If you’ve seen the documentary King Corn, you know that it takes more than a Hazmat suit and a kitchen to make High Fructose Corn Syrup, yet food packaging can say “100% natural ingredients” and be mostly HFCS.
If you’d like one reason to despise corporate honey producers, how’s this? Humans come by honey because of the largess of bees. Beekeepers harvest the surplus as honeybees go about –what we’ve learned is their more critical responsibility for human interests– pollinating our crops. Unfortunately it’s become more profitable to milk the hives of more of the honey and leave sugar water or High Fructose Corn Syrup for the hardworking honeybees. Yes it’s killing them.
Never mind it’s suspected as the leading cause of why American honeybees are dying off, it’s crude and parasitic. There might have been a time we’d say it was un-American.
HFCS-induced obesity and diabetes is too gentle a fate for greedy beekeepers. Likewise for cattle farmers who sell the milk, leaving their calves to nurse on a concocted dilution containing cow’s blood and other dairy substitutes — care to wager HFCS is not among them?
You can avoid Big Agra honey, and no doubt any processed foods which market themselves as containing honey. Although, you might check the label, most often the corporate nutritionists have already swapped out your honey for HFCS.
From Michael Moore: “15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now:”
> Friends, It’s the #1 question I’m constantly asked after people see my movie: “OK — so NOW what can I DO?!” You want something to do? Well, you’ve come to the right place! ‘Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system. Here they are:
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people’s homes are now truly worth — and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies — and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies — you name it. If a company’s primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by — and the first rule is “Do no harm.” The second rule: The question must always be asked — “Is this for the common good?” (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin’s socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don’t contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here’s a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors’ de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete’s sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!
FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:
1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent — or even a candidate from another party — if they don’t do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!
2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It’s time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party — and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama’s agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action — and he won’t feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it’s to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I’ll post it on my website.
3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year — or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don’t have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don’t believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on — and you should be on it!
4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there’s more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place “Capitalism Did This” signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)
5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth — so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here’s an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don’t fill that void, who will?
FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.
2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one — the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.
3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.
4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here’s how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn’t be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.
5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she’s right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants”). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I’ve turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny — she’s fit, she’s rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don’t put our own “oxygen mask” on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!
I’m sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.
Did you hear that Coke has partnered with the American Academy of Family Practitioners to offer nutritional advice about how Coca-Cola products can be part of a child’s healthy diet? What, with a side order of stomach pump? Have they developed an anti-venom for High Fructose Corn Syrup? How about superglue for the bottle caps? This reminds me of the malarkey on sugar cereal boxes about being “part of a balanced breakfast.” How many children do you know eat a heaping bowl of cereal with eggs, toast, and fruit? What would be the point of serving the cereal? Remember the scene in Supersize Me when nutritionists were asked what percentage of a regular diet can come from fast food? The answer: zero. 
Can a moral nutritionist speak favorably of processed food? These AAFP doctors probably think family dentists still give out hard candy.
Remember the catsup commercials played to the tune of Carly Simon’s “Anticipation,” about the tomato- based condiment emerging from its bottle with the reluctance of molasses? Remember too the regulatory attemt to categorize catsup as a vegetable? Which was it? Why were we impressed that a brand name ketchup would bottleneck like glue instead of flow out with the juiciness of ripe tomatoes? That uniform viscosity bore another similarity to sweet and sticky: High Fructose Corn Syrup!
Remember too the test of a proper spaghetti sauce being its resistance to leaking through a filter? TV audiences were shown that inferior sauces dripped, while the thicker, richer brand clung. That was probably the sweeter brand too. Thanks to High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Now hold on a minute. What’s wrong with HFCS? After all, the corn refinery industry assures us that HFCS is like anything, perfectly fine, in moderation.
But how do you consume HFCS in moderation, when the muck is IN everything?
The old catsup commercial’s subversion of our concept of what constitutes good food, didn’t occur to me until I pondered the uniform syrupy essence of nearly all processed food products today. When you look upon today’s supermarket aisles, colored by their uniformly bright products, you can practically choke on your anticipation of corn syrup congealing at the back of your throat.
I swear the otherwise transparent corn syrup has become aesthetic too. HFCS is present in the visual design of the cardboard cases of soda. It’s in the same triple stroke typefaces of pop and candy bars.
HFCS became so popular because unlike many natural foods, it didn’t have an aftertaste. The sweetness lingered, because it sticks.
What were we thinking was taking so long up inside that bottle, for which we were salivating with such eager anticipation? I’d like to think the hesitation was the food industry’s unconscious reluctance to reveal its poisonous mendacity.
Passing a prominent end cap in the Supermarket today and I noticed: the first ingredient of Kellogg’s NUTRI-GRAIN Breakfast Bar is HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. (Colorado has a law criminalizing disparaging remarks about food, so I have to say no more.) Except to add, HFCS is also ingredient two and four of the Nutri; and five and nine of the Grain.
Yum! Is corn the first thing that comes to mind when you think fruit and wheat? Or the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th? The big-agra commercials would have us ask, what’s wrong with that, it’s corn. Well, an inedible corn, also used as a gasoline additive. Corn is to HFCS what babies are to baby oil.
It’s not what Kelloggs would have you believe, in fact there is no nutritional information offered at nutrigrain.com. But other websites concerned with nutrition make note that Nutri-grain bars are neither.
Have a look at the ingredients label. I’ve highlighted the HFCS where they didn’t
INGREDIENTS:
Filling (high fructose corn syrup, strawberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, strawberry puree], glycerin, blueberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, blueberry puree concentrate, water], fructose, water, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, natural and artificial blueberry and strawberry flavors, citric acid, sodium alginate, calcium phosphate, xanthan gum, soy lecithin, malic acid, red #40 lake, blue #1),
enriched wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, whole oats, high fructose corn syrup, honey, corn cereal (milled corn, liquid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt flavoring, calcium pantothenate), calcium carbonate, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, salt, cellulose gum, leavening (potassium bicarbonate), natural and artificial vanilla flavor, soy lecithin, wheat gluten, potassium carrageenan, modified wheat starch, guar gum, molasses, niacinamide, zinc oxide, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin A palmitate, thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), annatto color and folic acid.
I’m sure you’ve seen the Sweet Surprise commercials. There are several to target different consumer groups, but all involve a person #1 expressing hesitation at the offer of a high fructose corn syrup-laden “treat” and a smug HFCS-pusher asking sneeringly, “Oh yeah? Well, what’s so bad about HFCS?”
In the ads, person #1 hems and haws and has trouble articulating a satisfactory reply. HFCS person pats person #1 on the head condescendingly and says, “I thought so. Don’t worry, high fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s part of a healthy diet.” Person #1 quietly accepts the offered Frankenfood while DDB Chicago, the creator of the ads, and the Corn Refiners Association, creator of the poison, high five at their clever game, played to the grave detriment of the confused end-consumer.
I’m going to enlist my fledgling filmmaker son to help me produce a commercial of my own. The script will look something like this:
———-
Corporate Shill Cornelia: High fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s perfectly peachy for you.
Vigilant Consumer Veronica: Oh, no, Cornelia. Fortunately for you, I have a PhD in molecular biology and can help you understand how terribly you’ve been duped.
When an individual consumes sugar, the pancreas responds by increasing the production of insulin which enables the glucose in the bloodstream to be transported into cells and used as energy. The body also increases the production of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate the appetite and send a satiety signal to the body. This tells us that we’ve had enough to eat, a crucial component in the pursuit of “moderation.”
HFCS, in contrast, doesn’t cause insulin or leptin production nor increased cellular energy. You see, every cell in the body can metabolize glucose, but HFCS is only processed in the liver, like fats and alcohol, where it’s converted into triglycerides. The “energy” locked in HFCS stays largely inaccessible to the body, and most people know that elevated triglycerides — which we commonly refer to as high cholesterol — can lead to a whole host of health problems, including hardened arteries and heart attack. With HFCS, the moderation mechanism is never triggered; we never feel satisfied. Maybe this explains why 30% of American children are obese and sluggish, and why Lipitor, which is used to treat high cholesterol, is the best-selling drug in the country today. With approval by the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors are now prescribing it to children as young as 8.
Cornelia, I know this is a lot to digest and, believe me, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The dangerous way HFCS is made, the genetically-modifed corn and enzymes that are used in its production, the fatty deposits and liver cirrhosis that may result from its over-consumption, the criminal complicity of the FDA, even the tale of interference with free-market mechanisms that led to its prevalence in the food supply, are all feature-length films in themselves.
Please, Cornelia, take my advice. Get educated about HFCS. Read labels. Protect yourself and your family from high fructose corn syrup. It truly is deadly, and there’s no smug satisfaction in that for me.
[hugs weepy Cornelia, hands her a tissue. children run into scene, grab offered apples, run off laughing and playing. pan to crushed box of Fudgsicles on picnic table, melting, chalk outline, puddle of congealed goo, like blood, surrounding] CUT.
But let’s look past the innuendo and unproven transgressions, to celebrate the man’s contribution to the cannon of Western popular music product. Please!
I hear celebrities dismiss the allegations of Michael Jackson’s pedophilia like too much water under the bridge, which would be true I suppose, if Jackson’s victims were more like John Wayne Gacy’s, buried under Neverland, instead of tucked into San Fernando Valley homes, divvying multimillion-dollar payoffs with their enterprising panderer parents. Will the confidentiality clauses stand between the public ever knowing which pederast was the more prolific? That innuended, I do concur those bottoms were small fry compared to Jackson’s true sick imprint on America.
The Michael Jackson TM projected a perversion of role models. Not even a cynical anti-hero, the self-crowned King of Pop was the nul-idol. Jackson rejected his skin color, his sexuality, even his place of belonging among mortals. Other than pathos for the sick dance-cyborg who never had a childhood, what humanity did Jackson share to communicate? To be fair, it wasn’t Jackson who kept the spotlight trained on his black/white Icarus act, foisting the unnatural deception that man can soar with a single glove.
Now dead, Jocko is heralded as among the greatest. But MJ was an internationally recognized poster child for enfeebled humanity, a glorified counter-renaissance man, resembling a human being like a drag queen pretends femininity. He may have channeled vinyl High Fructose Corn Syrup like no other, walking backward while dancing and such, but worth what legacy exactly? Jackson shares the ignobless of the Big Mac, the Lucky Strike cigarette, and DDT. Iconic and good riddance.
Michael Jackson did nothing for black emancipation, or acceptance of homosexuals, or the plight of the children of poverty. The vast majority of the world’s children are “robbed of their childhoods,” you narcissistic rich dumb-ass, and that didn’t stop you from amassing your vast fortune at their expense.
Jackson probably did more to amplify the phobia against pedophiles, the single minority he did incarnate, by denying the preponderance of indicators, by vilifying his accusers, instead of taking his riches to Dubai right from the start, to show the world into what true debauchers wet their willies.
He might even have championed sympathy for plastic surgery binge-purgers, but he lied about that worm-hole until his nose literally fell off. I remember when Jackson made public appearances in surgery masks, feeding the fiction that he was a germophobe. Meanwhile everyone in Hollywood knew from their own rhinoplasties about the actual face-saving purpose of those masks.
Perversely, it was Jackson’s least aberrant eccentricity that killed him. Drugs. Even as TV viewers watch Jackson’s body pass from helicopter to ambulance, over a red carpet no less, Big Pharma makes sure that the talking heads refer to Jackson’s narcotics as “pain-killers.” Jocko was in constant pain, apparently, like Rush Limbaugh and all overachievers etc, hence their susceptibility to addiction. You’d think the alibi would eventually defy credulity.
Prescription drugs circulate among the well-to-do, with the same ease with which the rich have access to good lawyers. The difference between street and medical drugs is that no one cares about the heroin or crack addict’s “pain.”
All the celebrities speaking in tribute to Michael Jackson want to minimize the ugliness Jacko paraded, even, and especially his drug habit. Some who profess to have been close friends express their utter shock at Jackson’s passing, at his frail condition and the magnitude of his drug use. How close could they have been?! Or how culpable are they still on Big Pharma’s not-yet-upped jig?
Jackson was the King of Sick Culture. His collaborator eulogizers are its second tier whores. What contemptible shills, who’ve got theirs, behind their Beverly Hills gates and their own golden narcotics tickets. Even at the premature passing of a unique creative soul, due without question to drug abuse, his peers don’t want to aggravate the corporate forces which continue to pervert the human social animal to beyond self-recognition.
The word “nutritious” defines a food quality that provides sustenance. I’ve no doubt as skepticism grows about the likely poisonous aspects of refined sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup, the corporate sugar-water purveyors will append “satiates your subliminal impulses” to the meaning of nutritious. Who safeguards our dictionaries from authoritarians who profit from reweaving the fabric of knowledge we consider inviolate?
We expect facts to change, but it is unsettling to be robbed of the words which we count on to measure the change.
Did you think “anti-Semitic” meant prejudice against the Jews? It does, except the Zionists behind sustaining Israel want it to indemnify their unpopular endeavor too. Anti-Semitism now means opposing Israel, although the stigma implied is of course still “Jew Hater.” But the appropriation is unseemly. Crusading Evangelicals could tell you, if you oppose their bloody incursions into the lands of Islam, then you must be anti-Christian. But are you?
It would seem only fair that the victims of anti-Semitism should be entitled to define what oppresses them, but that’s not who’s wrapping themselves in its protection. Zionists (both Jewish and Christian) claim that an overwhelming percentage of World Jewry supports sustaining the US-Israel occupation of Palestine. Is it true? I wager that the far greater proportion of both Jews and non-Jews repudiate military aggression, occupation, ethnic cleansing and religious oppression. But if it were true, claims of suffering historical persecution are not grounds to be given license to persecute others.
Anti-Semitism describes real, tradition-rooted anti-Jewish sentiment. To expand its meaning disrespects the very tangible prejudice which Jews still face. Opposition to sustaining Israel is actually Anti-Zionism, which is neither for nor against Judaism. Anti-Zionism denounces another long-held prejudice: White European Man’s assertion that the Holy Land belongs to him.
Anti-Zionism is the opposition to sustaining an illegally invaded, illegally occupied, racist administration of Palestine in the name of “Zionism.” Anti-Zionism calls for “the destruction of Israel,” meaning the dissolution of the Western colonial theocracy imposed on the indigenous population of the Middle East. To oppose the sustaining of Israel is a call to exterminate Israeli apartheid. Anti-Zionism is no resurrection of the Final Solution. It means leave people be. White settlers should not assume to usurp the lands and water rights of the native Palestinians.
Zionism defender Nathan Sharansky has constructed a definition of anti-Semitism with an expanded breadth, he calls them the three Ds: Demonization, Double Standards and Delegitimization. It’s this 3D definition with which Zionists are branding UCSB professor William Robinson, himself a Jew, as an anti-Semite. Professor Robinson circulated an email among his sociology students, comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to methods used by the Nazis, now US-Israeli lobby groups are calling for UCSB to censure him.
Sharansky’s three Ds are easily refuted because he offers no more than circular argument. Ipso Facto my eye. I reprint Sharansky’s explanation below, but first an abridgment:
Demonization: “…having [the Jewish state’s] actions blown out of all sensible proportion … can only be considered anti-Semitic.”
Double Standards: “It is anti-Semitism … when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers … are ignored.”
Delegitimization: “…the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic.”
Thus, if Israel considers the criticisms leveled against it to be insensible, then the criticisms are anti-Semitic; also, so long as abusive regimes persist, Israel reserves its prerogative to abuse; and, the legitimacy of Israel’s biblically ordained Manifest Destiny is never to be questioned. These are self-rationalizations which beg ridicule, but doing so would appear anti-Semitic.
Sharansky finishes: “If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.” To suggest that the right of the Palestinians to live in their homeland, have been usurped by the Jewish people, most of whom knew other homelands, is apparently anti-Semitic.
Here is Nathan Sharansky’s statement to support the 3-D formula for decrying “ANTI-SEMITISM!”
I propose the following test for differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. The 3D test, as I call it, is not a new one. It merely applies to the new anti-Semitism the same criteria that for centuries identified the different dimensions of classical anti-Semitism.
DEMONIZATION
The first D is the test of demonization.Whether it came in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the literary depiction of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion.
For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz — comparisons heard practically every day within the “enlightened” quarters of Europe — can only be considered anti-Semitic.
Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about Nazi Germany or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.
DOUBLE STANDARDS
The second D is the test of double standards. For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick.Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies by other governments engender the same criticism, or is there a double standard at work?
It is anti-Semitism, for instance, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers like China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria are ignored.
Likewise, it is anti-Semitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.
DELIGITIMIZATION
The third D is the test of deligitimization. In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism.While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.
Sarah Palin is probably like most people, she’d rather her medical records remain confidential. Most of us resist even the indignity of taking a drug test to qualify for a job. But executive level positions require the insurance of a bill of health, clean or not. Unfortunately for Sarah, the employers making the hiring decision for the Executive Branch are We the People.
I do hope there’s an Executive Privilege to invoke which can protect the details of some categories. If FDR could keep his wheelchair a secret, I don’t mind not knowing about mental health lapses, STDs, or conditions Palin had to invent to score antibiotics for a spouse’s infection. Sarah may not seem bright, or educated, but TV viewers can all attest she doesn’t lack sanity or stamina. I doubt a psychiatrist would consider her behavior to be in any way aberrant for a public figure.
What probably really chafes Sarah is that fewer of her viewers seem concerned for her health, than are eager to check out her strange pregnancy story. Ordinarily, I’d think reproductive health histories should be the last to merit scrutiny, but what if the details in question concern a politician who wants to make it her business to regulate the reproductive rights of others?
Should a daughter’s right to privacy supersede a policy maker’s family-values facade? If a politician wants to laud high fructose corn syrup as part of a child’s healthy diet, I’d like them to acknowledge if their children are obese. Don’t preach the practicality of abstinence if your children are reproducing out of bounds. Maybe your clan can afford unwanted pregnancies, at least admit it.
I don’t have a problem with Jamie Lynn Spears’ second teen pregnancy, she has the financial resources to have oodles of babies. Of what quality, I can’t judge. But I’m not much in favor of Disney holding her up as an example for teenagers who aren’t buffered from minimum wage jobs and no daycare.
More mothers than we could probably guess have raised a grandchild as their own, to save face for a daughter’s premarital accident. Nothing untoward about secret keeping, it’s just tragic that women are forced to hide. Perhaps we should wish that society be more accepting. Would Sarah Palin’s fundamentalism be taking us in that direction?
Sarah Palin’s reproductive dogma would be hypocritical if it turns out that her fifth baby Trig was in reality her daughter Bristol’s. Why do we presume to judge unless we know for sure? Why does Palin refuse to release her health records? She’s told the media she will, but November 4th approaches…
It’s reported the Trig pregnancy went undetected by Sarah’s staff, while by coincidence, over the same period 16-year-old Bristol was kept out of school on account of “mono.” Sarah was on a business trip in Texas when she says her water broke. She boarded the plane to Alaska, still without anyone knowing about her condition, and gave birth later that evening. Who really cares if it happened that way or not, except that Palin is an outspoken puritan.
Who cares if Senator Larry Craig solicits illicit sex in public bathroom stalls? Except he’s a leading demagogue against gay equal rights.
And their denials would make them liars. Since when do we tolerate duplicity from public officials?
There’s a chance Sarah Palin has complicated her story with the public announcement of daughter Bristol’s unplanned pregnancy and intention to wed her unwitting teenage partner. It would appear this revelation was made primarily to deflect suspicions about which of them gave birth to the April baby. Sarah’s argument is that Bristol couldn’t be five months pregnant now if Bristol had been Trig’s real mother. Except the public will have little way to know how far along Bristol really is or was, if at all. Until well after the election.
All those facts will be very easy to contain after the election.
The American public needn’t know Bristol Palin’s private life. But we have every obligation to discover if Sarah Palin is the straight shooter she pretends.