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Archive for October 24th, 2006

Tim Graham Takes Fox Palsy Personally

Posted by scott on October 24th, 2006

Via Wolcott, we see that the Corner’s Tim Graham is also in a tizzy about the Michael J. Fox ad.  According to Tim, Fox’s statement that stem cell research offers “hope” is a cruel joke, on a par with Ashton Kutchner’s efforts to convince Michelle Trachtenberg that she broke a water pipe in a parking garage with her car.

Punk’d by Parkinson’s [Tim Graham]
J-Pod, in an age when reporters routinely pick apart ads for being untruthful or misleading, this ad should be scorned in the press for making claims that are not yet scientifically accurate.

The right wing’s newfound passion for rigorously peer-reviewed 60 second political commercials that reflect a consensus view of scientific research is refreshing, to say the least.  I guess this puts an end to that whole “the jury is still out on global warming” business, not to mention deliberately misleading, industry-funded campaigns, like that ad touting the life-giving benefits of carbon dioxide.

Claiming conservatives oppose “life-saving” stem-cell research is, at the moment, completely unsubstantiated.

Uh-huh.  Did you happen to catch this piece in the Washington Post: In Heartland, Stem Cell Research Meets Fierce Opposition?  Just curious…

Life-saving? Right now, it’s in danger of looking like the embryo-destroyer’s version of WMD intelligence.

Oooh, SNAP, Timster!  Way to turn a frown upside down!

Aside from the factual flaws, it has the sickening usual liberal flaw of leading with the Unmockable Victim, and thinking the facts don’t matter, especially with those emotional chicks.
“I love the ladies, but you gotta admit they’re apt at any moment to take a plunge off the hysterical high dive.  They can’t help it; it’s a well-known fact that the uterus and yellow wallpaper drives ‘em batty.”
Wow, that damn-those-liberal-crips-we’re-not-allowed-to-mock meme has really taken off.  Ann Coulter ought to be collecting royalities.
(Oh, the liberal consultant smirks are everywhere, no doubt.)
Um…sure, Tim.  Like the Chesire Cat’s smile, the liberal consultant’s smirk remains behind, floating in the air, long after the consultant has faded away to K Street.  (But shhhhh!  Only Tim can see them!)

But blaming Bush or Steele or Talent for Parkinson’s disease is akin to John Edwards claiming in October 2004 that Christopher Reeve would walk again “when John Kerry is president.” This ad is shameless, uncivil, unproven, and a very personal attack.

shameless…uncivil…unproven…  Tim, Tim, take a breath and unbunch your panties.  I think the words you’re groping for are “frank,” “unsparing,” and “effective.”  But a “personal” attack?  In fact, a “very personal attack”?  Timmy, as I think your old friend Lassie would agree…it’s not all about you.

In other news, “Democrat” has ceased to be a member of a political party, and has become, apparently, a species.  At least, judging by this oddly worded headline on Rush’s website:

MICHAEL J. FOX IS NOT INFALLIBLE; HE’S JUST THE LATEST VICTIM USED BY THE DEMOCRAT

MARLIN PERKINS:  The Democrat, native to the Northeastern United States, was once common throughout the Lower 48 states.  As recently as the 1970s, the Industrial cities of the Midwest were black with thundering herds of Democrats, who thrived on the region’s good manufacturing jobs, collective bargaining agreements, and high rates of home ownership.  Alas, in recent years, the outsourcing of the Democrat’s native habitat has lead to a decrease in its numbers.  As you can see, we’ve baited our trap with a Barbra Streisand CD and a UAW card…yes, here comes one now, emerging cautiously from the underbrush.  I’ll scramble into the helicopter with the film crew while Jim nets the Democrat and wrestles it to the ground…

Anyway, back to Rush:

RUSH: One of the big issues in the Missouri Senate race — as you know, we touched on it yesterday — is the Michael J. Fox which is entirely misleading and which is in itself an attack ad, and it is filled with disinformation about embryonic stem cell research and how Jim Talent wants to criminalize it. Embryonic stem cell research — and, by the way, Fox is doing similar commercials in Maryland now for Ben Cardin against Michael Steele. But embryonic stem cell research is currently legal and completely unrestricted in both Maryland and Missouri and in the vast majority of other states. It’s largely personal and institutional ethics that keep scientists from cloning research.

Yeah!  I don’t know where this goofy idea that research and funding were somehow related came from.  The only thing preventing advances in stem cell science are the ethical qualms of scientists, most of whom are morally uneasy with this whole “research” fad.

The debate we’re having is almost always about governmental funding

 Oops.  Okay, scratch that ethical crap.

We will address that, but Michael J. Fox entered the political arena long ago. He became a US citizen in 2000.   He’s from Canada.

And that’s germane to this discussion because…uh…

Rush?  Help me out here…

He was active in the Kerry campaign in 2004

Got it!  So clearly, he deserves a catastrophic disease.  Shaky, saw-offed little Socialist.

One of the tactics the Democrats have — and they’ve used this consistently. They bring forth people who they think are victims for the purposes of exploiting them, and when you bring forth — for example, if you’re talking about embryonic stem cell research, and you want to convey the notion that the Republicans are opposed to it, and in effect they’re for people having Parkinson’s Disease. Make no mistake that’s what the intent is.

Okay, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but this sounds awfully familiar.  It’s almost as if there were a series of talking points issued, and everybody was told to repeat them ad nauseum.  Hey, I know that sounds crazy, you don’t have to tell me…

Then you bring forth a person who’s suffering the disease, and you illustrate the disease and the ravages and the suffering on TV to create sympathy and infallibility, because you’re not supposed to be able to attack somebody or criticize somebody in any way or in any regard if they suffer from the disease.

Wow!  That’s almost word for word Ann Coulter’s complaint about “the doctrine of liberal infallibility”!  What are the odds?  If I didn’t know better, I’d think they almost coordinated these spontaneous bursts of moral outrage.

It’s considered cold-hearted and cruel

It’s not, of course, but certain hysterical chicks consider it that. 

I would argue that Mr. Fox is damaging what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort at addressing and curing illnesses

Or at least, it was until Bush declared researchers could only use the 60 extant stem cell lines tainted with mouse DNA.  Because there’s no worse illness than Ennui in the Base.

Democrats are politicizing diseases and illnesses.

Alzheimer’s is a perfect example of corrupt machine politics.  Why do Democrats have to politicize disease?  We’re only politicizing the research that might lead to a cure for disease!  Geez!

The Breck Girl, John Edwards, promising, if John Kerry is elected, that Christopher Reeve and others with spinal paralysis would walk, when there’s no such is evidence that any research into embryonic stem cells will create any immediate cure toward anything.

Huh.  Seems like I’ve heard that bit before too.  Either there’s an RNC blast fax making it’s way around town, or the right wing pundits have beaten the Borg to the deployment of a working hive mind technology.

It is irresponsible to mislead victims of people suffering from these horrible diseases in such a fashion. But that’s exactly what has happened.

Wait.  We’re misleading the victims of people suffering from horrible diseases?  I wouldn’t have thought that a guy with advanced Parkinson’s could beat you up for your lunch money, but I stand corrected.

It’s no different than the way they do it in the environmental movement. They talk about dirty water and dirty air, and if you oppose the environmentalists, why, you must be for dirty water and dirty air!

Yeah!  Everybody talks about dirty water and dirty air, but nobody does anything about it!  Oh.  Wait.  Some people actually did.  That’s why we hate them.  Sorry!

Well, that’s about all the Rush I can take for the moment, since everybody in the Wingnutosphere is starting to melt into Ken Mehlman’s gooey, runny face, and I prefer my extremist hacks hardboiled, or at least al dente.

Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

The President Uses The Internets To Get On The Googles

Posted by scott on October 24th, 2006

Per Crooks and Liars, President Bush likes to Google his ranch.  He still refuses to send or receive e-mail, because it’s not as easy to shred, and sometimes copies can get stuck in the tubes and come back to haunt you later.  But he does enjoying using Google Maps to look at aerial photographs of brush, often pausing to remark, “Heh heh, that Barney Google’s come a long way.”

This development has been welcomed by First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian, who believes that Google and similar search engines represent a revolutionary advance in information retrieval technology, and because she’s getting tired of jangling her keys everytime the President gets bored.

Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Hugh Hewitt Can Beat Up Any Parkinson’s Victim in the House!

Posted by scott on October 24th, 2006

By now you’ve probably seen the ad featuring Michael J. Fox (if not, click here).  As you probably know, Fox is a Parkinson’s sufferer, so it likely comes as little surprise that he supports a candidate who favors stem cell research over one who does not.  In fact, this is so clear a case of enlightened self-interest that I really don’t quite grasp Hugh Hewitt’s dark insinuations of a hidden agenda:

There’s a new Michael J. Fox ad on stem cell research that supports Claire McCaskill’s campaign. Click over and watch it. It will take you only 30 seconds, and I promise I’ll still be here when you get back.

Will you, Hugh?  What about that time I wanted to pop into Williams Sonoma for five minutes just to grab a new egg whisk and you promised you’d be waiting at the bench across from the One Potato Two?  You broke my heart, Hugh. 

By way of response, let me first say that I think almost any kind of ad in support of a political campaign is fair game.

Less fair, but safer game are political ads showcasing short men with severe neurological disorders, because it’s much less likely that they’ll later buttonhole you in the Pump Room and punch you in the solar plexus until you vomit breast of pheasant and a split of Pouilly-Fuisse all over your wingtips.

If a candidate goes too far, the public will punish him or her.

“…I recommend forcing the candidate to wear the ballet boots and a three-strap penis cage.  Mistress well proved their curative powers the last time I stepped out of line.  In fact, add an uncomfortably tight latex scrotum snood and a couple of alligator clips on the man-boobs, and you’d see a renaissance of civility and bi-partisanship that would shock you like a cattleprod to the colon.  But I digress.”

So while I find the Michael J. Fox ad crass, tasteless, exploitative and absurd, I fully support Claire McCaskill’s right to shoot herself in the foot.

Right.  While Rush’s assertion that Fox was faking his symptons in order to garner sympathy can only be regarded as a high five-worthy coup of informed commentary. 

The most distasteful aspect of the ad is the way it exploits Michael J. Fox’s physical difficulties. Fox is an actor, and clearly knew what he was doing when he signed up for the spot - no victim points for him for having been manipulated by the McCaskill campaign. The ad’s aim is to make us feel so bad about Fox’s condition that logical debate is therefore precluded. You either agree with Fox, or you sadistically endorse his further suffering as Fox accuses Jim Talent of doing.

Hugh has apparently peeked over at Ann Coulter’s Composition Blue Book, since this reeks of her belief that anyone who confronts Republicans with the results of their ideological extremism represents a violation of the rules of war, since right wing pundits “aren’t allowed to respond.”  How dare Michael J. Fox have Parkinson’s in public?  How dare he support politicians who believe in funding research that may one day relieve his symptons.  How are you supposed to argue with that?  It’s not like those clumps of eight frozen cells in a petrie dish are gonna get off their lazy nuclei and shoot a counter-ad.  In Hugh’s day, palsied cripples stayed in their rooms and wasted away with dignity, or at least kept their heads down and their mouths shut in public in the hopes that — at best — people wouldn’t notice their shameful condition, and — at worst — would mistake them for Joe Cocker.

And what’s all this crap about “The ad’s aim is to make us feel so bad about Fox’s condition that logical debate is therefore precluded”?  I apologize if I’ve missed a great Fundamentalist Spockfest at some point, but so far the “logical” arguments against stem cell research seem to begin and end with the premise that frozen blastocytes, floating in the nurturing, womb-like confines of a Petrie dish, have an immortal soul to go along with their freezer burn.  This assertion may be many things — poetic, profound, intensely creepy — yet “logical” wouldn’t seem to top the list.  If that’s the sum total of their rational argument, then I would hazard to say Hugh and the other faithful are venerating the wrong trinity.  They’d probably get more bang for their tithe by worshipping The Father (Clarence Birdseye), the Son (Julius Richard Petrie), and the Holy Ghost Rider (Nicholas Cage).

This is demagoguery analogous to the pernicious and pathetic chickenhawk argument. The whole “chickenhawk” logic is that only people who have served in the military are entitled to have an opinion on military matters. Thus, the ideas of non-veterans don’t warrant a hearing and thus don’t need rebutting.

Actually, Hugh, I think that’s the plot of Starship Troopers.  The chickenhawk argument, as I understand it, is that men like Bush and Cheney, who avoided harzardous service in their youth, should have the minimal decency to hesitate before  sending today’s young people into a similar quagmire.  Additionally, it holds that people who are currently of military age (Jonah, put down that HoHo, I’m looking at you) and who agitate in support of a war of choice have a moral obligation to support that war with more than a pro forma shake of the pom poms.

While Michael J. Fox (like me) has some skin in the stem cell game

Let’s all pause, bow our heads, and observe a moment of silence in honor of Hugh’s stillborn witticism.

…that most people don’t, that doesn’t give him any special appreciation of the moral issues involved with embryonic stem cell research.  Sick people may want cures and treatments more than the healthy population, but that doesn’t make them/us experts on morality.

Yeah, sick people have no skin in the morality game.  Which is why Jesus was so often seen hitching up the hem of his robes and scurrying to cross the street whenever he had the misfortune to stumble over the lame or the leperous.

The ad’s disingenuousness also merits consideration. While Fox mentions “stem cell research,” the word “embryonic” is strangely lacking. Given that the entire debate centers on the ethics and morality of embryonic stem cell research, this omission is noteworthy.

Would it be disingenuous to point out that not all stem cell research involves embryonic stem cells?  Probably.  But that still doesn’t relieve Democrats of their obligation to use the terms of debate as defined by Hugh.  If this sort of thing isn’t nipped in the bud, the next thing you know, people will be using the medical term “intact dilation and extraction,” just because it was coined by a physician, instead of “partial birth abortion,” which as everyone knows is the correct term, because it was coined by a congressman from Florida.

AS FAR AS FOX IS CONCERNED, I feel bad for him. The ad is shot to carefully record the sounds of the spasticity brought on by his condition. It’s gut-wrenching to see the star in such a condition.

Hear that, Mr. Spastic?  Hugh doesn’t forgive you, but he does pity you.

But it’s strange that Fox has so eagerly bought the promises of the stem cell research community. If Fox thinks that stem cell research offers him (or me) hope, he’s mistaken. Stem cell research, both embryonic and otherwise, right now represents nothing more than a promising theory.

“I still can’t get over how people repeatedly fall for that whole “electricity” sham.  Sure, incandescent lighting is a promising theory, but I really think we should pull the funding, because if burning olive oil was good enough for our Lord and Savior, it ought to be good enough to run our computers.”

If it bears fruit, and that’s a huge “if”, it will likely do so too late to benefit Fox, me, and our contemporaries. In spite of the silky rhetoric of John Edwards-type politicians, dramatic medical innovations come slowly and take decades to pan out, not months.

“So there’s no point in getting the research started now, because even if it does pan out, it’ll be too late to help me.  Whereas if I continue to demagogue the issue, I’ll get real world political benefits in the here and now.  So screw you, Future Spazzes!”

One last note on Michael J. Fox. Unlike Fox, I’ve been a sick person all my life.

Must….resist…cheap…shot…!

Like most sick people who try to define their lives by something other than their illness, I’ve always recoiled at pity and even sympathy. 

“Of course, I’m not above abusing someone for using a personal tragedy to illuminate a larger social issue and then turning around and milking my own misfortune in an effort to immunize myself against any criticism my callousness might arouse.”

Personally, I find there to be something extremely disquieting about the way Fox has chosen to use his condition to bully voters into feeling bad for him and thus support his political positions.

It’s almost as if President Bush invited the widows of first responders to backdrop one of his political speeches, or used the badge of a dead police officer as a prop during a State of the Union speech, then took it back to the White House and used it to try to decode the secret messages from Ovaltine.

Speaking of disingenuous, Hugh, do you really want to pretend that using an emotional response to drum up support for your policies is illegitimate?  Because that shoves the last five or six years of Republican politicking out onto some rather thin ethical ice.

People know when they’re being manipulated.

 ”And I wish they’d stop, because this is the only playbook I’ve got, and it’s just…not…WORKING!”

This ad with its heavy-handed emphasis on Fox’s suffering will succeed in making Fox an object of sympathy and pity, but because of its naked crassness, it will not be a political success.

“…at least not if Clarence Birdseye answers my prayers.” 

As for Claire McCaskill, who has chosen to conclude her campaign in this manner, she will get no sympathy or pity from these quarters. Only contempt.

The fact that your quarters are bare of compassion and empathy don’t exactly come as a news flash, Hugh.   But I gotta admire the way you cleaned Wal*Mart out of their 5 gallon tubs of contempt.

UPDATE:  As TS of Tristram-Shandy points out, Hugh’s Townhall column, was actually written by his acolyte, Dean Barnett.  Which I should have known, since Dean (who suffers from cystic fibrosis) is the go-to guy whenever Hugh and his posse need to dash a little cold water on the embers of condolence.  So Hugh picked a spokesperson who, in Ann Coulter’s words, we’re “not allowed to respond to,” in order to complain that Claire McCaskill picked a spokesperson Hugh isn’t allowed to respond to.

Anyway, I was angry and leaped into the fray without doublechecking the byline.  And I should have known better, since Dan has previously floated several of the more reprehensible points above.  On August 25, in a piece titled “The Stem Cell Hustle,” Dan wrote in Hugh’s column:

AND THAT’S WHERE THE EXAGGERATED promise of the stem cell debate comes in. Virtually every doctor or researcher you talk to, and I’ve talked to a bunch, agrees that stem cell research holds out great promise for the future. It’s an avenue they’d love to see explored. It’s also a new science, and one that if it bears fruits, won’t likely do so for quite some time.

And apparently he had a gripe against Michael J. Fox long before the McCaskill ad, since he wrote in the same piece:

Pushed along by political interests who relish the chance to devalue the fetus, stem cell therapy has come to represent a panacea for the hopeless and the ignorant who understandably choose false hope over no hope. But, you have to wonder, what level of awareness do Michael J. Fox and Ronald Reagan Jr. have about the cause they so relentlessly tout?

Anyway, since this is at least the second time Hugh has allowed Dan to use his column to tell tomorrow’s victims of catastrophic disease to Suck It, I’ve decided not to rewrite this post, on the logical assumption that Bartlett’s words reflect the opinions of the management.

Wingnuts | 26 Comments »