Shame On You!

Well it’s time for this month’s winners of the "Shame on You" celebrity under-achievement contest. As always, the nominees were tough to narrow down, but I did my best, hopefully, to hit the nail on the head.

The envelope please:

First place this month goes to the entire Far Right for their disgusting display of fake patriotism in response to the news that Chicago had lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. From Fox News to Rush Limbaugh to Drudge to Glenn Beck to the Americans for Prosperity, it was a virtual free for all for the wingnuts when they found out that the I.O.C. had eliminated Chicago on the first ballot. The Americans for Prosperity erupted in a thunderous applause upon hearing the news; Limbaugh mocked, “The ego has landed;” and Matt Drudge’s headline proclaimed: “World Rejects Obama.” Shameless is a word in a half. It’s one thing to “hate” Obama; it’s quite another to root against your own country and then applaud when it gets eliminated. I have said everything I care to about what I consider to be the national malignancy that is the Far Right, but this time they collectively went above and beyond and took the cake. Fox News actually spent the better part of Friday afternoon talking about how wonderful Rio was compared to the corruption and crime of Chicago.

Later attempts to “suggest” that their jubilance was aimed only at Obama and was not indicative of any ainti-American rooting were weak at best. After spending much of the summer manufacturing rage against healthcare reform through intimidation, manipulation and fear mongering, this latest spectacle is yet another sad chapter in the annals of a movement that is about as insular and xenophobic as any movement in modern history. Go away, just go away!

Our runner up is Betsy McCaughey. The former Lieutenant Governor of New York, who played a major role in defeating healthcare reform back in 1994, and who coined the phrase “death panel” that Sarah Palin took and ran with, has once more outdone herself with an “op-ed” piece in the New York Post, titled: The “Kill Granny” Bill. In it she once more resorts to the same fear-mongering that has defined most of her fellow colleagues by suggesting that “the Senate Finance Committee bill robs the elderly to cover the uninsured -- like snatching purses from little old ladies." She actually quotes a doctor who predicts that if this bill is passed, “The only doctors left in Medicare will be those willing to ration care and practice cookbook medicine." The doctor’s name? David McKalip, the neurosurgeon who forwarded email pictures of President Obama dressed up as a witch doctor in a loin-cloth and headdress with bones in his nose. McKalip was eventually forced to step down from his position as president-elect of the Pinellas County Medical Association for his racist act. This was the expert McCaughey felt obliged to quote.

McCaughey “resigned” herself from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp. one day after her interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, in which Stewart read her out when she tried to spin the death panel claims, calling her ideas “hyperbolic and dangerous.” The highpoint of the interview was when McCaughey couldn’t even find the very section of the bill she was trying to misquote! There is a very special and warm place set aside in hell for this lady, and God help me for saying it, she can’t get there fast enough for my taste.

But bringing up the rear is a surprise entry: Alan Grayson. His comments on the floor of the House of Representatives were inappropriate, pure and simple. No matter ones views on healthcare reform – and the truth is that the Republican Party as a whole has not had any tangible or substantive contribution to it other than to state its unequivocal opposition to it - using a platform to suggest that Republicans want you to die quicker or that the current state of healthcare in the United States, no matter how dire, is equivalent to the holocaust is disingenuous at best and does a disservice to the cause of meaningful reform. Worse, it gave the wingnuts on the Far Right more ammunition to attack yet again the very thing we all assume Grayson and most intelligent people actually want. Furthermore, while Grayson’s rage was aimed at his Republican colleagues, he conveniently left out the Blue-Dog Democrats, many of who have taken tens of thousands of dollars of contributions from insurance companies over the last few years and are now the number one stumbling block to a Public Option in the Senate Bill.

That’s right, representative Grayson, it’s the Democrats who are killing true and meaningful reform. They have enough votes in the Senate if all of them voted as one. But because many of them, including Max Baucus – a Democrat! - have been in the pocket of corporate lobbyists for years, more Americans will needlessly die this year because they don’t have affordable healthcare insurance. Bill Maher was right. “Every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there’s a major political party standing in his way: the Democrats. We don’t have a left and a right party in this country any more; we have a center-right party and a crazy party. Democrats are the new Republicans.” The guys in the movie “Dumb and Dumber” have nothing on Alan Grayson and the whole Democratic Party. I’m going to borrow a line from this blog that I swore I would never again invoke, because I feel it is fitting. Stupid is as stupid does. Way to go Alan!