Kimberly Emerson

Well, let’s just see what the week has brought, shall we? Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that the number one goal of this Congress will be extending the ban on using federal dollars to pay for abortions, a Congressman from Tennessee suggested cutting welfare payments for families of students with low grades, and one particularly entertaining set of radio talk show hosts informed me that going to college made me a – let me make sure I get this right – “selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whore.”

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, all for bipartisanship – just not for something as important as a movie.

Now, each of these things is amusing in its own way. In the CBS article, Speaker Boehner discussed his wish to make the Hyde amendment a permanent piece of legislation. The amendment prevents Medicaid funds from being used to pay for an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother. This would only happen, he said, by assembling a “bipartisan pro-life majority and getting to work.” This could infuriate me, because I believe that every woman gets to decide what goes on in her own uterus, and I really don’t want to imagine what a woman has to do to prove she’s been the victim of rape or incest, or how close to death she has to come before the abortion is deemed necessary. Instead, I choose to focus on the amusement factor of Speaker Boehner referring to bipartisanship. The mere fact that he used the term makes me want to pull out my best Inigo Montoya impression and say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Back in November (after the election), the President had a screening of the movie Lincoln at the White House. Speaker Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell were invited, as were several other Republicans. None of them attended. Mr. Boehner has also been invited to six state dinners in honor of Britain, South Korea, Germany, China, Mexico, and India, and turned all of the invitations down. His associate Mr. McConnell sent his regrets for two state dinners and a celebration of his own state’s university NCAA basketball championship. Maybe they party with other Democrats all the time, I don’t know. But if you can’t watch a movie with someone, where you don’t have to look at them and it’s rude to talk, I’d say your chances of creating any meaningful coalition with members of his party are minimal.

Next up we have Representative Stacey Campfield, a Republican from Tennessee, who thinks that families play a big part in helping children succeed in school. I agree with that. We part company, however, when he proposes that the best way to get people involved in their children’s education is to reduce welfare checks by a third if students don’t perform at a certain level. I’ll be honest, my friends, I was going to skip the interview altogether. Bad journalism, but in addition to writing a fair column, I do have to worry about keeping my dinner down, and judging by the title, I wasn’t sure I could do both. Finally, I decided to suck it up. Let me say, dear readers, I tried. I really did. I heard interviewer Martin Bashir suggest that a 33% cut for bad academic performance is pretty severe. Rep. Campfield defended his position by saying that the standard the kids had to reach wasn’t that high. His exact quote: “I’m not setting the bar like the kids have to become rocket surgeons.”

Rep. Stacey Campfield,
not looking for rocket surgeons

I know what you’re thinking, but I did NOT make that up. At that point (about 2 minutes in), I was laughing too hard to listen anymore. It’s not fair of me, I know. Good rocket surgeons are probably really hard to find, if you need one. But after a few minutes of ceaseless giggling, breathing becomes a problem, and my cat does not know CPR. For my own health, I had to move on. Dock welfare payments for children’s grades, no. However, if anyone wants to introduce a bill docking a Congressional Representative’s pay by a third for mixing his metaphors while proposing we take money away from children, I will gladly donate to the cause. Maybe it will convince his children to help him prep for interviews. Families need to support their Congressional representatives.

Just when I thought the week could get no more entertaining, I found a clip of two radio talk show hosts discussing the effects of higher education on women. My thanks to the website Wonkette for bringing this to light. If I hadn’t stumbled across this, I might never have known that those years I spent getting my bachelor’s degree were actually the start of a slippery slope to prostitution. There I sat, night after night, reading Plato and conjugating French verbs, thinking I was getting an education. Ha! These two men have set me straight.

Kevin Swanson:Now remember, the goal is that these women have to be independent. The goal is lots and lots of birth control. The goal is lots and lots and lots of fornication. The goal is abortion. The day-after pill will help. And it will help a lot. Remember, the goal is to get that girl a job because she needs no stinkin’ husband, she’s got the fascist corporation and government-mandated insurance programs and socialist welfare that will take care of her womb to tomb. Who needs a cotton-pickin’ husband? Who needs a family? That’s pretty much the worldview that’s dominating, my friends. That’s what the college is all about.

Dave Buehner: Because her feminist professors have told her her husband will abuse her, she will be like a slave to him. Instead she will just go to the slave market and sell herself, at least sell her body, to the highest bidder. See, that’s much, much better!

All those false teachings over the years had me thinking that you needed the same amount of birth control pills, whether you were having sex once a year or once a day. I believed that birth control prevented conception, thus negating the need for abortion. I actually followed the theory that there were gadgets available to men to ensure that no children resulted from this debauchery. Can you believe it? Men, able to take some part in lowering the abortion rate? Boy, what kind of drugs was I on? (Anti-depressants, as I recall, but that’s not important right now.) No, Mr. Swanson and Mr. Buehner have opened my eyes to the fact that all that book-learning was just the devil’s way of teaching me to be a better hooker. At least now I know.

I did not actually listen to this recording, I just read the excerpts. Perhaps things are explained, if you listen the entire broadcast. Maybe there is a context in which separating the cute feminists like Sarah Palin from the ugly ones (“attractively challenged,” as noted by our politically correct hosts), whose only hope is to end up Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, becomes a rational distinction. (Maybe I would even reach a place where I could see being the Director of the EPA as a regrettable fate.) I’m sure if I listened to the nuances of the conversation, statements like this would make sense:

Buehner: I believe history will go back to this period of time and will look at feminism and say there was a time in which women lost the love of their children. They no longer cared about having children, they no longer loved their children, they no longer loved their husbands, where for all of history women very much cared about protecting the family. Now they only cared about themselves. They were riled up into a froth about how they were victims of society, patriarchal society, and they decided to become selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores.

Or not.

I actually always wanted a husband. Someone to share my life with. I wanted kids, to nurture them and see life through their eyes. My life didn’t work out that way, but it wasn’t because I thought the company I work for would take better care of me than some man. If I’m not always the most sympathetic listener when my friends with families tell me of their domestic woes, it’s usually because I’m thinking that they don’t appreciate their blessings. (Sometimes, of course, it’s just because I’m a lousy person who doesn’t want to hear your problems. But not always.) I can promise you, it’s never because I secretly desire that all of them would rise up in rebellion and follow me onboard the USS Singlehood, scraping off their husbands and children for the soul-sucking barnacles that they are.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be family-destroying whores…

I’m fairly certain that none of these men intended to amuse me. Especially the Rocket Surgeon. (I know. I’m trying to let it go, really. It’s just not happening.) But despite themselves, they provided me with a great deal of mirth this week. In a perfect world, that’s all their statements would do. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, and someone will probably take these men seriously. Then, all of us ugly, angry, EPA-working prostitutes-on-the-side will have to take them down.

Make some popcorn. It’s going to be a good show.

Kimberly needs a good laugh. Destroying families is hard work, and she could use a break.

Tags: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, birth control, children, Dave Buehner, EPA, feminism, John Boehner, Kevin Swanson, Lincoln, Martin Bashir, Medicaid, Stacey Campfield, welfare, Wonkette