Way back about a thousand years ago in terms of news cycles, in other words, on August 1, I wrote a little piece called "Loving the COTUS." The thrust of it was that the much-debated (and only God knows why) "right to privacy," and the dirt-stupid little notion propounded by the hard-core America-hating Republican Party that the Constitution lacks a right of privacy. Like I said all those aeons ago, suggesting there's no right of privacy in the Constitution is like saying there's no right of water in a snowflake.
We had then, and we have now, cause to be concerned about soon-to-be-Chief Justice Johnny Rob's views on the topic. The confirmation hearings have been little or no help. Between pontificating Republicans and terrified Democrats, the most telling thing we know about J.R. is that he likes "Dr. Zhivago," a really long movie based upon the book by Boris Pasternak that eulogizes the end of a brutal royalist regime in Russia. Oddly enough, J.R.'s favorite movie tells us something about him, and about Republicans in general.
Here's a quote from the movie. General Yevgraf Zhivago says "I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city."
Thanks for turning the lights on for us there, J.R. You won't give us a straight answer about whether you think a woman has a right to control over her own innards, but that's OK. You've told us plenty, pal.
Read that quote again. "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." By God, that's not a quote! That's a plank from the Republican Party Platform!
Need to reassure the religious weirdos that you're still on their side? No matter how degrading, hypocritical or embarassing, by all means, all Congress back into session for Terri Schiavo and talk about the "kutcher of liiiiiffffe." Need to placate the chickenhawks? Even though it's terribly stupid and undignified for a nation that boasts of its love for "peace," start a war with a third world country that costs a hundred million bucks a week and two thousand American mothers' sons. Grover Norquist breathing down your neck about tax cuts? What the hell! Put the kneepads on, do for Grover what Monica did for Bill and take the funding from the budget for shoring up the New Orleans levee system.
"Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." It's a littany.
So if the party tells Johhny Robs to put those damned uppity feminazis back in the kitchen where they belong, even if it means that thousands of terrified young women will die trying to roto-rooter their uteruses with a welder's braising rod, we know now that he will do it, for "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
And, irony of ironies, when the Republican Party decides to remind Johnny Robs that "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man," the party commissariat will do so in the privacy that women will no longer have. And they'll be able to do it because for three long, heart-rending days, America watched as Johnny Robs dodged every question put to him by the United States Senate; as Johnny Robs exercised his own right to privacy under lights, in front of cameras and kept private the one thing he knows better than any other: "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
- Bob Kincaid
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