CSotD: They can’t hear our cries ’cause they’re focused on our mons
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The droll, understated style of Wiley Miller makes him probably the best cartoonist to address this issue.
Given deadlines, this would be quite a buzzer-beater if he had drawn it after Limbaugh's attack, though there are times when the first cartoon of the next set can be more timely than usual. But I'm assuming he just picked up on the general assault on women's reproductive rights that has been swirling around.
If you didn't think there was an agenda within the anti-abortion movement to also end birth control, well, it's getting harder to miss.
It's like the animal protection groups that bring in support with pictures of big-eyed baby seals and then announce that, by the way, no decent person would ever enslave a dog, either.
The difference being that PETA doesn't have a candidate in serious contention for the White House, much less a brace of them, fighting to see who can be the most extreme.
I'm not surprised that cartoons on the topic of the Congressional hearings quickly turned into cartoons on Rush Limbaugh's comments, pro and con. But the intense heat being generated is obscuring any serious debate.
It does answer the question, "I wonder what the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas issue would have morphed into if the Internet had been as big a factor then as it is now?"
Start with a relatively benign situation: Hill simply provided a "maybe you should look into this" comment to the committee that would likely have stayed below the radar if she had gotten a 20-minute phone call from a committee member, if she hadn't had to go back and ask, "Did you get my note?" and then had someone inject her personal testimony into the hearings rather than simply taking it on background.
Ditto with Sandra Fluke: The past head of a student organization concerned with the issue is invited to testify at a committee hearing, and nobody outside the room would have heard a word she said if the fool in charge of the hearings had simply let her say her piece and move on. (Here's a pdf transcript.)
Not to say either woman was given a larger stage than she deserved, but every day there is all sorts of testimony slipping under the radar and through the cracks and whatever your choice of well-worn metaphor in Washington.
And it's not just testimony before committees: There are speeches made on the floor of the House that seem wonderfully persuasive if someone puts them on YouTube, until you realize that they are being made to an empty chamber and nobody with any power to change the system has heard a word of it.
However, both Hill and Fluke were poised, attractive, bright young women speaking candidly about, um, well, you know, that. (blush, giggle)
Now, just as Thomas's conservative backers hastened to invent a fictional backstory to discredit Anita Hill, Rush's backers are announcing that — gasp! — she's 30 years old and not 23 as MSNBC reported.
What's more, she's secretly a member of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, which she never revealed until the second sentence in her testimony, which, as it happens, was printed on the letterhead of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice.
Such deception!
And she knew Georgetown's student health insurance didn't cover contraception before she enrolled, and yet she enrolled in one of the most prestigious law schools in the country with the intention of seeing if perhaps that policy might be changed!
(Actually, they're spinning it that she ONLY enrolled to fight the policy. They haven't explained why anybody would go through three years of law school to overturn a policy that only impacts that particular school's students.)
So, okay, what kind of idiot would be persuaded by such clumsy, irrelevant, ridiculous spin?
The kind who wants to be.
If people can believe that the earth was created in seven days only 5,000 years ago, why wouldn't they believe that Fluke lied to MSNBC about her age and that she put herself through three years of expensive, painful study in the law library simply so she could overturn a clause in the school's health policy?
And that third-year law students have the time and energy to enjoy a robust and promiscuous sex life.
But I would point out that the kind of people who would believe that nonsense are the kind who will flock to the polls in November to assure that righteousness shall come upon the land.
Two observations:
1. Clarence Thomas was duly confirmed as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, where he has served primarily to keep his chair from floating up to the ceiling and to double the number of votes given to Antonin Scalia. Similarly, the fact that Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot is not going to keep one of these Christian Taliban candidates from getting to the White House.
2. Speaking of Rush Limbaugh's enduring status as a big, fat idiot, the exit of Olympia Snowe briefly highlighted the futility of an intelligent person trying to accomplish anything in Madhouse Washington, and it causes me to wonder if the author of "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat Idiot" is as effective as a US Senator as he was running around the country making intelligent fun of stupid political thinkers.
I like Wiley's cartoon. The nation is in crisis, but it really has all come down to the issue that people care about: Women's genitals.
And I wish I had more faith in the American people so that I could believe Matt Davies' take on things, but I've seen too many dangerous people attain power to be terribly confident.
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