Thursday, February 02, 2012

A Brilliant Maneuver


Yesterday the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced it would no longer fund Planned Parenthood’s mammogram outreach to poor women, because a right wing Congresscritter had started an investigation into Planned Parenthood for, frankly, who cares? Some absurd allegation, trumped up to provide this very excuse.

This utterly transparent ploy is the basis of a brilliant maneuver by the right wing-anti-abortion, hate-women crowd. First, they carefully infiltrated the Komen Foundation with Karen Handel, who apparently bedazzled founder Nancy Brinker with her ‘born again’ fervor to serve women (although she had made her career as an anti-abortion politician).

Then Handel convinced Brinker and apparently some other gullible members of the board at Komen to support this astonishingly stupid decision (talk about a snake in the garden!). And eventually got the Komen Foundation to make what is arguably the worst decision made by a woman since Nancy Pelosi declaimed that ‘Impeachment is off the table.”

But for the right wing women haters, this is win-win! Now, no matter what happens next, the Komen Foundation has lost all credibility with its grass roots supporters. It’s once cherished position as the preeminent US charity fighting breast cancer and providing poor women with the help they desperately need, is now in cinders. As an added bonus, the women haters got to cut off funding for their objet de détester - Planned Parenthood…. It’s a twofer!

And, in addition, now Karen Handel and the rest of the women haters have a fan-dab-tastic method for closing down anyone they hate at any time they want. All they have to do is get a tame Congersscritter to start any kind of bogus investigation into the target group and presto-chango, they can justify any hate-filled, anti-woman action their little black hearts desire.

To the right wing fanatics who thought this up: I have to tip my hat to a vicious tactical victory – well done.

To the idiots like Nancy Brinker who just drove her Foundation into the ground, you really should resign because getting suckered like this means you’re pretty much too stupid to be trusted with anything this important.

In the larger picture, I wonder what it’s going to take for the left wing in this country to wake up and realize that they’re in a war with an implacable, merciless enemy that absolutely will not stop until all women are slaves? Think I’m overstating the case? Have you listened to Rick Santorum lately? No abortions for any reason including incest and/or rape (I’m thinking of naming him the Pro-Rape candidate), no condoms for anyone and no sex at all unless it’s between man and wife (women only as wives, of course) and even then only for purpose of procreation - How could you tell, Rick? And how would you find out? If you think this is starting to sound like the Reader’s Digest version of The Handmaid’s Tale, you’re right.

I’ve often wondered why women in this country don’t just stand up and take power – they’ve got the numbers. I see things like this happen and I don’t understand why they don’t burn the place down. I’m not a woman (obviously) but I have a wife and a daughter and Hell would have to freeze over before I’d allow any, cramp-assed, pea-brained, woman-hating bigot tell either of them what they could or could not do with their own bodies.

Time to step up ladies, if you don’t grab hold of your own reins, there are plenty of people out there who will be glad to – for you own good of course.

UPDATE 1:
The Susan G Komen Foundation has reversed course due to the massive outcry against their boneheaded move against Planned Parenthood. However, Ms. Handel still has her job so i would expect there to be a stealth move to block funding after the attention has died down.

UPDATE 2:
Apparently there's a caveat: The Komen Foundation announced that they will honor current grants - which they were legally obliged to do since they had already publicly issued the grants. However, they made no mention about grants for next year, which were the ones in question.
It's possible that this is a planned Red Herring: approving already approved grants and waiting until the heat dies down before refusing the next years' applications.

We'll see...


UPDATE 3:
Well, that didn't take long, see this article in HuffyPo. Turns out VP Karen Handel was actually targeting PP all along and so the right wing woman-haters are doing exactly what I predicted they were doing. Champagne tonight in the Halls of Right Wing Batshit Crazy Woman-haters!


UPDATE 4:
Who's reading? I note that this press release was done at the unique time of year guaranteed to get it the least possible attention in the universe: on Superbowl Sunday just as The Game was about to start. I took a quick look around the web to see who was aware of the story: None of the MSM of course: NYTimes: No. CNN: No. Salon: No. Slate: No. NBC: No. ABC: No. CBS: No FireDogLake: No. ... Huffington Post: Yes, Daily Kos: Yes. I'm heartened to note that Arianna Huffignton found this story of enough interest to actually folllowup on it, And the DK has two articles offering some actual insight on the underlying issues. Well done HP and DK.
Shame on the rest of the so-called 'press' - let us know how the Great Battle in Indianapolis turns out willya?