Right now this is a textbook case - as in this could literally be made into a textbook - about how ignorance is the "realpolitik" of politics. I mean, what is this "Jansing and Co." on MSNBC? I've never watched it but this debate got me hunting for what was transpiring and let me tell you, she did not disappoint with her inability to avoid being the patsy for the right. She had no idea what she was talking about as she declares, "you cannot, as a government, tell the catholic church you need to go against what it considers to be a fundamental belief."
Staggering. It's a classic case of walking right over the facts to present it as the "hot button issue" in exactly the way that she told herself and others a thousand times, since the day she decided to become a "journalist," that she would never do. And it's all wrapped in the it'd-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-so-depressing irony that she is an apparently independent woman who, one would presume, would consider herself in charge of her life!
Textbook. Print it up. None for Texas of course.
And thank god Rev. Al was there - he has been one of the few on point from the get go - but with sentences that include "I'm clearly a baptist minister" it is easy for his arrogant MSNBC cohorts to dismiss him. Jansing of course ignored everything he said and suggested "compromise."
Excuse me for a minute. I'm having an aneurysm..
Okay. now back to the issue...
The media is incapable of dissecting what is going on so, while those who would misinform willfully are pushing the narrative, every other "impartial" media person can't help but write their intros and outros(?) in the context of the lie, so that there is a Great Lake's worth of water being carried inadvertently.
Meanwhile the Republicans, trying to make it about "guv'mint intrusion" is tentatively allied with the Church who are so giddy at this windfall of political capital that they may, hopefully, do their fucking march and force the GOP to either commit to being anti birth control or else have to back away.
It can be observed that Obama's administration, in what I believe is a very holistic philosophy of governing an especially arrogant country (though often to the disappointment of "progressives" who imagine its "our" turn to be totalitarians), has a knack of playing their cards close to the vest, staying strategically mute, so that the country, in that absence, engages in more considerate, ruminating debate than if "edicts" are explained, instantly compelling people to take vitriolic sides. So I have had this sneaking suspicion that they are doing this "bad rollout" which came after having exhaustively engaged the church, and comes with suspiciously little in the way of a "spokesperson" who would ground the debate - all these seeming "failures" are, I think, on purpose as it creates, counterintuitively, a genuine national conversation. I mean, I'm not young and there has been national, laymen involvement on issues as esoteric as the debt ceiling unfolding in the most unpolitical venues in a way I've never witnessed. Sure some have been lost (public option) do to a lack of strong push from a visible source but, A) who's to say that would have helped and not hurt by making it very polar and along lines of personality instead of understanding of the issue, and B) I've never seen so many people have political acumen about so many arcane things since they have to up their game on issues rather than pick a contestant in a pageant. The country is truly growing up, as frustratingly slow and tedious as it may be.
This debate here is causing people to dissect their unanalyzed religious hypocrisy, and exposing demagogues and provoking many timid women into realizing they are entitled to some basic things, and making men who, though not necessarily bad men, come to terms with what they never had to bother to think about in our ad hoc health care system. Women spend money on birth control which, let's face it, falls in the ledger more as a thoughtlessly horny man's expense than his forever forgiving-of-ignorance partner.
My point is, the church indeed has no right to push this, but there are more factors in the water that push the matter forward than just discrediting the pathetic hypocrisy of Catholic leaders. I'm not saying don't discredit them, but that should be but an apostrophe on the information deluge we ought to be contributing to here. After a week's worth of pundits (who presumably would be defending this decision) not pushing back on the upside-down view on first amendment freedoms in question, the best I actually saw was Lawrence O'Donnell getting a "briefing" about this from David Boies. It was almost pathetic since it should have transpired before the show, but the redemption was that it happened at all.
There is also, again, the fact that the Bishops and the Rick Santorum wing of the GOP are not actually in sync with the Jim Demint "Gub'mint intrusion" wing and there is room to exploit that since the Tom Coburns and the Scott Browns of the GOP, who just want a little taste of that pile on, are going to walk right into defending an absurd position if they're not careful. We should hope they walk out on that limb.
And again, the "never bothered to think about it" women's health issue as simply that is important. Men have spent a long time with their fingers in their ears (screaming la la la) about, A)the chronic, essential part of a woman's life this is, and B) the fact that the expense, the "only $50" that it is, is born exclusively by the women in this country and it's the end of the line. They're not going to keep on paying more for a joint expense just to defer to the elephant in the sexual relationship room (side note - poignant story by Hemmingway about what happens when you don't use birth control called "Hills like White Elephants"). they're not going to make an extra stop at another location other than their primary health care provider, just so Republicans can keep conflating the birth control THEY USE with the abortion they are phobic of (even though they use that to, just without confronting the truth of it among their wives, daughters and mistresses...)
So let's do better than just berate the idiocy of the Church for its pedophilia (noble, but easy to be perceived as a red herring strategy) and it's inconsistent outrage (also noble.... and also a red herring) and contribute more to the sad, adrift "straight" newsers who, though they won't admit it, do take many cues from this site. They are obviously lost and in search of guidance. Don't we have anything other than fish?