Big Daddy

Dear Big Daddy,
Any thoughts on the recent CRP convention?
– Vaccinated in Visalia

Dear V,
I know where you’re going with this: Michele Bachmann thinks the HPV vaccine causes retardation.

Correction: “thinks.”

Now I will admit that Bachmann might have some insight into what makes someone retarded. The next question, of course, would be, “Does it also make your eyes do that crazy thing?”

To wit, Bachmann has been talking about a woman who told her that the HPV vaccine make her daughter retarded. Later, speaking to CNN, she helpfully added: “I wasn’t speaking as a doctor. I wasn’t speaking as a scientist.”

No one was accusing you.

But really, what can I add to all this? I’m speechless, for once. It’s satire-proof. Well played, Rep. Bachmann.

The American Academy of Pediatrics quickly responded by saying, “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement.” Which seemed a bit unnecessary, since we already knew it was made by a Republican presidential candidate not named Jon “My numbers go down every time I open my mouth and say something reasonable” Huntsman.

I will give Bachmann some credit. She and Ron Paul were the only candidates who bothered to show up at the CRP shindig in Lala land. A couple of the other candidates were in the state, of course, but they were just trying to remember what pin number to punch into Charles Munger’s keyboard interface.

Bachmann, she’s not about the money. She’s just looking for another place to say something crazy.

Am I being mean? Really? Meaner than a hysterectomy? Cause that’s pretty mean.

Now when Jenny McCarthy got her online Ph.D. in science from Batpoop U. (Go Guanos!), we could forgive her because she was just a Playboy bunny and an “actress.” If anyone listened to her – which, apparently thousands did – we could still blow it off and call them all crazy.

But crazy is winning lots of misguided hearts and addled minds these days. And don’t get me wrong, it ain’t just Reeps. I kept my head under a pillow the entire week of 9/11 because I didn’t want to hear anything else about how there were no planes and they never hit the World Trade Center and it was all thermite bombs and Photoshop.

And then there’s all those liberal parents in Marin and Berkeley who think vaccines are going to turn their kids into Bill Gates minus the SAT scores. I wish I could go all Christmas Carol on them and show them the ghosts of polio past. Cause that shit is gangsta. Whooping cough and diphtheria don’t mess around. Hint: there was a reason people used to have so many kids. Cause you only got to keep about half of them. I used to think we were one upper-middle class-urban-epidemic from that idea going away, but now I’m not so sure.

 
Still, it’s in the party of Lincoln and Bill Buckley where crazy has gained the most currency. “Fourscore and seven years” has morphed into Rick Perry comparing himself to Galileo. No Rick, you’re the guy threatening to burn Galileo at the stake if he ever comes to Texas (and touting all the government jobs you’ve created for lumberjacks).

I’m not a scientist or a doctor either (though I’m happy to play the latter), but I’m actually willing to listen to what real ones say. So listen close: vaccines do not cause autism or retardation. No one is trying to give the HPV vaccine to 11-year-old girls so they can have sex. (Yuck. Shudder. Gross.)The idea is to do it long before they have sex. Which, parents of teens, is probably going to happen(ed) long before you want, think or know. Deal with it.

And when it does come time that teenagers are going to have sex, however many years (hopefully several) after that, no one is sitting around waiting for your approval. Ain’t nobody out there wearing a “WWBD?” (What would Bachman do?) chastity belt.

Unless it’s Marcus Bachmann during Pride Week. I hear the sequins on that thing looked fabulous.