• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Mitch McConnell, KY

Bob Smith, NH

Gordon Smith, OR

Ted Stevens, AK

Strom Thurmond, SC

HOUSE

Shelley Moore Capito, WV

Mike Ferguson, NJ

Melissa Hart, PA Steve Hom, CA

Mark Kennedy, MN

Doug Ose, CA

Charles (Chip) Pickering, MS

Mike Rogers, MI

Rob Simmons, CT

Heather Wilson, NM

ELEVEN

The People’s Prayer

I THINK IT was Thomas Aquinas who once observed, “There’s nothing like your own shit to make you realize how much you stink.”

In July 2001, Nancy Reagan, then keeping a round-the-clock watch at her husband’s deathbed, dispatched former Reagan henchmen Michael Deaver and Kenneth Duberstein to Washington, D.C., with a private message to George W .Bush and the Republican leadership. The party had been divided over the issue of stem cell research, the ongoing science of taking stem cells from discarded human embryos and using those cells to treat people with debilitating conditions like Alzheimer’s (the affliction that had visited former President Reagan), or find cures for other life-threatening diseases. The antiabortion zealots (among whom are included the Reagans and the Bushes) who have controlled the party for decades demanded that there be no embryonic research, regardless of the suffering of the living.

W had been leaning toward banning the research, telling the public, in essence, that he saw those dead embryos as living babies. I guess he feared that women would run out and fertilize their eggs just so they could get an embryo, have an abortion, and then sell the embryos for research. Such is the active fantasy life of the conservative nutcases who run this country.

But now the nuts were coming unscrewed, as a number of conservatives, from Tommy Thompson to Connie Mack, were giving their approval to stem cell research, declaring that it had nothing to do with the taking of a “human life.” Suddenly the media were full of stories of a conservative mutiny on the issue. Right to Life went to war to stop the flood toward reason.

W, though, seemed unfazed and unmoved, more concerned with the brand of toothpaste the British prime minister was using than with changing his antiabortion position.

But then the word came from Nancy. The soon-to-be-widow asked Bush to change his mind and approve, support, fund, and champion stem cell research. The research, she relayed to him through her errand boys, might save Ronnie or future Ronnies suffering from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and other catastrophic illnesses. Nancy had already been modifying her abortion stance over the past few years, and now she was coming out for the first time and saying, no, an embryo is NOT a human being.

In that one moment, the entire playing field shifted. The call from the front office had been made: SCREW THE UNBORN! SAVE THE GIPPER!

And sure enough, within days, Baby Bush’s principles were disappearing faster than a Condit intern. Word came from the White House that now there was nothing wrong with “certain” stem cell research. Bush went on TV and would not say that a human embryo was a human being. After decades of cramming it down our throats that “human life begins at conception,” we were now being told by the same individuals who trashed a woman’s right to an abortion that these “unborn babies” were actually nothing more that some dead embryonic tissue—which might just keep some sick rich people alive a few more years!

All over the country, Republican honchos joined in the call for more stem cell research. Orrin Hatch led the charge, saying, “This is not a question of the destruction of human life, it’s a question of facilitation of human life.” Even Strom “only-in-cases-of-rape-or-incest” Thurmond agreed. “Stem cell research could potentially treat and cure such maladies as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, various types of cancer, and diabetes.... I am encouraged by this pioneering science and support federal funding for its research,” said the old man, whose daughter, not so coincidentally, suffers from juvenile diabetes.

There’s nothing more lovable than an unembarrassed