Useless People and Death Panels
'Lady, if we were getting rid of useless people, you'd be the first to know.'
--comedian Bill Maher on the Jay Leno show this week, addressing the idea propagated by Sarah Palin that the Obama healthcare reform proposal includes the formation of "death panels" overseeing decisions on which patients will live or die. If you're dying to read her new book, word is it'll be out in about six weeks. And Politico reports that she's just as popular as ever with the right wing. Finally, you can review our earlier mention of Maher here.
8 Comments:
but, but... does her book have pictures?
Better you poking fun at her than me, Kim. But she's such an easy target.
I suffer from this disease called Keyboard Tourette's. Sometimes I just cannot control what I type!
That made me laugh, Kim. I think we all have that at least sometimes. But numbskulls such as Palin tend to bring it out in us, don't they?
I was so sad that she was the token "female" as if one size fit all. Such thinking also assumes we can apply that sizing to men.
I think many smart, progressive men felt the same way, but some of us (certainly me included) felt a lot better about being vocal about that only after some of our female counterparts made that very point about tokenism. But it does remain a tricky area, because as we learned with Hillary and Obama (and I must admit this surprised me) gender remains perhaps an even bigger electoral stumbling block in this country than race.
Gender does indeed, as do other aspects of sexual identity.
If you haven't yet seen the movie "Milk," I recommend it highly, as it addresses some of these very same issues. When I finally got around to watching it, I found it quite compelling, and also quite moving. I freely admit that it might speak more to me, though, than to some others. Que sera sera.
"Milk" is indeed a must-see movie. It's a reminder, in case anyone needed one, that Sean Penn is among the very best actors now working. He's played ferociously violent alpha males in the past, and quite convincingly. But in this movie he's morphed himself into a sensitive thinking-man's grassroots activist, and in so doing brought Milk's uniquely inspiring (and tragic) story to life as almost nothing else could have.
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