Category Archives: Random Blogging

Putting Its Worst Face Forward

Every day, a new headline paints a picture of today’s Republican Party. It’s a party the Republicans of my era wouldn’t recognize.

First we had Senate candidate Todd Akin asserting that victims of “legitimate” rape don’t get pregnant. (We have “lady parts” that “shut stuff down”…).

Then we had the GOP Rep. from Tennessee who explained that AIDS can’t be transmitted through heterosexual sex. (Tell that to the folks in Africa…)

This morning, Arizona newspapers announced that infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio would be speaking at the Republican Convention.

Arpaio, who is under investigation by various law-enforcement agencies including the Department of Justice, is best known for his anti-illegal immigration fervor, which tends to extend to the harassment of perfectly legal citizens who have the misfortune of looking Latino. He is also known for maintaining horrific jail conditions, including the erection of a “tent city” that has been compared to a concentration camp, in which he held people pending trial. (Not convicted felons, just people accused of something.) He has also reintroduced chain gangs, pressured inmates to donate organs….Not to belabor this, but he isn’t exactly a poster boy for enlightened criminal justice policies. Most recently, he has become the face of the “birthers,” insisting that President Obama was born in Kenya.

Arpaio’s racism and brutality aren’t exactly a secret. And while he is popular with others of his ilk, his approval rating in Arizona is around 37%–higher than we might wish, but hardly at a level to explain the decision to give him a role at the Republican Convention.

Republican officeholders have tried to distance themselves from Akin, but they undermined that effort with a platform plank confirming their agreement with his position. (That plank: adamant opposition to abortion, with no exception for rape or incest.) I haven’t heard of any efforts to push back against homophobia, or the profound ignorance most recently expressed by the Representative from Tennessee. And now, they extend an invitation to speak at the Convention to a man who is utterly loathed (and with good reason) by every Latino who has ever heard of him.

Add to all of this the Romney campaign’s decision to double-down on a welfare ad that every credible news source agrees is flatly untrue–an ad that is basically a very loud “dog whistle” to racism–and the picture that emerges is pretty ugly.

Some strategist in the GOP has evidently concluded that Romney’s only path to victory is through the mobilization of the old, angry white guys who “want their country back” from the rest of us.

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Alien Worldview

Wow. Just wow.

When Todd Akin went off on his ignorant rant about “lady parts,” it prompted a number of folks to turn over the rock under which he and his fellow “conservatives” live–and it turns out his crazy isn’t limited to women’s reproduction.

Salon raised the reasonable question, “why is this guy on the House science subcommittee?” and quoted the genius on climate change: “In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world wants to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways?”

Unsurprisingly, Akin also rejects the “theory” of evolution.

The article also noted Akin’s firm grasp of history, made clear in his belief that the Pilgrims came to the New World to escape socialism. (He must get his history lessons from David Barton.)

This would all be funny if Akin were the only elected official with this sort of delusional worldview. But what’s really scary is how many “fellow travelers” he has. Several of them are in Indiana. A friend of mine shared a You Tube in which Linda Lawson berated Eric Turner for expressing his opposition to the “rape or incest” exception by explaining that women would pretend to be raped in order to obtain an abortion.

I don’t get it.

How do these willfully ignorant culture warriors get elected? What is it about women and science and basic logic that repels them?

And most important, what will it take to engineer a return to sanity?

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What Planet Did You Say This Is?

During a televised interview, Missouri Representative Todd Akin, who is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, was asked about his position on abortion. Rep. Akin favors a complete ban, with no exception for rape or incest. He explained that an exception for rape was unnecessary, since victims of legitimate rape don’t get pregnant. The woman’s body “has a way to deal with that.”

Leaving aside the question of what constitutes “legitimate” rape, the more important questions are how this moron has managed to get elected, and how he won a statewide Republican primary. (He evidently serves on the House Subcommittee on Science, no less–a terrifying prospect.)

According to various reports, Akin sponsored legislation that would redefine rape in federal law to limit funding for abortion providers, and has a long track record of uninformed and extreme views about women’s health. He has a consistently radical  voting record on women’s issues, wants to ban the morning-after pill, and–my personal favorite– has expressed concern that criminalizing marital rape gives women “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” during a divorce.

This guy is a real piece of work.

But before we laugh too hard at the people who actually voted to place this man in a position of authority, perhaps we should look at one of the men we have sent to Congress. Not only sent to Congress, but are likely to elevate to the top position in the state.

Google–as I did–Pence and Akin. You’ll find that they have co-sponsored several measures–one that would have distinguished between “forcible” and “other” rapes, one to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one to get rid of the Department of Energy, another to make English America’s “official” language….In fact, when I searched for “Pence Akin co-sponsor,” I got 1,730,000 hits. Obviously, hundreds if not thousands were duplicates, and thousands of others were perfectly innocuous… still, it became clear scrolling through them that Akin and Pence are cut from the same (poorly woven) cloth.

The only difference is that Mike Pence understands–as Akin clearly does not–that he needs to reinvent himself as someone who actually cares about Indiana’s economy and job creation, rather than the social issues which have been his major focus as a congressperson.

Unlike Akin, he realizes he needs to soft-pedal the crazy.

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Are We There Yet?

Two and a half more months of content-free campaign ads for state and local offices.

Two and a half more months of spin, hyperbole and outright falsehoods from national campaigns and the Super Pacs that support them.

Two and a half more months of voters being addressed as if we are idiots–and two and a half more months during which large numbers of voters behave as if they are–filling the comments sections of blogs with invective, treating complicated issues as if they are simple and obvious, and displaying racism, homophobia and anti-immigrant bigotries.

Elections, as political philosophers remind us, are a sign of human progress, a civilized substitute for warfare and other uses of force to settle our differences. Looked at in that light, perhaps the “dirty tricks,” the inane debates, the “win at all costs” behaviors are understandable, if unattractive.

Maybe we should just learn to live with the reality that elections aren’t really about ideas and competing policies, but more like sporting events where crowds root for those they’ve identified as their “team,” irrespective of the merits and sportsmanship of that team’s players. Maybe we should learn to accept that civilization is just a veneer, that reasoned argumentation based upon evidence and verification is still beyond us.

Maybe we should just accept that we’re not there yet.

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The Drug Culture

Since Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel, there has been a renewed focus by the chattering classes on the role of “culture” in creating social norms. (Romney attributed the fact that Israel’s economy is more robust than that of the Palestinians to a superior “culture.” It caused quite a stir.)

Culture certainly plays a significant role in all societies, albeit not in the linear and highly simplified fashion Romney implied.  Often, being immersed in the culture as we are, we miss the connections.

I thought about the unappreciated ways in which we reinforce cultural cues yesterday morning, while I was dutifully doing my time on the treadmill. The television was in real-time (no TIVO at the gym!) and one commercial after another implored me to talk to my doctor about [insert name of drug here]. The purple pill, the pill for COPD and the cure for a raft of other initials and acronyms for ailments I don’t have.

There are a lot of appropriate reactions to the onslaught of medical ads with which we are all inundated daily. One of my pet peeves is the amount of money being spent by pharmaceutical companies at the same time they defend charging big bucks for medicines by citing research and development costs. The last numbers I saw suggested that the 5+ billion dollars annually being spent on advertising to consumers actually exceeds those R and D outlays.

But yesterday, it suddenly hit me that the message being conveyed–intentionally or not–isn’t the relatively innocuous (if expensive) “buy my aspirin” but “have a problem? Take a pill.” Thinning hair, low “T”, anxiety, trouble sleeping, gas….you name it, there’s a pill for it. An easy fix for whatever ails you.

These messages overwhelm the other ads, the ones imploring parents to talk to their children about the evils of drugs. How believable are those solemn discussions, when teenagers see their parents and grandparents being medicated and over-medicated? How are they supposed to respect the (highly artificial) line between the “good” pills (legal) and the “bad” drugs (illegal). I did a fair amount of research on drug policy a few years ago, and was astonished to discover that nowhere in the convoluted labyrinth that is drug prohibition is there a definition of what constitutes “abuse,” or an objective distinction between use and abuse, or a bright line between narcotics that are illegal and those that are routinely prescribed.

Here is an experiment anyone can do: turn on your television for an hour, and count the number of commercials for drugs. Watch how those ads portray people before and after they take the product being peddled.

In Huxley’s Brave New World, people were constantly being urged to stop worrying and take a drug called soma. ““You do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.” Soma was described as having “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.” 

Sounds eerily familiar…..

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