I am so angry at Chris Matthews' Hardball, and similar ill mannered screaming cretins on TV that I could spit! Tonight, his featured rant was that all this stuff about filibuster and judicial nominations is REALLY about abortion. What world do these people live in?
Unfortunately, I can answer my own question: the ratings world. Television discourse is really about conflict with some titillation and gore thrown in as much as possible. If you can get Pat Buchanan to square off against Ellie Smeal, then the culture wars are alive and well, and advertisers are happy to provide a consumer interlude. And guess what? If we can focus on (but not understand...) abortion or gay marriage or filibusters then we won't really think about how our whole economy and the future we are offering our kids is bankrupt. Keep people riled but don't have any real conversations.
But does it have ANYTHING to do with abortion? No. At least not the abortion world I live in, where women--both pro choice, pro life, and many who try not to have an opinion about it, actually terminate pregnancies for their own good reasons. In my waiting room there is actually a sort of common ground movement going on and its called KINDNESS. One patient to another, one parent or partner to another, and if a pollster asked their opinion on abortion or anything else they would have opposite opinions on it, guaranteed. But they are all in the same unfortunate situation--being pregnant when it seems ill advised to bring life into the world.
Who in the world thinks that abortion is the most important issue in American politics? I live and breathe abortion and I don't think it's the most important issue. The destruction of the environment, maybe. The export of war and unsustainable consumerism, perhaps. American arrogance and total lack of awareness of the rest of the world.
I would like to send Chris Matthews and every whiney Congress person to sub Saharan Africa for a month to live. I mean to try to subsist on 1/4 cup of rice a day and unsafe water amid the AIDS orphans and terrorized by rival thugs. Then come back and tell us what the most important issue is. Abortion will be on the list, in the same column as being able to feed your family, work, and educate your kids, but it won't be the same issue manipulated by the power brokers in Washington DC, it will be about the people in my waiting room.
--Bon
Notice that most, if not all, of our news junkies and political talk show hosts are conservative pundits who really don't have any manners or say anything that makes much sense? Propaganda left and rights...just great...
Posted by: Narcissa | Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 02:01 PM
I am so happy that you feel this way. I thought I was all alone. I am a 14 year old girl in a program for Planned Parenthood called Peer Educators. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. Recently, my grandmother that I was living with discovered that I was volunteering my time to tell my peers about condoms and birth control and STDs under the Planned Parenthood name, and she kicked me out of her house. She said Planned Parenthood performed abortions, and I must not be a Christian if I believed it was right.
This was such a shock for me; I come from a very close family, and right now my parents are having very hard luck-we were staying with them, and because of my volunteer work, we were kicked out on the streets. I'm so happy that there are people out there that believe in people like me-I'm not trying to make abortions happen or not happen, I'm just trying to tell my generation about the bad stuff out there and the way their choices will effect them for the rest of their lives.
You make my heart swell.
Posted by: Sara | Saturday, June 18, 2005 at 06:35 PM
Abortions are fun, but they won't save you any money on your car insurance.
Posted by: laura | Saturday, June 11, 2005 at 08:09 PM
The rich politicians aren't the ones who'll be burying their children when they die of starvation or some other illness the family cannot afford to treat. Having babies just for the sake of having babies and building up a population (lest those immigrants outnumber us) is a step back to the days when infant mortality rates were high because poverty and disease ran rampant. But then again, the weak and uneducated (which are byproducts of pevrty) are less of a threat to the powers than be, aren't they?
Posted by: Ol Cranky | Sunday, May 29, 2005 at 09:50 AM
I put a link up to your blog on my own nursing blog at http://mediblogopathy.blogspot.com . Are you nurses? It sounds like it, but I've read a lot and haven't found that answer. You've got a great blog going here. -HK
Posted by: HypnoKitten | Thursday, May 26, 2005 at 09:07 PM
Glad to see that Billy, who will never become pregnant nor have to make tough decisions about his own pregnancy, puts my reproductive health at the top of his list of "important" political issues.
Keep up the great work with this blog. I'm a huge fan and a regular reader. I think you're all amazing.
Posted by: Jill | Wednesday, May 25, 2005 at 07:04 PM
What I thought was weird about Chris Matthews is that if you watched the 7pm EST show before watching his 9pm EST Special last night, he seemed to have changed his mind quite a bit in 2 hours - for one thing he was much calmer in the first show and willing to listen to different opinions and admit the Democrats had other problems with the judges, for example - Owens' opinion that the New Deal is unconstitutional. The second show he was yelling and interupting and only letting people speak who were parroting back what he said. So I think ratings is a reasonable reason for that mess of a 9pm show - I guess people like the yelling.
Posted by: Chris | Wednesday, May 25, 2005 at 11:36 AM
Um...I think abortion is the single most important issue. And I believe that the filibuster and judicial nominations have everything to do with abortions. Everything.
Posted by: BillyHW | Tuesday, May 24, 2005 at 11:45 PM