Friday morning, 4/7/06, I read about
a cartoon about South Dakota's new antiabortion law, auctioned on EBay to benefit Planned Parenthood and an SD Oglala Sioux tribe, both actively fighting this terrible law. The cartoon was fun
and educational: it included the office and home phone numbers of Bill Napoli, Republican State Senator who sponsored the state law. So I called Napoli's office, and was promptly attacked by the
batshit crazy politico, who spent 15 minutes raving at me, denying quotes of his ravings, and making the South Dakotans who voted for him look even worse than I had imagined (which is pretty bad).
Read on for some lowlights of what Napoli considers a "friendly conversation".
I called the office number, asking politely to speak with Bill Napoli. The answerer replied "Motion Unlimited Museum" - I repeated my request to speak with Bill Napoli - they repeated that I'd reached "Motion Unlimited Museum". Thinking I'd misdialed or the cartoon was in error, I apologized for bothering them and hung up.
Rechecking the cartoon, I decided it couldn't have the wrong number that actually hassled someone without getting corrected by now, that I must have misdialed. So I called back, again got "Motion Unlimited Museum", which I noted in the EBay listing is indeed the business owned by Napoli. So I repeated that I was calling for Bill Napoli. The answerer replied that he was Napoli - he had tricked me the first time, but my persistence paid off. I spent the next 15 minutes confusedly stumbling through the nightmare world of nonsense and denial that is Napoli's everyday life.
I started off telling him my name, then saying that I wanted to have an abortion, and was that all right with him? I'm a man, and I expected to blow his mind with an absurd question, loosen up the robot mind I expected I'd find at the other end of the line. It worked too well: he replied with an angry
"Well, I wish your mother had an abortion."
Surprised, but not disappointed in the demented ravings of a prominent Republican scumbag, I kept my telephone manners. I'd prefer to post a full transcript, but I'll just note some details that I did learn about Napoli that I can report. He says he's not telling women what to do - he doesn't care what women do. When I asked him whether he cared if a woman has an abortion in South Dakota when it doesn't threaten her life (violating his law), he admitted that he does. But he claims that it's "the state of South Dakota" that tells women what to do. Sure, he voted for the law, in fact he proudly reminded me that he sponsored it. But he says that the SD legislature "just executes the laws". I asked if SD were so different from my own state that its legislators don't make the laws, and its executive doesn't execute them, and he just spluttered.
He tried to make some kind of elaborate justification, between long, irrelevant digressions into podium-speak about how many South Dakotans believe life begins at conception, for how "an embryo isn't an embryo", it's "a life". I asked him to help me understand how he could claim that "an abortion isn't an abortion". He tried to tell me that the procedure to which I was referring was just murder, quickly abandoned that contrivance in favor of insisting that the "abortion isn't an abortion" statement was words I put in his mouth. I told him it was a paraphrase, and he bared his soul to me by telling me that I had "mangled" his words. He really is obsessed with his images of abortion. So much that when I reminded him that he had just claimed that "an embryo isn't an embryo", which he then insisted on denying through the end of the conversation. Which I sensed was near, as my disgust was making my maintenance of politeness (which I never lost) too difficult.
We digressed back into how my mother's abortion, which he demanded up front, would have changed his life. He said he'd be happier, because I wouldn't have called. I asked how that could make him happy, when he wants to stop abortions, and he got back into his insane doubletalk about how he isn't telling women what to do. I asked him whether he thought I was a threat to my mother's life, which his law would accept as a reason for her aborting me, and I frankly can't even remember the unintelligible gibberish he came up with. When asked whether he's telling women what to do by prohibiting things they could do, like abortions, he repeated that he's not telling women not to have abortions.
I played Alice in his Wonderland for a few more minutes. Napoli tried to get me to hang up unless we could find some "common ground", which I said I didn't expect (since he's batshit crazy). He kept insisting that we should talk only if I were interested in a "friendly conversation". I told him we weren't friends, but that didn't stop me from wanting to learn more about him. He said something stupid about the difference between being friends and a friendly conversation, so I reminded him that I was merely having a polite conversation with him, though he wasn't having a polite conversation with me. In fact, he had insulted me several times, starting with his early response to my absurd question (to say nothing of his abortion demand on my mother): he said "if you're stupid enough to ask a question like that", that I shouldn't be calling him. When I reminded him that he'd called me stupid, he tried to weasel out if it by saying that he'd said "if".
I'd finally talked to this deranged public official long enough. He apologized for insulting me and being rude, but rationalized it because he claimed he'd taken hundreds of calls, many screaming, obscene and threatening to kill him. I replied that I wasn't going to kill him, and accepted his apology (I find that makes the guilt hurt a lot more). I forgave him for being an asshole, as I expected no less.
I hung up thinking that any Dakotan stupid enough to vote for him deserves the abuse he's making of their laws. But I certainly don't deserve to live in a world of tyranny hustled along by his cynical production of the antiabortion laws he denies helping overturn Roe v Wade in a Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas court, or later. I just wonder why Napoli can have a conversation like the one he had with me, but not have to read transcripts made by actual journalists that would reveal his batshit crazy denial and ignorance of basic government, human rights and reality. Maybe someone wants to call him back and publish such a transcript - you can find his phone numbers at the link above, and Napoli will probably answer. Just try to keep a sense of proportion while you're talking to a batshit crazy politician with the power of life and death over South Dakota women and their unwanted children.