A duplex condo in Waverly Square is on sale for $279,000; a single-family home on the street where Romney lived is listed for $3.2 million.

This data is so shocking that the author of the article, one Alana Semuels, was numbed to the point of inanely writing that, “To be sure, all cities and towns have areas of varying income levels.” Again, I can only pray that you have situated yourself in a sitting or prone position, preferably with rubber mats and/or soft pillows close by.

Even worse, the wealth disparity in Belmont is so great that none of the working-class peons Ms. Semuels spoke to in town even mentioned Willard “Mitt” Romney by name. Their fear of reprisal is, I am certain, implied.

If this doesn’t win a Pulitzer, I am quite sure it is a signal that the dark spectre of fascism has irrevocably settled across our once-free nation. That, or the esteemed members of the prize committee foolishly attempted to read this while standing and subsequently had to be hospitalized.