Flowery
Oh, Florida, Florida, Florida. What is your problem.
I mean for one thing there’s this winner.
Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism” by “dictator professors” in the classrooms of Florida’s universities…According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.
Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” – for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class – would also be given the right to sue.
Is that a clever idea? I mean…what if students believe ‘God’ made the earth a few years before their parents were born? What if they believe 11 plus 2 equals 957,853? What if they believe Napoleon invented the automobile and Hitler was a Notre Dame football star?
What do students go to university for at all, if it’s not to have their beliefs not respected? They go there to find out that some of the things they believe are wrong. Dang – they even go there to find out that beliefs aren’t about ‘respect’. Well, except in Florida, maybe. (And, if Horowitz has his way, in Ohio and a few other states and pretty soon all fifty and I have to go pack my trunk now.)
And then there’s the Jebster.
Mr Bush’s brother, Jeb, meanwhile, has suggested doctors might have misdiagnosed Mrs Schiavo’s condition, which he says might be one of minimal consciousness rather than vegetative.
According to the Associated Press news agency, the governor and the state’s social services agency say they have filed a petition with a Pinellas County trial court seeking to take custody of Mrs Schiavo.
Mr Bush’s brother suggested that based on what, exactly? His own medical knowledge and familiarity with the case and personal examination of the patient? Intuition? Something he saw on tv? A fairy whispering in his ear? Hmm. I wonder if I can do that. [closes eyes, thinks hard] Okay, let’s see. There’s a car in the shop in Wichita, Kansas, that the mechanics have said has transmission problems, but I, sitting at my desk here in Seattle, suggest that the mechanics might have misdiagnosed that car’s condition, and actually what it has is ugly upholstery. I mean, my opinion is as good as theirs, right? It’s disrespecting my beliefs to say it’s not. It’s hell’s own arrogant for those stupid doctors to think they know more about Terri Schiavo’s condition than Jeb Bush does, just because they’ve examined her and he hasn’t and they know how a brain works and he, to put it mildly, doesn’t.
Well, great. What the hell. Let’s let legislators decide what college teachers should teach, and let’s let governors decide when doctors have made boo-boos. Peachy. Three cheers for minimal government. Not only micromanaging hospital care and university teaching, but also claiming universal competence. Brilliant.
Whatever. Maybe when Jeb gets custody of Schiavo he’ll have his parents move in so they can babysit for her and give him some time off. That would be sweet. Family values kind of thing.
I wonder if these legislators are also pushing tort reform. Oh, the irony!
Is it just me (or OB’s choices since getting a new computer) or have the last bunch of news items been exceptionally depressing and threatening to people with brains that are actually in use? I see no one, so far, has commented on the last entry about the Dutch MPs in hiding. It really is upsetting and there’s hardly anything one can say. Do things have get as bad as Nazi Germany every single time before people wake up?
And Florida, well… I’m only commenting now because I read the article before I read OB’s reaction and thought, how can one mention it without the quote “Freedom is a dangerous thing”? Baxley apparently meant the opposite of what one might think he meant, seeing the line out of context. Why didn’t he speak just a little more clearly and say “Freedom is a dangerous thing, so let’s take it away from professional, experienced educators, most of whom have opinions I don’t share, and put it in the hands of their charges”? Not quite lunatics in charge of the asylum yet, but we’re getting there. If this goes through all the way, how long will it take till everyone can see what’s inside Pandora’s box?
I know, the tort reform thing is such a joke! Somebody disses your beliefs? Call a lawyer!! And oh by the way let’s pass tort reform legislation. Err –
No it’s not just you, Stewart – these are incredibly depressing items. (Not new computer-related either, at least not as far as I know. Just a bad pocket of reality, it seems.)
It’s not exactly a news flash that force and intimidation often succeed at doing just what they want to do. But – well, at least one might as well point it out.
Actually, I am somewhat heartened by all the bad news. Let me ‘splain.
Despite the desparate attempts by right wing nutjobs and the not-even-a-little-bit-liberal media to sway the public to their extremist “culture of life” nonsense with misleading video clips, unsupported “diagnoses” and other nonsense – the public isn’t buying it. A vast majority of the American public is sympathetic to euthanasia in general, and is appalled by the political grandstanding in this case in particular.
Similarly, the attempt to gut Social Security has gotten absolutely nowhere with the public, despite massive spin-doctoring, staged”town hall meetings” and a truly massive misinformation campaign. Political reality is that the attempt to gut Social Security will fail.
Moreover, I hear LOTS of grumbling (from the general public, not just Democrats and progressives) about the recent changes to bankruptcy law that screw over families that suffer job loss and medical hardship while explicitly protecting corporate interests.
I read an argument some months ago (and I cannot for the life of me remember where I read it or who wrote it) suggesting that, given their most recent presidential “mandate” and a majority in both the House and Senate, the Republicans were almost certain to vastly over-reach themselves and generate a massive backlash.
And so it begins…
Maybe it was the extreme concentration within that “pocket” that made it seem as if the other side had become more brazen than usual in its demands and less concerned with disguising the lust for power and control as something else. I suppose, as long as the people threatening Hirsi Ali, for example, are not claiming that they’re going to kill her because her claims that they oppress women are false, they still have some honesty on their side. Not really my idea of a consolation…
Of course, I was speaking more of American politics (the Florida stuff) than the Dutch terrorism case. Yeah, I don’t find much consolation in the fanatics successfully beating down Hirsi Ali, who has all my sympathy and support. But I do find consolation in several key elements of the BushCo agenda failing at home. (It’s been failing abroad from day one.)
I agree with the overreach thesis and, prescinding from the sad particulars of the individual lives involved, find the Schiavo affair rather funny. The malicious nutjobs in power are starting to show all of their cards, just before economic crunch-time hits, and the ever apathetic/resentful American public is beginning to wake up and realize just what they voted for. So let’s all get together and form a new organization to support rightwing necrophilia: “Zombies for Life!”
Night of the Living Republicans, eh – good idea.
I don’t know, though, about this over-reaching thing. Since they’ve successfully redistricted everything in such a way that they will go on controlling the House forever and ever – I think the wake-up has come a good deal too late.
To quote a clever online comic/commentary: “My wife and I made out our living wills last night. Mine says that if I fall into a persistent vegetative state, and Tom DeLay comes within a hundred miles of me, I am to turn into a zombie and rip his fucking head off. They can’t prosecute the undead for manslaughter, can they?”
Find this comic (and some even more brutal-but-honest) at:
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war45.html
I was having trouble keeping track of the political hypocrisy (don’t even get me started on the media) so I made a little list. Don’t, however, underestimate people’s willingness to forgive a great many sins to someone “trying to do the right thing” even if it isn’t…..
So you’re worried about the re-districting of the House of People’s Commissars: haven’t you learned anything about the inevitability of history?