{"id":22971,"date":"2011-09-16T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22971"},"modified":"2011-09-19T08:49:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T13:49:53","slug":"people-always-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22971","title":{"rendered":"People Always Say…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…that they are tired of politicians who “act like politicians” – who calculate everything they say to a fine, calibrated sheen, in order not <\/em>to lose a single vote.<\/p>\n

And then you encounter the exceptions – and you realize why so many\u00a0politicians\u00a0do <\/em>measure what they say so very very carefully.<\/p>\n

Paul Wellstone was one of them; he pretty much shot from the hip and said whatever his heart put on his sleeve. \u00a0He was, of course, so thoroughly in tune with the the Minnesota mainstream media’s “Wish I coulda been at Woodstock” id<\/em>\u00a0that it never really cost him.<\/p>\n

And then there’s Michele Bachmann. \u00a0A woman who proves the old saying “when a lefty calls you “crazy”, it’s their way of saying “you’re smarter than me” [*], she’s also the exact opposite of a Tim Pawlenty or a Norm Coleman; as I discussed almost three years back<\/a>, if Coleman and Pawlenty are like political engineers, calculating out all their angles so that they don’t spring any rhetorical gusset plates and get dumped in the political river, then\u00a0Michele Bachmann is like a jazz saxophonist, improvising, sometimes without a net. \u00a0When it works, it works, like Dizzy Gillespie improvising around a theme. \u00a0And when it doesn’t? \u00a0Gillespie used to repeat sour notes a few times, to make it seem intentional; in jazz, it works. \u00a0In politics?<\/p>\n

Enh.<\/p>\n

At the last Republican debate, Bachmann mentioned some unfortunate claimed outcomes from Governor Perry’s HPV vaccination campaign.<\/p>\n

A couple of medical ethicists picked up on that statement, and theatrically demanded the details.<\/p>\n

Mr. D from Mr. Dilettante’s Neighborhood<\/em>\u00a0found some irony in that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I would assume that [the ethicists] both understand that releasing medical records is a dicey proposition, given the strictures involved. And it’s hardly surprising that the news media aren’t mentioning that these two ethicists are asking for a course of action that would be considered unethical. Would the parent of a child really consent to havving their child’s medical history splashed across the airwaves and the internet? Would you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not sure I’d want it mentioned in a speech, either, but there are <\/em>different levels of intrusiveness involved here – some of them with legal implications.<\/p>\n

But Mr. D. seems to have had that same feeling I got, too:<\/p>\n

Having said that, Bachmann is wrong, wrong, wrong about vaccinations. The anti-vaccination folks are playing a dangerous game and Bachmann was exceptionally foolish to play along in the hopes of gaining a temporary political advantage over her rival, Rick Perry. Whether Perry’s approach to the matter was wise or not is tangential to the larger point, which is that vaccinations have greatly improved public health and saved the lives of millions of people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To be fair, I don’t think Bachmann was playing to the “anti-vaccination” people so much as the “I’ll see to own kids’ vaccinations without any of your executive-ordering, thank yoiu very much” crowd.<\/p>\n

Not that the left or media (pardon the redundancy) will help distinguish the two.<\/p>\n

[*] OK, it’s not an “old saying”. \u00a0I made it up. \u00a0But I don’t think it’s especially inaccurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…that they are tired of politicians who “act like politicians” – who calculate everything they say to a fine, calibrated sheen, in order not to lose a single vote. And then you encounter the exceptions – and you realize why so many\u00a0politicians\u00a0do measure what they say so very very carefully. Paul Wellstone was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-conservatism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22971"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22973,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions\/22973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}