The secret mind-control plot engineered by America’s right-thinkers must be working, because it was almost impossible to escape from Sarah Palin last week. She was on the cover of Newsweek and chatting with Oprah, then “The Today Show.”
Nonetheless, I will try to ignore her and hope that if I ever write another book, I’ll be able to hustle as much publicity that produces book sales that puts money in my pocket.
Instead, let us ponder the politicization of nearly everything.
Consider the Fort Hood shootings of Nov. 5. Perhaps first we should consider that the Texas installation was named for Gen. John Bell Hood, who took up arms against the United States in 1861 and made it his duty to kill American soldiers.
Fortunately for the Union, Hood was inept. He lost Atlanta to William T. Sherman, seriously damaged his army with a frontal charge at Franklin, Tenn., and got routed in the battle of Nashville in late 1864. Just why America named its largest Army base after him is a mystery. He was a traitor to the Union and a catastrophe for the Confederacy.
At any rate, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is in custody and charged with 13 murders after the shooting rampage. We don’t know his motive. He might have snapped. He might have been an al-Qaeda agent. Or a seriously disturbed man. Or a zealous jihadist. There are, of course, intensive investigations underway, and we’ll likely find out.
But instead of waiting for some facts to emerge, we’ve got Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, telling us that it was “the most destructive terrorist attack on America since Sept. 11, 2001.”
If he’s so sure of that, why’s he even bothering to convene hearings? And aren’t terrorist attacks by definition aimed at civilians, rather than military personnel? And how did this turn into some sort of litmus test?
To move on, there’s the recommendation from the Protective Services Task Force of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that women in their 40s no longer get routine mammographies for breast cancer. The reasoning sounded sensible. Mammography often detects benign tumors (false positives) that lead to needless anxiety and surgery. Anxiety isn’t good for anyone’s health, and there are always risks in going under the knife. Thus the routine screenings harm more women than they help.
This can be argued one way or another on scientific grounds, and it should be. But there was Rep. David Camp, a Michigan Republican. “Let the rationing begin,” he proclaimed. “This is what happens when bureaucrats make your health-care decisions.”
Not exactly. The PSTF report itself says “The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take into account patient context, including the patient’s values regarding specific benefits and harms.”
Camp might have taken the trouble to read the report before making it yet another Republican talking point against health-care reform — but why not politicize the report and get that sound bite?
Climate change? It’s almost a religious issue any more, not a scientific one, since any expression of skepticism turns you into a “denier” who’s enabling a carbon apocalypse. It is now politicized beyond any hope of honest inquiry.
Hydraulic fracking of natural-gas wells? Just state that the public may have a right to know what chemicals are being pumped into a public resource (the government-owned subterranean mineral rights), and you’ll get attacked as an enemy of domestic production and thus a supporter of foreign tyrannies.
This could go on, but I’m starting to think it would have been less depressing to be a dead fish, going with the flow and pondering Palin.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a frequent contributor to The Post.
