The Culture War is still on. That rumor flying around after November 4th that new tickets to the Culture War Dance were being revoked and the entire shindig cancelled in favor of a more humane world turned out to be filthy lies.
Discredited, debunked, shot, maimed, fried with a blowtorch and struck with an iron hammer the Right Wing of this country, particularly the fascists who look up into the clouds and see God on their side, refuses to die and be consigned to the ash heap. In the spirit of Zombie Nixon and Zombie Reagan they just keep coming back, ignoring the repeated rejections of their own Silent Majority of their doomed ideology, hellbent with lust in their eyes on controlling what goes on in your bedroom, kitchen, laundry room, broom closet, movie theater, and doctor's office.
New Example A writ large: Walgreens, the suburban mega-corporation and legal drug dealer to the masses, giving common, upstanding citizens a hassle for daring to -- god forbid -- buy legal birth control.
Around two today the Consumerist carried the story of a guy named Michael and his girlfriend who ventured into an Oxford, Mississippi Walgreens with intent to purchase birth control. Yes, I said it, well wrote it, and I'd write it again. Birth Control! Shocking, I know.
What, are you telling me it isn't shocking? That this isn't 1955 and women are free to control when, and if, they reproduce? No doubt this would be front page news for the hepcats at the Walgreens of Oxford, Mississippi.
Michael writes of his girlfriend's experience (emphasis mine):
Well, the other day we decided to be extra-safe and to get the Plan B pill from Walgreens here in town. My girlfriend went and requested Plan B, equipped with the knowledge that it's a non-prescription drug available with ID. She said the pharmacy worker started asking for proof of insurance in order to get the pill. My girlfriend refused and asked to speak to someone in charge. The pharmacist then came, and my girlfriend told him she simply wanted Plan B and that her ID should be good enough. The pharmacist then went about getting the pill, but they also seem to have a policy, a lá abortion clinics, of forcing a waiting period of an hour and giving adoption literature to the person requesting the contraceptive. Now, Plan B is just an additional spermicide, not an abortion pill, but that's another can of worms. In the end, my girlfriend demanded the Plan B immediately, and she got it, but not without a fair amount of interference on Walgreens' part. They also insisted on writing down her driver's license number.
I assume, fair being fair, Walgreens enforces a cool your heels for an hour before possibly doing something untoward with your genitals policy when the 50 year old Mayor of Oxford, Mississippi slips in the back door a few minutes before closing time to refill his Viagra prescription. The nice lady behind the cold white desk surely passes him literature on the dangers of his coming chemically induced erection and a pamphlet that provides useful alternatives like abstaining from sex altogether. Perhaps the Pharmacist in the Oxford, Mississippi goes the extra mile and does a selective reading from the Mormon anti-sex tome masquerading as novel "Twilight" before the Mayor of Oxford, Mississippi is allowed to fill his Viagra prescription.
You mean to say he doesn't? That this low level harassment is reserved for just women who, in 2008 , dare to exercise some chemical control over their own bodies? Shocking. Well, I wish it was shocking, I wish it was uncommon, but the shocking thing is that it isn't shocking.
The Culture War is not over. The Right Wing -- particularly the ones that seek to conduct the business of every woman's uterus from a centralized Spire somewhere in Colorado Springs -- is still out there, killing the buzz and squelching the freedoms of millions of citizens every day. The Walgreens in Oxford Mississippi is one snapshot of this.