Santorum: Abortion Cooties!

[phantom power]

I think one of my all time favorite rhetorical tics of conservative politicians is trying to convey crap they picked up in Christian right propaganda mills without really spelling out what they’re talking about or where they got it—for fear of the media following up, no doubt—and inevitably coughing up something that causes observers to scratch their heads and ask what the fuck they’re talking about. (Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments being a perfect example: It took thousands of words from multiple journalists digging around in his past to finally explicate what the hell he was stabbing at.) Rick Santorum coughed up a real gem in this genre the other day, where he accused—at a Students for Life event, no less—the pro-choice side of being obsessed. To be fair, he sees this as a virtue, but it’s also utterly laughable to think that right wingers suffer from a lack of obsession with women are having unauthorized sex.

But what’s hilarious about this is that he coughs up some garbled, unintelligible nonsense about showers:

“They make it uncomfortable for students who come to Austin to shower at a Young Men’s Christian Association, YMCA, gym, because they live it,” he said. “Because they live it. They’re passionate, they’re willing to do and say uncomfortable things in mixed company. They’re willing to make the sacrifice at their business because they care enough.”

....

...As anyone who knows the Christian right can attest, it’s really, really common for them to run around being aggressive, harassing and provocative, and when they are held accountable, to preen about how they’re being oppressed for their faith and isn’t this a free country and wah wah wah? One reason they do this is because they believe that’s what liberals do—that we routinely make up claims of sexism and racism so that we get our sexism/racism checks in the mail or something—and that justifies this blatantly dishonest behavior in their minds. It’s super ugly, and one reason that one should be wary of the “both sides” mentality in the media, because the behaviors in this case are absolutely not parallel. That’s why, when I read this, I immediately thought that what likely happened was that they went into the showers and started proselytizing, and when people understandably argued with them or asked them to take it elsewhere, they responded in an ugly fashion. We are, after all, talking about high school and college age conservatives—think James O’Keefe during his pimp videos and plotting to kidnap journalists days—so not exactly the most evenly tempered crowd.

...Instead, it seems more like the Y, who I may remind you believes their mission is to “put Christian Principles into practice”, simply believed that the admission price to use the showers should be that Students for Life not use their facilities to try to provoke debate over the issue of abortion rights. It seems that if the anti-choicers could have shown up and taken a shower without picking fights over this, it probably would have been just fine. Instead, Santorum is basically telling them that they need to be more aggressive about picking fights in inappropriate situations, because—he claims—the other side is doing it. That we are not—personally speaking, I have been in many a gym and community center in my life and so far have started zero fights over abortion rights in that time—doesn’t matter. It’s the pretext to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is pick fights and then preen like they’re victims when they’re held accountable for it.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/07/abortion-cooties/