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Links in this episode:

Fear of the vagina

Fred Dyson’s anti-choice record

Bristol Palin is news

Keenan at the DNC

Richards at the DNC

Planned Parenthood’s services

John Hagee vs. stay-at-home-dads

Stay-at-home dads? Minority.

 

This week on Reality Cast, we’ll have samples from an interview with author and columnist Thomas Frank, and an opportunity to download the entire interview for free! Also, coverage of the media circus surrounding a certain teenage pregnancy, and a recap of some pro-choice speeches at the Democratic National Convention. And since when are stay at home dads the new villains?

Apparently, now merely acknowledging that women have vaginas without keeling over in shock is reason enough to oppose someone’s candidacy. The blogger Media Czech discovered a right wing blogger panicking because a congressional candidate in Kentucky participated in this.

• insert vagina monologues *

We didn’t learn much about the candidate Heather Ryan from this incident, except that she likes the Vagina Monologues. But we learned a whole lot about the guy who posted the video and asked if that’s what the public really wants from a candidate. We learned, for instance, that he has a deep and abiding fear of a harmless organ possessed by half the human population.

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A story of national importance on our issues like the story about Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s daughter being pregnant at 17 pretty much has to be covered on this podcast. Of course, by now everything that can be said has been said. So the only left to do is cover the coverage. Which is fine. Because one thing that’s certain is that if there’s a pregnant teenager in the public eye, you’re fixing to witness a media circus.

• insert circus music *

CNN let citizens take the high road. Kind of.

• insert cnn palin *

That’s Fred Dyson, a state senator in Alaska. That’s very nice of him. But does his generosity to women extend past respecting that his colleague’s daughter is a human being? Of course not. Dyson is a rabid anti-choicer who has sponsored legislation in the Alaska senate mandating that the state should lie to women in order to scare them out of having abortions. He sure sounds like a nice man here, but the legislation he’s behind is all about treating women like we don’t deserve even the basic decency of being told the truth about things like abortion’s link with breast cancer. By the way, there is no link.

Joe Scarbarough on MSNBC suddenly pretended to be the king of the high road.

• msnbc palin *

Oh, step off it. Without defending some of the unfounded rumors, I can safely say that this is the most disingenuous pearl-clutching I’ve heard in forever. Now we’re suddenly worried about the privacy of young women? Where was this concern when the Gloucester, Massachusetts girls were accused of making a pregnancy pact? Where is this concern whenever someone tries to pass a law limiting women’s rights? If these people could muster even a thimbleful of this concern over privacy for any women that aren’t members of the political elite, then reproductive rights wouldn’t even be controversial in this country. They’d be a given.

I think Ruth Marcus had the best answer to this pearl-clutching in the Washington Post. (Quote. "Like it or not, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is intertwined with an important public policy debate about which the two parties differ and on which Sarah Palin has been outspoken." End quote. It’s true. If reproductive rights and sex education weren’t massive political issues, then this would be a non-story. But they are political. People who oppose sex education, easy contraception access and abortion rights have only themselves to blame if pregnancy is political.

Fox News was the most amusing outlet for me, of course. Basically, they’re stuck. On one hand, they know that the official anti-choice line is to act like teenage pregnancy is a huge blessing, because otherwise they’d have to admit that their anti-choice policies are about punishing women for having sex. On the other hand, the business model for Fox is based on the idea that shaming women and exploiting female sexuality is profitable. So they went maudlin, having Billy Graham’s daughter compare this to a hurricane.

• fox palin *

Give me a break. First of all, Hurricane Katrina killed thousands. As frustrating as this no doubt is, it’s not killing thousands of people. Second of all, I can’t reiterate enough—every single person declaring that the Palin family deserves privacy on this needs to answer for the privacy of all other women in this country. Do I have privacy? Do I get a right to make my own decisions about my body away from the prying eyes and grabby hands of right wingers? Anyone who supports restrictions on women’s access to birth control and abortion has forsaken the right to hide behind privacy on this. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. Anything short of that is saying that people in power have privacy and rights, but the rest of us don’t, which is un-American. We don’t have a royalty in this country, last I checked.

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I had a really charming and excellent interview with Thomas Frank, the author of the new book "The Wrecking Crew" and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. It’s an examination of the conservative ideology of government, and yes, I sprung a reproductive rights question on him. What can I say? He’s one of the best political writers out there and it was a pleasure having him sit for a longish interview.

If you’re not already a subscriber to the podcast, I recommend going to our iTunes link on the front page and subscribing. That way you can get the whole interview and not just this sample.

• insert interview *

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I’ll admit, I was quite pleased to see that both Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, and Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL, were given slots to speak at the Democratic National Convention. Both these organizations are demonized by anti-choicers. After all, anti-choicers can’t really attack these organizations for what they actually are, which are pro-choice organizations that advocate for women’s rights and health. So they lie about them. So I was heartened to see these women get up and educate the public about what they do.

Here’s Keenan talking about how NARAL supports not just a woman’s right to a safe abortion, but the other host of ways they support women.

• insert keenan speech *

Here’s the reason that the real axis of the debate is about women’s rights and not about fetuses. Keenan is right—the feminist liberal view that NARAL springs from is consistently pro-woman. The whole thing where anti-choicers call pro-choicers "pro-aborts" doesn’t make a lick of sense. Pro-choicers are the ones who are fighting for women to have contraception access. Calling someone pro-abortion is like saying you’re pro-divorce because you think unhappy marriages are a bad thing. I think unhappy marriages are a terrible thing. Ideally, we prevent them by making sure that couples walk into marriage with their eyes wide open. But if prevention doesn’t work, then you should have the right to divorce. Doesn’t make divorce a walk in the park, and everyone knows it.

Naturally, as a fellow Texan, I was excited to see Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, speak. She’s the daughter of the much-beloved late governor of our state, Ann Richards. It makes me happy to see that Cecile has taken that legacy and chosen to be an advocate for women’s rights with it.

She used her platform on national television to explain some of what Planned Parenthood does.

• insert Richards speech *

The anti-choice myth about Planned Parenthood is that all they do is abortion and that it’s some kind of profit-making industry. Actually, only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion. They probably do more to prevent unintended pregnancy than any other organization in the country, which means that they’ve prevented millions more abortions than any anti-choice organization ever could. Most of their patients are there for contraception, cancer screening, and STD testing. And since they’re a non-profit, they can turn all money earned right around into improving services and reducing the cost to the patients for these services.

I’ll be monitoring the Republican National Convention to see if there’s any speeches of note from people talking directly about our issues for next week’s podcast.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Evangelical preacher John Hagee appears to feel very strongly on the subject of stay at home fathers.

• insert hagee dads *

It doesn’t really make sense. If there’s a group that deserves the label "vanishingly small minority", it’s stay at home fathers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in May 2006, there were 143,000 stay at home fathers in the whole country, compared to 5.6 million stay at home mothers. That means stay at home fathers are .04% of the population. I’m guessing with numbers that low, there wasn’t likely a single one sitting in the congregation at Hagee’s church, even if it is a mega-church.