GOP attempts to quiet dissent won’t work
By Alan Chartock
Mon, Feb 7, 2005 4:42 pm

Here are some more letters that I might have gotten if anyone had written them.
Dear Doctor: I really adore you. You have the courage to call them like I see them. You agree with me, and that makes you great. My boyfriend, Richard, doesn’t share my sentiments. Anyway, I recently saw a conservative website that shills for private ownership and greed. They referred to you as a “boot licker” because of your radio interview with a wonderful upstate Republican congressman, Sherwood Boehlert, who seems to have grave questions about President Bush’s plans to revise Social Security. My boyfriend, Dick, is a stockbroker and he thinks the president is right. My question: Does it take a lot of courage for a Republican congressman like Boehlert to oppose the President? Another: Is he right to do so?
Please just sign me Manhandra in Manhattan.
Dear Manhandra in Manhattan: Sherwood Boehlert is one of those rare, powerful politicians who does what is right, not what is self-serving. President Bush’s plan to revise Social Security borders on political criminality. How many people do you know who owe the dignity of their last years to Social Security? I can tell you that my mom and dad can be counted in that number. Bush seems to want it all for himself and his rich friends. He wants to divert a good deal of what should be there for you no matter what, into that game of chance we call the stock market. The bottom line is this: If you retire when the market is down you are in big trouble. Right now, because of Bush, the market is having a lot of hiccups. We have a huge national debt, the greatest in history. People like the Chinese communists are holding our bonds, and the market doesn’t like it. Let me tell you, I think I know why Dick likes it. All that money from Social Security will be forced into the stock market which will simply make stocks rise in price, if not value, and he’ll make out like a bandit. They aren’t going to stop at that. In order to “save the program” they are going to make you wait longer to get the money that you have been paying into Social Security all your life.
What’s got the Republicans wary about Boehlert and some of his moderate Republican colleagues is the fear that they will break ranks with the radical Republicans such as Majority Leader Tom DeLay and that the lousy plan to basically kill Social Security will be history. That is exactly what should happen. This man, Bush, calls himself a “compassionate conservative” but all I see is one mean dude. By the way, dump Richard and find yourself someone who thinks about someone besides himself.
Dear Doctor: What is your problem? You are nothing but a bleeding-heart liberal and I have seen you take positions that are oh so self-seeking. I happen to know that you are the president of a network of public radio stations. I have heard that you are very angry at Gov. George E. Pataki for lowering the amount of money the state’s public broadcasters receive. Hey, the only people who listen to public radio are liberals like you. The rest of us listen to geniuses like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. Why should the government give money to public radio and TV?
Just say I’m Bertha in the Bronx.
Dear Bertha: Thanks for your letter. Think of it this way. Public radio and television are like the opera. In fact we play the opera and a lot of other things that you would not get anywhere else. We also play in-depth news that simply is not available on the commercial band. We feature news from places like the BBC so Americans might know what other people are thinking. As for Pataki and his ilk like Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, these guys do not really want you to have other sources than Rush and his fat-mouthed cronies. That’s why he cuts the public radio and television services. At least this time it’s across the board. The last time he tried it [it didn’t work] he just targeted the stations I run. People were really mad and gave more money during our fund drives than ever before in a quicker time. By the way, 90 percent of the money that we do get comes from people who want the best in music and public affairs. When the politicians who can’t control public broadcasting get angry, they try to kill us. Wouldn’t you? Of course you would, just read your own letter.


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- posted by Raymond @ 2/10/2005 01:55:00 PM

 
Preserving the right to choose
I, Publius
Preserving the right to choose
By Alan Chartock
Special to The Eagle

The other day, Roselle and I went to see "Vera Drake," an English movie set in 1950 when the world was still recovering from the Second World War. Mrs. Drake is portrayed as a virtual saint who brings goodness to everything she touches. One of the things she does is terminate the pregnancies of young women who "get in trouble." While she is using a syringe and "helping" her girls, the children of the rich were sent to psychiatrists. With enough money changing hands, the doctor would declare that a pregnant woman was suffering from mental illness and should have a safe, sanitary abortion in a hospital. Not so for the children of the poor.

What was happening in England at the time was very much like what was happening here in the United States. I had friends who were forced to undergo illegal abortions and the terror surrounding them was palpable. Of course, now a woman who wants an abortion can have one, assuming she can find a doctor courageous enough to perform one and provided some whack job with a rifle doesn't decide that God told him to shoot the obstetrician in an effort to dissuade others from doing the same thing.

This is an issue that calls for political courage and many of our politicians who know what they would want for their daughters are gutless wonders. But I've seen some real courage. I was there in 1970 when the New York State Assembly, by a single vote, cast by a single upstate Republican named George Michaels, legalized abortion in New York state. I watched as a courageous Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and made a woman's right to choose in this country a reality.

If there is a single thing I believe in more than any other, it is a woman's right to choose. We must never return to the days of back-alley, life-threatening procedures because some self-appointed moralist declares that even if a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, a woman must see her pregnancy through. We now have a president of the United States who would deny women a right to an abortion. We have a bunch of lunatics in the Republican-controlled Congress of the United States who would do the same thing and we have a Supreme Court, which, with the possible change of a single vote, might take us back to the Dark Ages.

Of course, more recent medical advancements may change all of that. We now have access to the "morning-after pill," which will allow a woman to prevent a pregnancy. I don't have to tell you how the Darth Vader forces have worked to put a stop to dissemination of that pill. I don't have to tell you how the government of the United States has passed laws that would stop us from providing birth control information to countries that are so overpopulated that families couldn't possibly feed their children. We have organized religious groups that suggest that politicians who favor a right to choose should be excommunicated, and bishops who tell them that they should "burn in hell forever" for their courage and tolerance. Why is it that in this country there are still so many who would impose their moral code on those of us, a clear majority, who do not agree with them?

Vera Drake was symptomatic of her time. She couldn't stand by and watch the suffering of helpless people. You can only imagine what courage that took in 1950. It still takes courage for doctors to perform abortions in the United States or for clinics to provide that service. Why? Because in this country there is still a culture that permits bigotry and threats, to the extent that doctors, afraid for their lives, just won't do it.

Every person in our community should watch this film and feel the pain and depression of that dark time when abortion was illegal and people were victimized by bigots who imposed on the rest of society their standards of when life begins. I knew women who were subjected to this reign of terror. They walk among us and when pro-choice organizations send them requests for money every year so that they can fight the bigots, they write a check and send it in. It is only when today's men and women understand what it was like before Roe v. Wade that George Bush and his ilk will be stopped in their tracks.



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Alan Chartock, a Great Barrington resident, is president and CEO of WAMC Northeast Public Radio and a professor of communications at SUNY-Albany. His web site is www.alanchartock.com




- posted by Raymond @ 2/10/2005 01:53:00 PM