smacky and bucky

(Today's title from Seymour, Steve Buscemi's character in Ghost World)

I already said this in a comment on De's blog, but it needs repeating here:

I was sickened to see George "Asshead" Allen (republican congressman in Virginia) smirking that Daschel getting booted gives a "clear signal to other democrats in congress that the American people will not stand for them acting as roadblocks to the republican plans." Oh shit. And he specifically mentioned that now they should be able to go forward with oil drilling in Alaska. Guess it's time to squeeze as much as we can out of the world now and let someone else deal with the mess we leave behind when we die with our bloated corpses. Sigh.

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While I'm at it, I also had another thought: Why is it that when a (traditionally white) woman takes fertility drugs and has 6 or 7 kids at one time, it's a "miracle" and she's on the news, and companies line up to give them free things? So you had a litter. Congratulations, you’ve achieved something usually limited to the lower animals. Dogs and cats do this every day. It would be one thing if this simply happened. Then it would be unusual enough to make the news. But if you paid a fertility doctor thousands of dollars to be in this position, well, um, that was your choice. Good luck with it. Yet when a (traditionally black) woman is on welfare and has 3 or 4 kids, she’s shamed and a leech? How does it all come down to a matter of timing? Five kids at once is a “miracle?” Actually it’s not; it’s a perversion of science. Who can honestly say they need five children at once, (or at all really, but I won’t criticize that. If a woman wants to spend her life as a breeder, so be it.)

Women used to have lots of children, and there were valid reasons for it. The infant mortality rate was so high, having a large number of kids increased your chances that one of them might live to adulthood and take over your family business and keep the family name alive. Also, women had little education and no jobs outside the house. Husbands had a great deal of control over their wives, and “barefoot and pregnant” was the norm. Times have changed. I’m not railing against motherhood. It’s a beautiful thing. But don’t be surprised when I don’t stop what I’m doing to send you good luck wishes when I see you on tv holding 5 kids you paid a doctor to give you.

Are these doctors quacks? Or is fertility such an inexact science that you can’t predict how well the treatment will work? “Oops, you went from barren to having 6 kids in you. My fault!” Or do these people see the local news coverage of the couple in Buttcrak, Iowa beaming with the 6 little miracles, and the free diapers and college educations, and decide “What the heck, we could use some of that.”

Now that fertility treatments are becoming common, people are less impressed by the “5 children at once” trick. Maybe it will discourage people from doing it.

Wow, I sure picked a small portion of the population to pick on today. Tomorrow I’ll rail against people who eat grapes in the grocery store before they buy them. Like it’s not stealing. It’s not like opening a box of cookies while you’re in the store. You’re buying the box, so you can eat them all if you want. But grapes are sold by weight, so if you eat them in the store, they have a lower total weight when you reach the cashier. That’s called stealing soccer mom. I see you do this and it makes me feel petty and mean. It makes me want to turn you in.

I've said this before, on my old blog, but I hate people sometimes. "Good" and "moral" people justify their little sins. I feel like Travis Bickle, only I'm not going to shoot anyone to impress Cybill Shepherd. (Taxi Driver reference, in case you haven't seen it.) Let's be clear: I know "hate" is a strong word. I mean it in the curmudgeonly Mark Twain way, like when he described The Damned Human Race. Not in the “a great fire needs to cleanse the Earth” sort of way. And I know I’m a hypocrite. We all are.