Akin, Mitt, and How One Gets Legitimately Raped

I know I'm a little late coming to the subject, and frankly, haven't been paying that much attention to the details, but over the years I've found that paying a lot of attention to the details when it comes politics really isn't very helpful. So long as you paid attention for too long at some point in your life, you pretty much know everything you need to know. Many would dispute such a claim, and yet I would maintain that the story with politics is much like the story with soap operas—

"General Hospital," for example. My wife had a little down time the other day and happened to land on GH, which she hadn't checked in on in over a year, she claims, and lo and behold, within a couple of minutes she was gasping: some character who'd done something over a year ago was doing it again, this time with a brunette ...

Anyway, handicapping politics, it's like riding a bike ...

Go back to any of my pre-elections blogs back in 2008. I was right about practically everything. Obama was going to win. He'd beat Hillary Clinton, for Christ's sake! He was going to clean up on John McCain, especially after the financial crisis hit ...

Obvious, and I'm not even that smart, or plugged in, and yet ...

Last January, I predicted that Romney would eventually emerge as the nominee for the Republicans—obviously—and that he would get trounced by Obama in the general election in November. Again, to me, for any number of reasons, this is obvious—as it is obvious to most thinking Republicans, who are privately very concerned that this year's ticket is going to not only lose, but be a flat out disaster for the party.

My Democratic friends, on the other hand, are mostly doing what they always do: wring their hands and worry that over half the voting population is going vote for someone like Mitt Romney. This despite the fact that Mitt Romney, not to mention the earnest Ayn Rand disciple who voted for nearly all of Dubya's budget busting policies back when it was popular to do so, Paul Ryan, are even poorer candidates than McCain and Palin were—which is to say that more gaffes, and yet not as fun, or funny, is a bad follow-up to 2008, and is going to lead to a result, regardless of what the economy does, that is going to cause some soul-searching in the Republican Party.

At least it should.

But hey, we were going to talk about rape, right? Not listen to me pontificate about politics.

Fine. So here's one reason (bear with me) why Romney, from a political standpoint, isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer: after being for a woman's right to decide what kinds of things happen or don't happen in her  womb before he was against it, he is now, according to my Twitter feed, straight from the convention, supposedly, in favor of women having a limited amount of say over what happens or doesn't happen in their wombs, but only in the case of rape and incest.

A much more reasonable stand, supposedly, than that radical right-winger Ryan, who thinks, and is on the record as saying, that abortion should be outlawed categorically. Never mind if Uncle Ned had relations with your 15-year-old daughter, whether he raped her, legimately or illegitimately ...

And here is where, I'm sorry, we have to pause, briefly—again—to define some terms that even if you had paid a great deal of attention to politics and pundits of late, you might still be confused on just what constitutes legitimate rape as opposed to the other kind.

Thus, so we are clear, legitimate rape is the kind that involves people like Freddie Krueger (is that how it's spelled?), which is to say, real monsters, killers, forcing themselves on you. In fact, most women who are legitimately raped either die or are left for dead afterwards, and that's how you know they were legitimately raped. Kind of like with the witches in Salem: if they didn't drown, they must be witches.

Which brings us to illegitimate rape. Which is basically the kind of rape that happens when you survive it and can still talk coherently and don't have any cuts or bruises or serious amounts of blood running out of somewhere. For instance, let's say you meet a big professional athlete for the first time and you think he's kind of cute, and therefore, since you didn't spit in his face or tell him to fuck off right away when he started chatting you up, you probably led him on, and then, well, he doesn't just want to have sex with you in the one hole, but all the others, too—and he's fucking huge, right? Well, unfortunately, that's still illegitimate rape, and he doesn't go to jail, and still gets to play his sport and make millions and be well thought of again, because, let's face it, you tried to kill yourself a couple of times in the past, over totally unrelated issues, but still ... if he'd really raped you, he'd have probably strangled you too, so you wouldn't tell anyone, right?

Or here's another example: let's say Biff and Muffy—Biff is a college freshman, and Muffy, say, is a high school senior—really like each other A LOT, and really want to do it, but unfortunately Muffy's parents, rather than buying her a horse, or sending her to a convent, bought her a pretty expensive promise ring, with diamonds and her birth stone, with the idea that if they bought her this ring she wouldn't have sex with anyone until she was married, and practically passed out after the reception ... and well, she could fuck then but not before.

Anyway, turns out the two one night when Mom and Dad are out having sushi, or maybe off in a hotel somewhere fucking themselves, can't control the rage of their young hormones, and then the condom breaks, and holy moly, lo and behold, in a couple of months they've got a situation on their hands. And Mommy and Daddy are pissed. Especially Daddy. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is off in the future, and that contrary to all my smug predictions, Romney and Ryan end up in the White House, and they appoint a couple more anti-abortion judges, who overrule Roe vs. Wade, and now we're back to either flying Muffy to Europe, or Canada, or to the Bahamas or Bermuda, or getting out the hanger, or ... Muffy taking a pass on her first year at Princeton to have a baby that would one day grow up to know that he or she came about because the condom broke, and Dad—Biff—well, he lost interest, funny how that works, or ... Muffy could come to understand, after significant pressure is applied by both her mother and father, but especially by her father, who has made a lot of fucking sacrifices and saved a lot of fucking money so she could go to Princeton and not be raising a kid straight out of high school, in their house, that Biff in fact raped her.

And from there ... Mother and Father and Muffy take the case to the newly established, tax-payer funded, Abortion Tribunals, where it would be decided based on standards hammered out after a great many committee meetings, by a select group of experts appointed by someone who may or may not have a womb or a vagina, and who, themselves, may or may not have either, or agendas, or be having a particularly good day for that matter, whether or not the accused—Biff—did in fact legitimately rape Muffy, thereby, possibly, allowing her to go off with a signed, notarized document allowing her to get a legal abortion done right here in the United States, if not necessarily at Planned Parenthood.

Which is why I like Ryan's approach better. If it's all about killing and love of the unborn, then you have to love Uncle Ned's fetus, too—and Biff's.

Even Freddie's.

And if you aren't willing to tell your daughter to suck it up and remind her that she after all shouldn't have had sex in the first place, let alone let Ned anywhere near her, or Biff play with her boobies (which she ought to know leads to other things), that she should have been more careful not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with monsters and condoms that don't break, without pepper spray or a .357 magnum ... and really, if she wouldn't have been born a girl in the first place none of this would be happening, she could lose interest, maybe write a check or two and walk away all the way to Princeton if she was lucky, but ... unfortunately, the law's the law, and too bad for you, Muffy ...

Seems fair, right? Consequences, baby. Tough love!

Still, while I can't say I'm an expert on the matter, and don't follow the subject as passionately as many do, while I'm busy raising boys, not girls, I'm inclined to think—in fact, go figure, it seems obvious to me—that if you aren't willing to look some young frightened girl in the eyes and make such pronouncements, that you ought to keep your mouth shut when it comes to someone else's young frightened girl ... and to women generally.

But what do I know? I haven't check my Twitter feed for hours ...

And wasn't Ayn Rand an atheist? All that Christian nonsense getting people to care for people they shouldn't and making a mess of things? Didn't I read that somewhere, back when I was paying more attention?