Saturday, February 18, 2012

When only one ear hears a hearing

I'M A WHITE GUY. Always have been since birth. But I've always been put off by so many white guys, pejoratively speaking, that I've met over the years who use the color of their skin as Exhibit A of swaggering superiority over various other human hues. As if that isn't bad enough, I can also report there are a lot of swaggering white guys in the land who are deeply into patriarchy predating the Dark Ages.

That was easily confirmed, by Rep. Darrell Issa's hokey male-dominated congressional hearing on separation of church and state but was really all about contraceptives. Issa is a native Clevelander, the richest man in Congress (estimated $450 million), politically fashioned by the accident of his gender and culture, and submissive only to the dark climate of his remarkably conservative district in Southern California. (Could he possibly be one of Gov. Kasich's California Wackadoodles, too? Naw. Too white , well off and Republican to be criticized.)

One day earlier this week, Issa sat as the committee chairman for his inquiry that paraded a panel of witnesses carefully selected to ignore the certain argument against his premise that contraceptives are bad business. He even barred a woman law student from testifying for the other side. There's that side of democracy, too.

Here are the carefully chosen enablers of Issa's dense patriarchal premise that men know better about everything: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Yeshiva University; Dr. Craig Mitchell, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bishop William E. Lori, representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Matthew Harrison, President of Missouri Lutheran Synod, (who claimed conscience martyrdom by the Feds), Prof. Ben Mitchell, Union University (evangelical).

You might want to bet $10,000 that all were against abortion and a lot of other bothersome female stuff.

Dissenters would have had more luck walking barefoot over a stretch of hot coals.

But wait: That one misrepresented hearing drew a coast-to-coast response from women who won't let anybody forget their outrage. And we're told they outnumber the white guys. After all, it is 2012.

As I keep insisting: Republicans, you have a problem.


5 comments:

Mencken said...

If you're white, kibbee and tabouli was served at the First Thanksgiving. Or not.

Grumpy Abe said...

How did you know? Besides my father hated chicken and turkey.

ChrisChristieFan84 said...

What on earth does race have to do with the Catholic church being forced to violate its religious teachings on contraception?

David Hess said...

AS chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, Issa is the heir to a former chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana,
who perceived his job (under the Gingrich regime) as a license to persistently torment Democratic White Houses. Burton, you'll recall, once shot a melon in an experiment to show that a presidential aide who killed himself had actually been murdered to silence him in an investigation of wrongdoing by "someone" in the White House. Issa has now stepped into that role. His aim is to keep this issue of contraception alive through the election season as a means to stir resentment against Obama among right-wing Catholics, solidify the GOP base (particularly the evangelicals who yearn to form a theocracy), and pander to the anti-abortion groups.

Marv Katz said...

Darrell Issa, from car thief to car-alarm magnate, with a stop-off in between as an arson suspect. (Google him)

Sad to say he's a Kent State grad, albeit from the Canton branch, not the main campus.