The last few weeks have been rather trying for me. You see, I love culture. And I love life. But you know, I hate Republicans, I hate what they're doing to this country, and I simply detest the phrase "culture of life." Every time I've read or heard that phrase during the sickening display of hatred and ignorance that's been the Republican take on the Schiavo matter, I literally want to vomit.
Flip with me, and let's do away with this so-called "culture of life."
Now, we all know they don't actually care about life at all, and lots of people have talked about the Republican hypocrisy involved in this phrase. Pointing out this hypocrisy is fine and important, but the media isn't buying it at all. As Eric Boehlert writes today in his article,
"A tale told by an idiot" in
Salon:
Newsweek's 2,500-word feature this week on Schiavo inserted this timid mention into the 14th paragraph of a 15-paragraph story: "Given polls showing solid majorities supporting the tube's withdrawal, Republicans may have overplayed their hand" (emphasis added by Boehlert). The newsweekly did not mention that Bush's job approval ratings have fallen to a new low in the wake of the Schiavo intervention.
It's hard to imagine that if President Clinton (or a president Al Gore or John Kerry) had cut short his vacation to fly back to the White House in order to sign controversial legislation, and three days later network polls showed the legislation to be wildly unpopular, reporters would not have asked, How did the president become so out of touch with the mainstream? Who at the White House is to blame for the fiasco? How is the administration going to recover politically?
During last fall's election campaign--well, during all campaigns this happens--there was a lot of animated discussion among us Dems about the benefits or drawbacks of going negative. I'm firmly putting myself down on the "let's go negative" side. So when thinking about "culture of life" spilling out of every Republican's (and "nonpartisan" media's) mouth more frequently than babies spit-up, I think the Dems need to stop using the hypocrisy angle and instead simply call it what it is. It's not a culture of life, it's the Republican cesspool of violence.
In their quest to stop abortions, they kill doctors. When they don't like what happens in court, they scream outside hospices. When they want to protect American interests in the Middle East (oil and power), they send our troops to their deaths and kill countless civilians. When they don't like how the Senate operates, they go "nuclear." You know, the examples are endless. They are violent people. They gay-bash. They lynch. They destroy anything in their path. They live in a cesspool of violence.
Senator Lautenberg and Senator Kennedy have taken a couple of steps down this path, calling out delusional DeLay's extremist threats against the judges in the Schiavo case. I would like to see every Democrat get up on that TV and work this:
Democrative National Committee Chairman Howard Dean laughed today when asked what the Democratic response should be to newly urgent issues of the culture of life. "Culture of life?!" Dean guffawed, "You must mean the Republican cesspool of violence!"
Senator Clinton this morning issued a statement about the Schiavo matter in which she said, "It's about time the vast right-wing cesspool of violence started to understand that their brand of extremism is not in line with mainstream America. Just take a look at the polls!"
Well, I can dream can't I?