Category Archives: Random Blogging

Be Careful Who You Piss Off

The Huffington Post reports that several officers of the Susan B. Komen Foundation have resigned in the wake of what can only be described as the debacle of that organization’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

When the Foundation decided to play abortion politics at the expense of poor women who depend upon Planned Parenthood for their annual breast exams, it set off a reaction of epic proportions–not to mention a level of scrutiny that the organization had formerly escaped. Questions were raised about the outsized executive salaries, the organization’s habit of suing other nonprofits that had the temerity to use the color pink or the term “cure” in their own efforts, and the percentage of overall funding that found its way to actual breast cancer research. According to the Huffington story, fundraising is down, morale is low, and management is in disarray.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from this exercise in self-destruction, but I think the most hopeful sign has little to do with the Komen Foundation and a lot to do with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood has been the object of unremitting attack by the Right for many years now. Those of us who are older can remember when Planned Parenthood boards drew their members from civic leaders of both political parties; indeed, George H.W. Bush served on the national board until he decided to accept the nomination for Vice-President. The organization was not particularly controversial, because it was understood to be in the business of providing health care and family planning to women who needed those services but lacked the resources to access them.

The abortion wars and the rise of an extremist Right Wing willing to play dirty undermined the formerly widespread recognition of the importance of Planned Parenthood.

Despite the fact that abortion never exceeded 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services, despite the fact that no tax dollars were used for abortion services, and despite the fact that economic pressures made the organization’s provision of women’s health services more critically important than ever, Planned Parenthood’s reputation took a real hit–the result of unremitting attacks and dishonest characterizations.

The response to Komen’s clumsy effort to further de-legitimize Planned Parenthood may have marked a turning point.

When the “abortion wars” were seen as genuinely limited to the question of abortion, most women–even the most pro-choice among us–could recognize and respect the deep moral ambivalence many people feel about the issue. But recent political assaults have torn the mask off of much of the “pro-life” movement, displaying a profoundly anti-woman agenda. It is one thing to oppose abortion; it is quite another to attack women’s right to contraception and reproductive health as a violation of the religious prerogatives of those whose theologies subordinate women.

Women are waking up to the very real threat to our hard-won equal rights. In the process, we are recognizing the attacks on Planned Parenthood for what they really are–attacks on us.

Let’s hope that the people perpetrating those attacks–the Rick Santorum’s and the Eric Miller’s and their ilk–learn what the Komen Foundation has learned: be careful who you piss off. Because–as the saying goes–if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy.

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Love It or Leave It

When I was growing up in the 1950s (yes, I’m THAT old), anti-communist crusaders had a handy phrase with which they shouted down any criticism of American government: “Love it or leave it.” There was, in their view, no room for middle ground–if you weren’t a patriot, defined as someone who defended 100% of what America was and did, then you needed to move elsewhere.

Apparently, the love it or leave it folks are back–albeit in slightly different philosophical garb–and they are enthusiastically supporting Rick Santorum for President. This time, it is those of us who are unwilling to identify America as a “Christian Nation” –and behave accordingly–who are being invited to leave.  

Despite the efforts of all of the GOP candidates to pander to the religious fringe of the party, the Santorum campaign has been the most explicitly tied to religious doctrine, and Santorum himself is quite obviously the most sincere in his beliefs. It should come as no surprise that he has attracted those elements of the electorate who feel aggrieved by the respect for diversity that characterizes modernity.

In fact, Santorum’s campaign has operated to shine a light on a campaign element that political operatives usually manage to obscure–judging (accurately, one hopes) that too much attention to it will repel more voters than it will attract. Most campaigns that have chosen to court the Christian Nation folks have done so through carefully targeted appeals and the use of “dog whistle” terminology in campaign speeches. (George W. Bush was a master at this–he would sprinkle phrases through his speeches to signal the faithful that he was one of them–knowing that the majority of Americans were unfamiliar with the phrases and their context and would fail to “get” their significance.)

Santorum, however, has chosen to run as a theocrat. He makes no bones about his desire that American law should reflect his religious beliefs.

Santorum and the people he has attracted cling ever-more tightly to a revisionist history that justifies the past privileging of white, heterosexual Christian (formerly only Protestant) males. The more society changes, the more they reject the generators and markers of that change–science, globalization, diversity.

It is hard to believe that in the 21st Century we are watching a credible candidate for a major political party’s nomination reject evolution, deny the existence of global climate change, criticize women who work outside the home, oppose the use of contraceptives and advocate second-class citizenship for gays–a candidate who rejects the principle of separation of church and state, and welcomes the support of pastors who tell non-Christians they should leave the country if they disagree.

In the (thankfully highly unlikely) event that Santorum becomes President, I think many of us would seriously consider that invitation.

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We Need a Prime Directive

My husband and I recently watched a re-run of Star Trek: Voyager. The story-line revolved around the application and importance of the “Prime Directive.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek (is that even possible??), the Prime Directive is the guiding rule developed by the future’s Federation of Planets: officers of Starfleet are expressly forbidden from interfering with the internal affairs of other planets and civilizations, no matter how well-meaning that interference or how potentially disastrous the results of non-intervention. The difficulty of complying with the Prime Directive has obvious dramatic possibilities, most of which have been mined extensively by the various Star Trek spin-offs.

On rare occasions, where the provocation was overwhelming, interference with other civilizations worked out, but usually in episodes where the Prime Directive was ignored, things ended badly.

Americans could learn a few things from Star Trek. At this stage of planetary development, we are the “big kahuna’s,” the analogs of the sheriffs in the old westerns, or the Federation forces in Star Trek. We are all too easily seduced by the temptations–and delusions–that come with power.

A Prime Directive might have kept us out of Viet Nam and Iraq. It might have kept us from confusing self-interest with self-defense.

At the very least, the existence of a Prime Directive would require serious public consideration of the  reasons being offered to justify a proposed intervention, the adequacy of those reasons, and the validity and reliability of the facts offered to support such justification.

When I hear Santorum, Gingrich and Romney rattling sabers at Iran and spouting nationalistic bromides in an effort to pander to the least thoughtful elements of the electorate, I can’t help marveling that an old science-fiction series displays more substance, more gravitas, more maturity, than the Republicans who are currently competing for their party’s nomination for President.

I can’t imagine Santorum, for example, a man who feels no compunction telling other people and other nations how (his) God wants them to live, and who promises to impose (his version of) “morality” on the rest of us should he be elected, embracing–or even understanding–a Prime Directive.

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Living in Indiana

Yesterday, a county election board ruled that Dick Lugar isn’t eligible to vote using the address of the house he sold in the 1970s. (The board declined to find criminal intent, since the Lugars had relied upon opinions issued by two Attorney Generals.)

I’m not about to delve into the question whether the board–which evidently relied on its own attorney’s analysis of the relevant statutes–was right or wrong. But it’s hard not to wonder what’s really going on with this particular line of attack.

This morning’s Star editorialized

Such is the state of politics in 2012. Instead of building a philosophical and intellectual case as to why Richard Mourdock is a superior candidate, the Republican primary challenger’s campaign and his supporters have instead chosen to wallow in side issues such as the status of Lugar’s residency.

The easy reply to that observation is that it would be pretty hard to build a case for Mourdock being a superior candidate; the man is a bad joke.

The attack on Lugar’s residency is obviously intended to drive home the argument that the Senator is out-of-touch. (Whatever the technical legal resolution, the “optics,” as the political types say, are awful–and effective.) Being out of touch, having been in Washington too long, are time-tested themes of many campaigns, and whether this one has taken the attack a step too far will ultimately be decided by primary voters who will either agree with the charge or recoil from the way it has been pursued.

I have been saddened by Lugar’s pandering to the ever-more-rabid GOP base, but I am even more saddened and appalled by what that base considers evidence that Lugar is out of touch. The list of complaints includes things like supporting nuclear arms negotiations, voting for the President’s Supreme Court nominees, and being willing to compromise with the Democrats from time to time in order to get the nation’s business done.

In other words, they want to remove him for being a sane (albeit very conservative) lawmaker who actually understands what elected officials in a democratic system are supposed to do.

I’m not sure that I live in Indiana any more. Politically, it feels more like the Twilight Zone.

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The New “N” Word

I learn a lot from my friends on Facebook.

Yesterday, a couple of people linked to a Slate Magazine report of a poll of Republican electorates in Mississippi and Alabama. The results were eye-opening, in more respects than one: by considerable margins, GOP voters in both states rejected evolution (66% in Mississippi, 60% in Alabama), and believed that President Obama is a Muslim (in Mississippi, only 12% said he was Christian, while 52% said Muslim and 36% were unsure; in Alabama, 14% said Christian, 45% Muslim and 41% unsure).

My first reactions were predictable. 1) A country that rejects science is a country in decline; 2) People who insist that Obama is a Muslim are probably are many of the same people who criticize him for attending a church where Rev. Wright was pastor–i.e., intentionally ignorant people; and 3) So what if he were Muslim? Being Muslim shouldn’t be any more out of the American mainstream than being Mormon or Jewish or Unitarian.

But of course, this isn’t about the comparative merits of different theologies. This is about pathology. It’s about the hate that dare not speak its name.

Another friend’s post hit that proverbial nail on its head. “Muslim” he wrote “is the new “N” word.”

We’ve come far enough in America to make the use of the original “N” word unacceptable, even among people who harbor very racist beliefs. We come far enough to actually elect a black President, and by a pretty substantial margin. That’s progress, and I don’t mean to diminish its significance.

But to dismiss the immediate and irrational response to that election and this President–to insist that every criticism of Obama is grounded in policy differences–is to ignore the elephant in the room.

The “birthers” and their ilk–the folks who insist that the President was born in Kenya, or that he is an adherent of a religion they have also demonized–are intent on labeling Obama as alien, as Other. But they don’t want to admit to themselves–or betray to others–the true source of that Otherness, or the real reason for their animus: the color of his skin.

At least they are true to their own beliefs: they haven’t evolved.

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