78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Independence Does a Body Good
2005-07-05   3:25 p.m.

It was a little hard to swallow all the fourth of July hoopla this year when faced with Justice O'Connor's decision to retire her seat on the Supreme Court. We have this great celebration of independence and freedom every July to mark our separation from an invasive and intrusive ruling system. Yet here, and now, W gets to replace two Supreme Court Justices, and many of us feel freedom, independence and the notion of balance won't have anything to do with that decision. Big corporations, powerful lobbying groups, and conservative groups who fear anyone that isn't their version of white-straight-Christian-American, we fear, will have more to do with these decisions than any attempt to keep the nation's ideals (you know, like separation of church and state) intact. That little weenie wants to go down in history so badly he can taste it - even if, it appears, it's as the worst president in decades.

O'Connor, a conservative herself, was moderate enough to be instrumental in the defense and protection of the historically un-protected: minorities and women. But if we replace her with two slick, refusing-to-be-moderate conservatives who are forever indebted to the homogenous GOP groups that put them where they are, we're all in big big trouble. Look forward to getting arrested for distributing condoms to the public in the next decade.

This turn of events came a few days after I found out that David Hager, W's infamously poor choice (criticized on ALL SIDES) as head advisor to the FDA's Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs, not only is under examination for suspicious and unethical medical practices, but for SPOUSAL ABUSE as well. To me, this was no surprise, just basic psychology. If your main professional goal is to make it very difficult for women to access any form of birth control, it's pretty clear that women who have control over their lives and some kind of independence is deeply troubling to you. It's also pretty clear that if you refuse patients MEDICAL treatment sometimes, turning them away and insisting it's their "souls" and "immoral choices of sexual behavior" that are making their abdomens hurt/periods heavy/cysts rupture, you must really hate women and want them to suffer. So that Hager was a wife beater really wasn't surprising. What was: how LITTLE attention our media paid to this news. Could there BE a worse person to have in charge of government programs involving women's health than a man who beats and rapes his wife? Where are the democrats? Why aren't they all over this? We really should be already anticipating how to shut down a Jeb 2008 run. This Hager stuff is yet another case of LOOK WHO THIS ADMINISTRATION PUTS IN CHARGE!! that could be exploited to reveal the corruption and just general "I'm-drunk-with-power" public policy making we have going on right now, but this opportunity has already come and gone.

Hence, my frustration at the fourth of July celebrations. Hoo-ray, indeed - I am a patriot and love my country and want to protect it's people as much as possible. But it's a little difficult given the bind we're all in for the next few years.