"Special needs." Sigh. Over the past few weeks, we've been re-introduced to this fairly innocuous euphemism courtesy of Sarah Palin, who has wielded it like my own mom used to wield her trusty wooden spoon: depending on the context, it was used for the production of 1) comfort food or 2) threats or 3) outright ass-whuppins. (Nota bene: comfort and food are the only two terms from this series that I actually mean to endorse). I may or may not have been drinking to get through the debate itself, but my keyboard follows the speed limit, so follow me over the fold for some brief and disjointed observations on the subject...
The fact that Palin's most recent spawn was brought to term with an uncommon genetic anomaly (Down Syndrome) has, I gather, endeared her to different sections of the electorate: to some because they don't believe that women should have the right to make the choice that the Palin ladies have made recently; and to others because they "relate" to the undeniably greater challenges presented to parents whose children need more than the average milk, hugs, and -- eventually -- admonitions to use contraceptives, instruction in the competent use of which Sarah Palin would like to see disappear from public discourse. By "relate," I mean that -- if the teevee and the newspapers and whatever the hell this is are to be believed -- there are people out there who finally feel that they have a chance to be represented in government, and who won't feel "represented" by a professor of constitutional law, because they couldn't profess anything more complicated than their support for beer that is less filling or great tasting.
One senses that, in terms of Classical Republicanism as filtered through modern Federalism, perhaps this fact is, as the kids say these days, "oh-kay." As political theorist Hannah Pitkin pointed out long ago in her seminal work The Concept of Representation:
representation as ‘standing for’ by resemblance, as being a copy of an original, is always a question of which characteristics are politically relevant for reproduction
because
the history of representative government and the expansion of the suffrage is one long record of changing demands for representation based on changing concepts of what are politically relevant features to be represented. (87)
Now, I can't think of a seamless transition here -- like I said, if I tried to watch that debate while sober there's a good chance I'd go Elvis on the decade-old Sanyo -- but is our grand republic really suffering from too little "special" representation? Are the people on your street really objecting to the fact that endemic, systemic failures of our grand nation are going to be rectified by representatives who frankly don't just care for people with sub-par cognitive capacity, but who ARE people with sub-par cognitive capacity? Phrased differently, does the Dumbass Demographic currently LACK a voice in government? Have you LISTENED to James Inhofe or Joe Lieberman speak recently? For whom are they speaking if not the not-quite-thinking-it-through-all-the-way contingency?
Here's a brain-twister for you: how about caring for the REGULAR NEEDS children in the country first? How about electing and championing somebody who is going to represent concern for the millions of regular, everyday, American children whose basic needs for food, medicine, decent education, and an environment not filled with toxic chemicals or toxic violence are not only ignored, but actively denied by people like John McCain and Sarah Palin?
I've been involved with in the past with groups that rightly have emphasized the fact that "Civil Rights are Not Special Rights." All I'm ranting -- I mean "asking" -- is that a few more people in this great country take a step back and ask whether our national problem is the under-representation of very small minorities: namely, the wealthy, the connected, the privileged, the Special, and the ignorant. From my view, Congress and the White House are representing those folks just fine. Perhaps it's time we took a step away from swooning over "Special Needs" and thought about plain old needs.
Good night and good night.