September 16, 2011--Just Say No to HPV
Michele Bachmann stepped in it again. This time about the HPV vaccine. The one that protects against cervical cancer.
This should be an easy one, especially for a woman who considers herself a feminist. True, a conservative feminist who says she is "submissive" to her husband (when challenged she spins it as really meaning "respect"), but one with a powerful career in Congress and after the Ames, Iowa straw poll the frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Perhaps it was the formerly part of being in the lead that threw her off her game last week at the GOP debate--according to the pundits, she "didn't show up." She was so eager not to get lost again in this week's debate mano-y-mano between Governors Romney and Perry that she got a little shrill and carried away with herself.
She saw an opportunity to take Perry on directly and seized it, expressing Tea-Party outrage that he, by executive order in 2007, required all preadolescent girls between 11 and 12 to be inoculated against HPV, the virus that later in life can cause cancer.
Her initial point--where she should have stopped--was that this exposes Perry as a big-government, daddy-state operative who presents himself hypocritically as favoring less government. She had him pinned red handed, in action, governing by fiat no less, intruding in the lives of families and disregarding parental rights and prerogatives.
He weakly responded that he now regrets not having done this through the legislative process but impressively stood by his intention to help girls when they become women reduce their chances of getting cancer.
But Bachmann, having made her good Republican point, went further, claiming that the HPV vaccine has been shown to cause mental retardation.
The press the next day and through this week jumped all over her for again ignoring science. They and national pediatrics groups were quick to point out that this claim of hers was totally unfounded and that she was trying to get in another shot at Perry who appears to continue to be the frontrunner in spite of the HPV flap and his continuing to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. I guess that when it come to Perry the Republican base is in love and unshakable in their support.
What the press and those on the left generally failed to note is that her attack on Perry's inconsistency is less about governments requiring HPV vaccination than another flare up in the culture war that have been roiling the country since at least the 1960s.
This time about premarital sex.
Have you heard Michele Bachmann or any of her colleagues on the right railing about requiring measles or polio vaccinations? Not a one.
HPV is special to them because to be effective it has to be administered to young girls before they become sexually active. Thus, it's too late to wait until after they are married. I assume, if it would work, that Congresswoman Bachmann would be all right vaccinating 25-year-olds right after the wedding ceremony and before the honeymoon
Unspoken is the feeling disturbing to Bachmann and other fundamentalists that to inoculate 11 and 12-year-olds may not only help prevent cervical cancel but also gives them tacit permission to become sexually active.
Thus, in coming weeks and months, unless Perry becomes this fall's version of Donald Trump, we are likely to hear a great deal more about HPV. Listen between the lines to see if you, like me, sense we are talking more about adolescent sex and abstinence than big government, health, or parents' rights.
This should be an easy one, especially for a woman who considers herself a feminist. True, a conservative feminist who says she is "submissive" to her husband (when challenged she spins it as really meaning "respect"), but one with a powerful career in Congress and after the Ames, Iowa straw poll the frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Perhaps it was the formerly part of being in the lead that threw her off her game last week at the GOP debate--according to the pundits, she "didn't show up." She was so eager not to get lost again in this week's debate mano-y-mano between Governors Romney and Perry that she got a little shrill and carried away with herself.
She saw an opportunity to take Perry on directly and seized it, expressing Tea-Party outrage that he, by executive order in 2007, required all preadolescent girls between 11 and 12 to be inoculated against HPV, the virus that later in life can cause cancer.
Her initial point--where she should have stopped--was that this exposes Perry as a big-government, daddy-state operative who presents himself hypocritically as favoring less government. She had him pinned red handed, in action, governing by fiat no less, intruding in the lives of families and disregarding parental rights and prerogatives.
He weakly responded that he now regrets not having done this through the legislative process but impressively stood by his intention to help girls when they become women reduce their chances of getting cancer.
But Bachmann, having made her good Republican point, went further, claiming that the HPV vaccine has been shown to cause mental retardation.
The press the next day and through this week jumped all over her for again ignoring science. They and national pediatrics groups were quick to point out that this claim of hers was totally unfounded and that she was trying to get in another shot at Perry who appears to continue to be the frontrunner in spite of the HPV flap and his continuing to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. I guess that when it come to Perry the Republican base is in love and unshakable in their support.
What the press and those on the left generally failed to note is that her attack on Perry's inconsistency is less about governments requiring HPV vaccination than another flare up in the culture war that have been roiling the country since at least the 1960s.
This time about premarital sex.
Have you heard Michele Bachmann or any of her colleagues on the right railing about requiring measles or polio vaccinations? Not a one.
HPV is special to them because to be effective it has to be administered to young girls before they become sexually active. Thus, it's too late to wait until after they are married. I assume, if it would work, that Congresswoman Bachmann would be all right vaccinating 25-year-olds right after the wedding ceremony and before the honeymoon
Unspoken is the feeling disturbing to Bachmann and other fundamentalists that to inoculate 11 and 12-year-olds may not only help prevent cervical cancel but also gives them tacit permission to become sexually active.
Thus, in coming weeks and months, unless Perry becomes this fall's version of Donald Trump, we are likely to hear a great deal more about HPV. Listen between the lines to see if you, like me, sense we are talking more about adolescent sex and abstinence than big government, health, or parents' rights.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:07 AM
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