House of Eratosthenes

It’s thrust into the news once again, as Rush Limbaugh is in hot water — somebody’s definition of “hot water,” somebody, somewhere — over his “insensitive” comments about Parkinson’s Disease sufferer Michael J. Fox.

His body visibly wracked by tremors, actor Michael J. Fox appears in a political ad that was the subject of widespread discussion on Monday after conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed Fox was “either off his medication or acting.”

A victim of Parkinson’s disease, Fox speaks out in the ad for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, who supports embryonic stem cell research.

“I think this is exploitative in a way that’s unbecoming of either Claire McCaskill or Michael J. Fox,” Limbaugh said on his syndicated show.

On his Web site Tuesday, Limbaugh appeared to back away from his accusation.

“All I’m saying is I’ve never seen him the way he appears in this commercial for Claire McCaskill,” says Limbaugh. “So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act, especially since people are telling me they have seen him this way on other interviews and in other television appearances.”

In response to this CBS news story, I did something really funny and strange and weird. Hey, this is the House of Eratosthenes…it’s named after a guy who ran around peeking in water wells, eventually figuring out the earth is round, and how round the earth is, in an age where conventional wisdom said the earth was flat. House of Eratosthenes. Not “House of Some Guy Who Believes Everything He’s Told.”

So I did my funny thing. I clicked the button on my trackball. I clicked open Rush Limbaugh’s website to see what he had to say for himself. Yeah that’s right…I went to the place CBS said they got their information, and gave it a gander. Silly me.

Michael J. Fox Is Not Infallible;
He’s Just the Latest Victim Used by the Democrat
October 24, 2006

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the big issues in the Missouri Senate race — as you know, we touched on it yesterday — is the Michael J. Fox commercial which is entirely misleading and which is in itself an attack ad, and it is filled with disinformation about embryonic stem cell research and how Jim Talent wants to criminalize it. Embryonic stem cell research — and, by the way, Fox is doing similar commercials in Maryland now for Ben Cardin against Michael Steele. But embryonic stem cell research is currently legal and completely unrestricted in both Maryland and Missouri and in the vast majority of other states. It’s largely personal and institutional ethics that keep scientists from cloning research.

The debate we’re having is almost always about governmental funding or radical measures like the one currently on the ballot in Missouri, which is Amendment 2, which would write a right to cloning into the state constitution of Missouri, and it’s one of these cleverly worded things that makes you: if you vote yes, you’re voting no, and vice-versa. So we’ll talk more about the Michael Fox situation because, as I knew yesterday, the Drive-By Media, including things like Inside Edition, are all panting (panting) to make something out of this that isn’t. We will address that, but Michael J. Fox entered the political arena long ago. He became a US citizen in 2000.

He’s from Canada. He was active in the Kerry campaign in 2004 and he’s entered the political arena again with this series of commercials for Ben Cardin in Maryland and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. One of the tactics the Democrats have — and they’ve used this consistently. They bring forth people who they think are victims for the purposes of exploiting them, and when you bring forth — for example, if you’re talking about embryonic stem cell research, and you want to convey the notion that the Republicans are opposed to it, and in effect they’re for people having Parkinson’s Disease. Make no mistake that’s what the intent is.

None of that, so far as I can tell, directly contradicts what’s been presented to me in the CBS piece.

But it makes some great points worth noting.

Not that any of it changes my position on stem cell research. I have no religious objections to it whatsoever, nor do I have any personal beef with using up taxpayer dollars on the research. But at the same time, I fully appreciate there are other taxpayers, who do.

Nobody, with any scientific credentials, or with a name and reputation worth defending, is willing to put their nuts on the block and say “Michael J. Fox needs stem cell research to cure his condition.” Nobody is willing to say Michael J. Fox is doomed forevermore, to anything, without that kind of research. Nobody’s willing to say Michael J. Fox enjoys some kind of hope for his future condition, that is dependent on this kind of research.

So the way I figure it, people like Michael J. Fox need this kind of research, just about as much as your average Catholic needs a statue of the Virgin Mary erected on the steps of City Hall. Right? Oh sure, if the research does work out, it would mean a whole lot more to him than that…but nobody’s willing to say that’s the way things will go, or even that there’s a decent chance that’s the way things might go. Scientifically, this research is nothing more than a political prop.

And a statue of the Virgin Mary on the steps of City Hall, while it would be pleasing to the Catholic voter, it would be deeply offensive to the Jewish, Muslim or Atheist voter. (Do Atheists get a capital “A”? Do they want one? I dunno.) Except…I’m really not quite so sure Jews and Muslims hold it as a sacred belief, that they’d be committing some kind of mortal sin by tolerating the statue.

The Judeo-Christian voter who values prenatal human life for religious reasons, is being asked to look the other way while babies are being ground up. Oh yeah, reality is a little more scientific and refined than that crude metaphor. But not meaningfully so.

And that’s how I see it. Use a sick person like Michael J. Fox to stump for Democrats who support embryonic stem cell research…or use Christopher Reeve…or anybody else. It’s no different from saying “So-and-so is a Catholic, and he’d really like to see a big marble cross in the rotunda of the Supreme Court.” It’s no different. Not unless someone wants to insinuate Michael J. Fox actually needs the research to take place. And nobody’s willing to come out and say that. They only imply it.

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On Embryonic Stem Cell ResearchTuesday, October 24th, 2006

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006