Alexandra Petri truly is a national treasure.
When is a child not a child?
by Alexandra Petri
When is a child not a child?
A child is not a child when believing in her existence would force you to notice your own cruelty. When the story of a 10-year-old who had to cross state lines to end a pregnancy that was the product of rape, because the post-Roe laws in the state of Ohio are cruel enough to force birth on a child in her circumstances, is sufficiently monstrous that you want it to be unimaginable.
A child is not a child. She is a “hoax,” surely (Fox’s Jesse Watters). A “fanciful tale” in the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “a story too good to confirm.” A story that “looks like a lie” (New York Post). An exaggerated concoction by pro-abortion forces designed to make you feel that your laws are inhuman, that they are vicious, that they are written by people to whom these things could never possibly happen, and therefore they are clumsy and careless in the most bruising possible way.
She cannot be a child. Children are what your laws protect.
But then she is real after all. She is not a hoax. The story is true.
Then, a child is not a child simply because you are refusing to see her. Because you are trying to believe that what you were asking of her was not monstrous. In the words of the counsel for the National Right to Life, Jim Bopp, the man who should have thought about the people his words would affect as he wrote model laws for state legislatures looking to restrict abortion after Roe v. Wade, “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.”
Already, the child in this story is someone else! The 10-year-old child is not a child; she is a woman, one of “many women.” It is the fetus that is the child, now, the “baby.” The “benefit”! How convenient! How neat! How easily these words take a situation that is gruelingly, guttingly real and reduce it to a sanitary realm where there is not a victimized child anywhere to be seen. Just women (many women!) and babies and benefit.
A child is not a child when you are forcing her to give birth. She is a woman, suddenly, and the fetus is a baby. Presto, change-o! That’s not justice, it’s sleight of hand.
A child is not a child when she does exist but you cannot admit, now, that what you are forcing her to do is more than dangerous for someone in a body so young — it is monstrous. You scramble to make it sound as though a law that forces a 10-year-old assault victim to give birth is a good law, with benefits. Or that the law does not do what it says.
There’s nothing I can add; what Alexandra Petri has written speaks for itself.
h/t to Josie for sending me the article.
Celebration Open Thread: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
MattF
Yup. Ms. Petri is back, after maternity leave, and she’s not foolin’ around. Actually, she’s fooling around too. So, multi-talented.
A Good Woman
Thanks WG. She is spot on.
sab
It absolutely sickens me that an unfortunate raped pregnant ten year old has to become a poster child for abortion rights.
But here we are. I don’t know what lesser problem would get through to these people.
Rusty
This was a beautifully written piece. I was once told that that Gospels could be boiled down to, Things don’t matter, Ideas don’t matter, People matter. Supposedly religious politicians and judges are turning this on its head, ideas and things matter, and people don’t matter at all. An actual 10 year old rape victim is the messy human reality, interrupting the wonderful abstractions of Dobbs and Dobbs supporters. The religious 6 reactionaries of SCOTUS want to glide through their wonderful world of ideas, avoiding the messiness that actual people are deeply impacted by their decisions. It’s all so cruel.
Villago Delenda Est
Terrible things need to happen to Jim Bopp. Spanish Inquisition type things. No comfy chairs, either.
trollhattan
She says in a scant few paragraphs what I’ve been stammering and spitting in rage about the past several days.
“Winning the day” now requires Republicans drop any pretense of not being monsters and by god, they’re up to the task.
Monsters.
different-church-lady
Basically this is all coming down to O’Brien holding up four fingers and “educating” Winston Smith about how many he should see.
mali muso
Yeah, she pretty much summed it up. I vacillate between incandescent rage and unbearable sorrow. This is no country to raise a girl.
waspuppet
I don’t mean to make them seem insincere or less dangerous—actually, it’s more dangerous for its mindlessness—but there’s a real “don’t want to be the first one to stop clapping for Stalin’s birthday” energy to the American Taliban and their zeal.
And yes, every year Petri doesn’t win a Pulitzer makes me madder, although to be fair some of the recent winners have been pretty worthy. And kudos to the Washington Post for having her, although also F them for continuing to refer to her as being “on the lighter side.” That’s never been accurate and calls into question whether they even realize what they have there.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
I called Bopp’s cell when I saw his comment. Told him my name, told him how disgusting he was.
He just laughed and said he could care less. Oddly, the laugh (the cruelty being the point) sent me into a rage – I shouted “fuck you, asshole” and hung up.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Villago Delenda Est:
The thought crossed my mind during the call.
SiubhanDuinne
Alexandra Petri is who Maureen Dowd would like to be but simply doesn’t have the capacity or the humanity.
Immanentize
Megan McArgle-bargle never disappoints in her ability to publish offensive takes:
different-church-lady
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh I get the feeling Maureen Dowd is perfectly happy being who she already is.
different-church-lady
@Immanentize:
That woman’s thinker is just plain broke.
Immanentize
@different-church-lady:
Funny, my give-a-shitter seems to also be broke.
Sister Golden Bear
@sab:
It’s pretty clear that even this case doesn’t get through to these people. Yes they’re trying to deny/minimize it, but none of them have have said that the law needs to be changed.
Obligatory Upton Sinclair quote:
HumboldtBlue
@Immanentize:
Just came here to highlight that fucking cockwomble and her terrible fucking take on this and every other subject.
And for some positive vibes, here is Charles Barkley telling the haters to fuck off in defense of our gay and transgender friends.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sister Golden Bear: It’s the equivalent of their failure to change gun laws after Sandy Hook. They’re presented with the most extreme outcome and decide they don’t care
trollhattan
@Immanentize: I’ve got a two-by-four with her name on it.
ETA, it echos Scalia’s conclusion that the occasional execution following a false murder conviction is outweighed by the importance of honoring the court.
smintheus
Nothing really new here. Denying the existence of inconvenient victims of Republican policies is the entire reason why the phrase “crisis actor” exists.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Barkley.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@HumboldtBlue:
Speaking of gay friends, the fucknuckle who wrote the Abortion Bounty Texas statute is now going after insurers who cover PrEP for sexually active gay men.
They want everyone who isn’t them and who won’t accept their suzerainty to die.
Ohio Mom
Having waded into my local paper’s comment threads earlier this week, I can tell you the RWNJs are not at all interested in the girl.
In turn, they’ve been furious at the two doctors — the Ohio child abuse specialist and the Indiana OB-GYN — for not filing the required reports, because if they had, the police would have arrested the rapist by now! Why isn’t there an investigation! And the doctors broke HIPPA! (Note: the Indiana doctor’s employer investigated and found she had broken no confidentiality policies).
Oh, the reports were filed and the police did arrest the culprit? Now they are furious because the rapist is “illegal,” it’s because of Biden’s border policies, never mind that the man has been in the country since years before Biden was elected and sworn in.
Next I read that the mother was protecting the rapist because he’s her boyfriend. Huh? If she’s protecting him, how did it happen he was arrested, and pretty quickly considering how many cases the police never solve. (In other places, I’ve read that it was the mother who first contacted the authorities.)
I’ve sworn off further wading so who knows what they are ranting about today. They spin around madly, looking for anything to be mad about except what happened to the girl.
It’s mildly amusing to me that every now and again, one of them would venture that the girl should not have to carry the pregnancy to term — they couldn’t quite find it in themselves to say, “I’m glad she got the abortion.”
different-church-lady
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: “Look, we’re not actually saying we want gas chambers, but, you know, we gotta protect the kids. Unless the kid is pregnant, in which case…”
Scout211
Petri is great. I am so glad she wrote this and thanks WaterGirl (for the excerpt) since it is behind a pay wall for the unsubscribed.
This is a wonderful column with great snark when needed. However, all of her points and even some of her snark echoed the many comments and posts here on balloon-juice in the past week.
We have so many wonderful and clever commenters here. Thank you all.
We should have a column of our own. LOL
HumboldtBlue
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
That news just came across my Twitter feed.
Tony G
According to Jesus, pregnant females (of any age) are just temporary disposable repositories for the blastocyst and fetus. One the fetus matures into a baby and is born, he or she also becomes disposable. the Bible says so!
zhena gogolia
@sab: My feelings exactly.
But nothing will get through to them. Slaughtered elementary-school children don’t get through to them. Nothing.
phdesmond
i attended Alexandra Petri’s first WaPo chat in four months, after maternity leave. in anticipation, i posted my recent poem “Light Verse” and asked if she liked it.
she did! the answer she posted in chat:
Bill Arnold
Asking as a male.
An etymology question; when did fetuses regularly start being called babies? E.g. was it sloppiness on the part of ObGyns who were trying to discourage behavior that might hurt fetuses? Was it driven by religion patients insisting on calling their fetus a baby? It’s been a very successful rhetorical trick, to en-person a developing fetus with the status of baby.
B. Belichick
Not one of the Republicans (and a few Democrats) or anti-abortion supporters would be able to comprehend the essay. Word play like in 1984, th enovel, is ruling American thought today which is driven by a corrupt church.
senyordave
Do they still draw and quarter* people? If not, it should be brought back just for Jesse Waters.
I’d pay to see that.
zhena gogolia
@senyordave: Believe me, the phrase “drawn and quartered” crosses my mind with respect to TFG and others many times a day.
trollhattan
Convince me this wasn’t a hit, go ahead, I dare you.
“Amazing.”
Eolirin
@senyordave: No you wouldn’t. Or if you did you’d regret it afterwards.
I know people are angry, but can we please avoid this kind of violent fantasy rhetoric? This shit has always been intensely awful and if you really are looking for gore like that, please seek professional help and stay away from guns and other humans. FFS.
OzarkHillbilly
@zhena gogolia: I prefer “tarred and feathered.”
Subsole
@Rusty:
I recall an old story told by an itinerant street preacher that someone supposedly overheard in some bus stop a long, long time ago.
He said that people would be startled by just how little their faith or their works counted for, when measured against their lack of compassion.
And these people he was telling it to? They had faith. Faith enough to cast out ill spirits! They had strong faith, and did mighty works with it. But ultimately they would be thrown into the fire, because they cared more for the casting out of demons than the people they were casting them out of.
I cannot believe these people, today, these conservatives, ever truly heard the Christ of that tale. They would have far, far more compassion otherwise.
When Christ said to be not as the ones who pray loudly in public? These are the people he was warning you about.
Tony Jay
Love Petri, and she absolutely nails the mendacious sleight-of-terminology that turns a terrified 10 year old rape victim into a judgement-worthy woman, and a bunch of unwanted cells into an ickle likle baby-waby that can, should the ‘benefits’ be properly understood, just get passed on down the line like an unwanted prom dress if the irresponsible slut who ordered it can’t be bothered trying it on for size.
It not a baby. Not scientifically, not medically, not even religiously, no matter what the forced birthers try to pretend.
It’s only politically a baby, and only in the same sense that a political football is, actually, a football.
AM in NC
While Ms. Petri is always a great read, this piece was beyond amazing. It stuck in the shiv multiple times in soft and tender places, and it peeled away any veneer of decency these monsters try to maintain.
senyordave
@Eolirin: I think I’d be pretty cool with it. We have a broken country/society in the US because of creatures like Jesse Waters. IMO, we are unique among developed countries in the level of brokenness (sic) because of these people who have poisoned the whole idea of public discourse. You don’t see the same thing in European countries, or Can, Aus, NZ, etc.
Baud
@senyordave:
Everything else aside, in the United States, lefty rage doesn’t hurt the right the way righty anger hurts the left. People wish for a cultural symmetry that doesn’t exist.
YMMV.
Bex
@Eolirin: Agreed. Of course it was free “entertainment” back in the (medieval) day. You didn’t have to pay and you could bring your lunch…sorry, I’m just about to lose mine.
Ohio Mom
@Bill Arnold: Interesting question. There’s so much slang for body parts and functions generally, and also much lacking knowledge of correct terminology.
I suspect people saying things like, “There’s a baby in her tummy” predate the abortion wars. It’s the vernacular.
What’s a tummy, anyway? A stomach? Your stomach and your intestines? What’s a baby doing in your digestive system? If a doctor uses the word “baby” he/she is probably trying to meet the patient where she is.
WaterGirl
I should have credited the person who sent me the article, but she didn’t include her nym in her email, and the little database in my head that matches names and nyms is stalled at the moment.
Josie
@WaterGirl:
It was me, WaterGirl. I always forget to include my nym in my emails and to use my pen name email account. What can I say, except I’m old. :-)
Damien
@Eolirin: you’re making a real assumption about what other people would enjoy. Personally? Yeah, I could pop some popcorn for gelding the slavers of women. Drawn and quartered for Bopp, though.
WaterGirl
@Josie: I knew I should know the nym that went with the name, and maybe on another day I could have pulled it out, but today was not that day.
I will update up top to credit you with the h/t.
MagdaInBlack
@Eolirin: Thank You.
Josie
@WaterGirl: Thanks. I’m amazed at how you keep up with all you do.
oldster
@Bill Arnold:
I think there’s a very general feature of our thought that allows us to refer to potential things as though they were actual. I can point to a pile of lumber on a lot and say, “that’s our new house!” I can point to a sack of potatoes and say, “that’s tomorrow night’s dinner”.
Our minds plan ahead and envision what we hope, or fear. If a woman wants to refer to a few hundred cells and say, “it’s my baby and it’s a brilliant opera singer,” then she’s doing nothing different from the woman who counts out a lot of hundred dollar bills and says, “I’m saving that — that’s my sports car.”
But in fact, a pile of lumber is not a house, a stack of money is not a car, and a handful of cells is not a baby.
So, I think it’s not so much a matter of language as of how we view the world and anticipate the future.
Kropacetic
@Damien: Count me on team “let’s not do that.” Capital punishment is unacceptable on its own merits. Making a gruesome spectacle of it is beyond the pale and certainly unconstitutional (if that means anything anymore).
If you want gruesome spectacle, Hollywood got plenty for you. If you get excited by this shit, do what healthy people due and subsume your toxic desires into fetishes that you can enjoy consensually with other people.
Gvg
@Bill Arnold: actually i suspect most people called them babies for a thousand years before the medical community learned enough to need the word fetus and it just never caught on among the majority of the population. Sorry. So that was easy to propagandize and weaponize.
JoyceH
@trollhattan:
I know! I don’t like to get all conspiratorial, but dang! How many other presidential wives have died of ‘blunt force trauma’? It’s just kinda weird that we see pundits on television telling us that Trump ran his business like a mob boss, ran the White House like a mob boss, acts like a mob boss, thinks like a mob boss – but then when the ex dies from a fall down the stairs, oh, perfectly natural, nothing to see.
And BTW, something I’ve been wondering. All this reporting on Trump’s determination to get to the Capitol on 1/6 — what did he plan to DO there? How did he imagine that going? Did he think he was going to stride into the chamber, flanked by Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and demand that his fake electors be certified to give him the election? Did he assume that Congress, overawed by his masterful manliness, would hasten to comply, and he could then bask in the applause and appreciation of a grateful nation?
And while I’m wondering – Patrick Byrne! The ‘who are YOU?’ Mister Rando who wound up at that ‘unhinged’ Oval Office meeting. A news report the other day told me something I didn’t know – Byrne had funded a lot of the election challenging process, recounts and court cases etc. But what I don’t see mentioned in the mainstream media is that Byrne had had a three year affair with Maria Butina. So I wonder – is he still in contact with her? When he showed up at that meeting, was he there for his own interest, or was he being Putin’s eyes and ears in the Oval? What would his financial records show? That election challenge funding – was that his own money, because he’s just sooo into politics? Or was it Putin funding the attempt to overturn a free and fair election? We ought to at least ask the questions…
lefthanded compliment
@Eolirin: I thought when I read that comment that this place could do with a comment policy along the same lines as Wonkette’s.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: Look, if a steady flow of dead school children is the cost of their political power then that’s a bill they’re gonna make sure gets paid.
Kropacetic
@JoyceH:
@trollhattan:
I ain’t convincing anyone, I have no evidence. It does seem like “falling” falls into the well-known health risk categories for people in their mid 70s.
WaterGirl
@Josie: It helps that people like you send me good things that need a wider audience!
opiejeanne
@JoyceH: Dang it, I’m going down that same rabbit hole, asking those questions about a mob hit. Why did Ivana fall down those stairs?
Kropacetic
@lefthanded compliment: What is Wonkettes policy?
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: I’d be happy with even a really firm dope slap.
opiejeanne
@Kropacetic: In Russia people seem to fall out of windows and down stairs a lot.
Was she carrying a bathtub?
different-church-lady
@Baud: That’s because we’re not really into hurting people, whereas they’re really into it.
WaterGirl
@lefthanded compliment: What is Wonkette’s policy? Our comment policy is in the footer.
JAFD
@Kropacetic: Meself, am on team ‘have had attack of gout, can think of several people who deserve one just like it.’ Won’t kill you, just hurts like (BLEEP)
MagdaInBlack
@opiejeanne: Allegedly a heart attack. I’m down the rabbit hole too, because why not.
JoyceH
@opiejeanne: To be fair, I did see an article that talked about the fact that she’d had mobility issues lately. But still, it just strikes me as weird that a fall down the stairs would produce blunt force trauma to the torso. Seems to me that arms and legs are the usual victims, well, those and the head. I’d feel less squinty-eyed about it if the fall had killed her with a blow to the head. The torso is what makes it seem more mob-like, the whole ‘don’t mark the face’ thing. Maybe there’s a very knobbly banister?
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: yes I’m sorry to be classed with the violence fetishists. It’s just that That phrase does go through my head.
Alison Rose
Great comment on the article:
JoyceH
@different-church-lady:
I don’t wish death on the people I’m hating currently – I want them to lose power, lose all their money, and go to prison. And I want them to live a good long while, long enough to live to see what the history books say about them.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: I think at this point we’re all aware that the line between rhetorical violence and actual violence is frighteningly faint. So best if we eschew it, no matter how righteously outraged and frustrated we are.
lefthanded compliment
@Kropacetic: Programming Note: Rules For Commenting Radicals – Wonkette
different-church-lady
@JoyceH: I’d be happy with just the losing power part
Eolirin
@senyordave: There’s a huge difference between wanting to see certain people go away, or to be hurt in the abstract, and wanting to for real, not just in your imagination, watch intense physical brutality carried out. If you actually want the later, seek help. Like immediately.
@Damien: Yeah I’m assuming the people on this blog aren’t fucking psychopaths.
different-church-lady
@lefthanded compliment:
If Wonkette had rotating taglines I’d be nominating that.
different-church-lady
@Eolirin:
On this blog? Yeah. In the rest of life I’m not so sure anymore
Bill Arnold
@Kropacetic:
Curiously, her ex is said to have a fear of stairs and steep down-slopes in general. (There are plenty of videos that appear to confirm this.) These fears did not emerge when Trump had his 70th birthday; they are said to be much older than that.
Do any of her children have keys to her apartment? Are there video recordings of the entry-ways? Have they been erased? Etc. All these and plenty more theories will be pursued by police and by journalists.
Basically just saying that the priors, namely that the Trump family is involved, shift the estimated probabilities a bit. I would not be surprised if people start spreading rumors and conspiracy theories involving the Trumps, and counter-theories start being spread by the pro-Trump operatives.
Dan B
@sab: “these people” would have to acknowledge they are sadistic, judgemental sadistic who are a drag on society. They might fear they would be removed from society. But since many of these people claim that there is “no society” they should have no need to be fearful.
As a gay man who grew up when the most welcoming friends and family wanted us to remain invisible I learned that your chosen family is the real family.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: yes I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have read wolf hall so many times
JoyceH
@different-church-lady:
Nope, not good enough. Impoverishment and prison. General all-around ignominy and disgrace. They need to serve as an example so others won’t try to follow their lead.
Which reminds me – how about we arrest some of these guys who call in death threats to legislators and election officials? Just the harassing phone calls have increased exponentially, and why not when it’s entirely consequence-free. A few well-publicized arrests and convictions would bring a stop to that.
different-church-lady
@JoyceH: I said happy. I didn’t say satisfied.
Steeplejack
Commenter Frumpycat on another Washington Post piece, “The GOP courted antiabortion zealots. Now they’re stuck with them.”
VOR
@JoyceH: The term “Epsteined” was trending on Twitter, speculating Ivana was killed to silence her. I don’t know what information these conspiracy theorists think Ivana would have possessed. She and TFG were divorced 30 years and two younger wives ago. AFAIK she was not scheduled as a witness in the NY AG’s investigation or any other.
Ivana was 73 and reportedly had a bad hip. The Guardian article on her death includes this paragraph:
Dan B
@HumboldtBlue: Thanks for posting that clip of Charles Barkley. I’m crying. Maybe it’s years of being shunned and maybe it’s the dozens of friends who died of AIDS. There’s hope that these people will have an epiphany but it seems to be the rarest thing on earth.
FelonyGovt
The parade of horrible consequences is only beginning. The 10-year old rape victim, the women who suddenly can’t get their life-saving medication for rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other conditions, the women who are going to die from untreated pregnancy complications…
MagdaInBlack
@VOR: You’re no fun.
John
A 10-week-old embryo is not a baby. A 10-year-old child is. This is the truth they want you to ignore.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: That’s amazing.
J R in WV
Speaking of Constitutional punishment, isn’t forcing pregnancy on someone a cruel and unusual punishment in any sane person’s book?
Esp resulting from rape, or ectopic bound to cause death, etc?
How is this not banned by that Amendment about cruel and unusual, anyways?? Just wondering out here in the sticks…
ETA: Last? ;~)
HumboldtBlue
@Dan B:
Glad it helped.
@Alison Rose :
Chuck’s a good guy.
eddie blake
@VOR: it got him and the hellspawns out of testifying.
different-church-lady
@eddie blake: For now.
Chris Johnson
@Bill Arnold: Or to put it more simply albeit speculatively:
Trump is run by the Russian mob i.e. Putin, from WAAY back, always has been. He is afraid of stairs because he has been thrown down them and survived, or been threatened with them and not thrown down them. Ivana may predate all this, but now she is Trump’s ex, and there is a hell of a lot of pressure within Russia to make their American puppets play ball and start a doomed civil war, and they killed Ivana in exactly the method they threaten their puppets with in order to send the message, ‘continue to play ball or you are next’.
So it’s Russians, damn straight it’s shady as it is a mob hit, and it’s not because they had any beef with Ivana, it’s to send a message that they are ready to start murdering important American politicians at any time now. Anyone, anywhere: the idea is you are not safe by taking sides against the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
Because Trump is a bozo, a puppet of Putin. It’s not him who will kill you if you join the Dems and expose the Jan 6th conspiracy for what it is. It is the Russian mob that will kill you, and unlike Trump they are capable of it.
I’m pretty sure that’s what’s actually going on and always has been. There are remaining questions, such as: if they’re going to kill you anyway, even in jail, and you’re going to be caught anyway, maybe go out in a blaze of glory exposing the Russians? Are they in fact that damn infallible if they can’t even conquer Ukraine? Can you really base a nation-state’s power on mob hits? What kind of world does that bring about and what are the weak points, where does that structure of power break down?
Bottom line is, I thought it was a hit even before hearing about ‘blunt force trauma’ and am unsurprised, nor am I surprised that it seems to be really brazen. It’s a show of force in a very specific way, and it’s those who are still living who are the target.
Riodawg
Brilliant.
UncleEbeneezer
The Not-A-Child tactic for refusing to admit/see their awful policies/beliefs is the same thing they did with Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Tamir Rice.
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson: So the NYPD are in on the coverup? There was no sign of forced entry. She had hip problems. Falling down the stairs will cause blunt force injuries even if you’re not pushed.
Chris Johnson
@VOR: No, not to silence her, to intimidate the others under mob control by using her as an example. Epsteined is not a bad analogy because the message there was they can get you even if you’re in prison.
Sure Lurkalot
@Alison Rose :
“Oh my, you don’t think we’d make a 10 year old care for a baby? That would be irresponsible and cruel! We’d just whisk that baby off to a deserving most definitely hetero couple who tragically can’t conceive on their own. God’s gift, actually. Win win all around.”
Ohio Mom
@VOR: Now that I’ve reached Medicare age, the questions asked at the beginning of every doctor appointment include, “Have you fallen in the last month?”
I haven’t fallen yet so I have no idea what happens if I answered Yes. But they seem to be anticipating that one day I will.
livewyre
@Eolirin: Just to agree and elaborate on this, since it rankled here too. I suspect this rhetoric comes from not just some individual illness but rather a tacit sentiment in general society that the problem with public executions is that they had the wrong targets. The implication is that it’s fine if it happens to someone who deserves it – and there’s always someone who deserves it. You’re just not allowed to say it in polite company. Accordingly, the nature of the illness is lack of restraint from saying it in polite company.
Steeplejack
@Immanentize:
I think David Klion was mocking McArdle. Her actual (dreadful) take:
kalakal
@JoyceH: That’s kind of what I’d want for. Disgrace, penury, Jail time, not medieval public executions. And a policy of naming public toilets after them so they can be proud of their legacy.
Riodawg
Sorry. Losing the thread should be my handle! Petri’s article was brilliant.
kalakal
@JoyceH: Anecdata I know
Have had 3 serious staircase falls .
At 15 slipped going up, fell forward cracked elbow .
At 30 stair carpet came loose legs flew out, landed flat on back several steps down. Cracked lumbar vertebrae .
At 55 stepped on black cat on dark stair , cracked ribs on knobbly bannister.
As a clumsy fool I’m running 2 out of 3 for torso damage
Scout211
Nothing happens, actually. I say yes almost every time and the medical assistant just pauses and then moves on to the next question. Strange.
VOR
@Ohio Mom: They say you know you are old when people stop laughing when you fall down and are concerned instead. I’m old enough that last time I fell and hit my head, the doctor sent me for a head CT scan.
sab
@Steeplejack: Argle Bargle randomly flinging numbers around again. What is she even trying to say?
opiejeanne
@MagdaInBlack: Cardiac arrest. It means her heart stopped. It’s what everyone dies of, technically.
The medical examiner says she died of blunt force trauma to her torso. I’m still pondering that.
Baud
@kalakal:
How was the cat?
Matt McIrvin
@opiejeanne: I always think of the line from “Mystery Men” about the death of the Bowler senior. “He fell down an elevator shaft, onto some bullets.”
zhena gogolia
@Baud: The cat always gets away scot-free.
Tony G
@zhena gogolia: The “pro-life” right loves cruelty and, when they deem it to be appropriate, they love death. They are monsters. They cannot be reasoned with and they cannot be shamed because they have no shame.
different-church-lady
@sab:
“Look at me! I’m a professional thought-haver!”
Steeplejack
@sab:
I think she’s saying that it’s a small number of people (girls), so we should worry less? Like David Klion said in the (mocking) tweet linked by Immanentize: “Relax, libs, only a tiny percentage of the people we’re legally forcing to give birth are under the age of 11.”
Baud
@sab:
She’s saying the number of child tragedies isn’t high enough to justify allowing Democrats to win elections.
Baud
Via Reddit.
PIGL
@JoyceH: Personally, I wanted to cease political activity. I don’t much care how that comes about.
eddie blake
@Matt McIrvin: poor carmine.
Citizen Alan
@VOR: Yeah, I don’t give a shit. “The Clinton Death List” consists of everyone who’d ever been in a room with Hillary Clinton and then later died over the course of the last 30 years. So if Shitgibbon’s ex-wife who’d once accused him of rape dies under tiniest suspicion, I say tweet and blog about her getting Epsteined to our hearts content.
Citizen Alan
@kalakal: While out on my late mother’s deck last week, my leg went threw a rotted board and plunged through until my ass landed on the deck. While I got away with nothing but scratches, I was sobering to think that if that had happened to my 85-yo mom who lived alone, she might well have broken a hip, been unable to crawl to get help and died out there by herself.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: I would be more shocked if someone could show me a straight male College Republican who had never sexually assaulted someone.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: “Our tent is big”
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Some people will call me hopelessly naive, but I still believe most College Republicans assault women of legal age.
kalakal
@Baud: Oh absolutely fine. He still likes to lurk there. He’ll be sorry the day his cunning assassination plan works. Who’ll be getting his cat food then, eh?
kalakal
@Citizen Alan: It really is sobering, you get fragile as you get old and you don’t bounce, you thud
Jim Appleton
@Tony G:
This.
Cruelty is the point.
Subsole
@sab: She’s saying a certain amount of wastage among the lesser orders is acceptable.
Because if you scratch a libertarian, you get a bleeding fascist.
Yutsano
Rafael saying the quiet part out loud.
different-church-lady
@Yutsano: Since when was “We hate the gays” quiet on their part?
scav
9 and 10 year olds are, in their eyes, far too young to learn about sex or worse! be exposed to the manifest dangers of being exposed to happy, well-adjusted and non-ostracized gay people let alone the unspeakable horror of a transgendered person in a bathroom. But as for being raped into a state of obvious benefit and maternity? They say bring it on.
Children are similarly not children enough for protection when they’re useful as child labor for school lunches or as targets for being stolen from their families under the heading of “deterrent” in immigration policy.
JoyceH
@Citizen Alan:
Boy-howdy, ain’t that the truth? Heck, they didn’t have to have ever met Bill or Hillary, if you could Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon back to them, it went on the list. Clinton’s mother’s chiropractor died in a plane crash, he’s on the list. The boyfriend of an ex-wife of a state-trooper who’d been on the governor’s security detail committed suicide, he’s on the list.
columbusqueen
@VOR: Exactly. I’m only 57 but I have had one bad fall last August (leaving me with a bad left shoulder) & two near swan dives down steep basement steps caused by my hyperaffectionate tomcat getting underfoot. No conspiracy theories required, folks.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: I too tend towards Occam’s Razor on this one. Or perhaps Occam’s Staircase.
Miss Bianca
@kalakal: Sandy Denny died in a fall down the stairs, and she was only in her 30s, as I recall. Staircases are dangerous things. I almost always hug the wall or grab the bannister with a death grip going up and down the stairs at the Mountain Hacienda here. By the time I’m in my mid-70s (should I live so long) I fully expect to have made the transition back to a one-story dwelling.
Bill Arnold
@Jim Appleton:
Cruelty, and the Fear that well-publicized cruelty generates.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
Wow, a sad story. But apparently she made a habit of falling down stairs.
lifeinthebonusround
@mali muso: But we need to raise girls for the sake of us all. We need to raise them above the muck that Republicans would drown them in. Above the cruelty that Republicans would have us ignore. We need to raise strong girls, even stronger than us — and I know they are — to fight again. My nieces and great nieces are those girls.
columbusqueen
@zhena gogolia: Denny was drunk–she was separated from her husband who had just taken their baby girl because of her alcohol issues. To top it off, she fell at her stiff-necked parents’ home, who refused to call a squad out of shame about Sandy’s drinking. Had they gotten her help, she might have survived; it took two or three days for the head injury to kill her.
Miss Bianca
@columbusqueen: oh, God. I didn’t know that last part of the story. I hope her parents were haunted for the rest of their miserable lives, the creatures.
linnen
Citizen Alan @121
You can take ‘Straight’ out of your sentence and it still would be a stretch to imagine.
columbusqueen
@Miss Bianca: Me too. They were quasi-Victorian types who disapproved of Sandy’s entire life & career. You can see them featured on the album cover of Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking as the dour older couple standing in front of their house.
Ruckus
@Rusty:
“The religious 6 reactionaries of SCOTUS want to glide through their wonderful world of ideas”
Sorry, those are not ideas they are disasters. They don’t want the world to be run by humans, they want the world to be run by bullshit, pain and anything but reality.
PaulWartenberg
The anti-abortion crowd loved being on the offensive in their war against women’s right, calling us all baby-killers and un-Christian and what have you.
Now that they have Roe crushed, they suddenly find themselves on the defensive, asked about the horrors of child pregnancy and rape, and the best they can do is deny, deny, and deny…
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
Just over four years ago I almost fell down a set of concrete stairs, with a concrete wall at the bottom because I had developed an abnormal condition of the inner ear called Meniere’s which greatly affects balance and had no idea about it. If I had not had my hand on the rail I likely would have suffered the same fate as Sandy Denny, even being sober. I moved shortly after to a bottom floor apt. I was just shy of turning 70. I don’t trust my ability to stand with my eyes closed or when it’s really dark and trying to go fast down stairs is verboten. Up fast works fine.
This getting old shit is getting old but the only alternative is far worse.
columbusqueen
@Ruckus: Yeah, I just left work an hour ago, but when I stood up to leave, my right leg cracked loudly & now I can barely put weight on it. Getting old sucks.
Uncle Cosmo
From R. A. Heinlein, Between Planets (1951), my current favorite of all the RAH juveniles.
JaySinWA
@zhena gogolia:
I think that is the most believable part of the “theory”. I doubt the Russian Mafia is doing that sort of bank shot, and if they did that the NYPD would be smart enough to figure it out and cover it up.