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October 26, 2006Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhoodMichael J. Fox is going to do a couple of minutes with Katie Couric this evening on the CBS Evening News. In considering what that will be like, I realize that 30-minute broadcast news shows are essentially pointless. In the space of a few minutes, Couric cannot be more penetrating than a prop knife, and between greetings, sympathetic murmurings and a background briefing to get viewers up to speed (and time to thwack the deserving Rush Limbaugh) there will be no time to ask a question that someone really needs to ask Mr. Fox: If your ads are not meant merely to generally paint Republicans as heartless science-hating bastards content to see you suffer, why did you make an ad similar similar to the McCaskill one for the Maryland race, supporting Cardin…WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT ESCR? I am sure Couric will not ask that question with the excuse that there is no time. Which begs the this question: aside from making money, what’s the freaking point of a nightly news broadcast, if you can’t ask a question that gets to the heart of a thing? Like Betsy Newmark, I basically think - from what I’ve read - that Limbaugh was very foolish in his initial response to the McCaskill ad by Fox. I’m not excusing his bloviating, but I do think I understand why Limbaugh lost it. He saw, once again, a Democrat gambit that was built on establishing “absolute moral authority” on the suffering of an individual simply because that individual was advocating an agreeable position (ala, for example Cindy Sheehan). Just as, during the heyday of Cindy Sheehan’s presidential stalking one never saw news stories profiling grieving mothers of dead soldiers who support the war, you will never see a Parkinson’s Sufferer such as the Rev. Billy Graham, being asked his thoughts about Embryonic Stem Cell Research. No one ever asked Pope John Paul II about it, either. They wouldn’t give the agreeable answers, you know. It’s very unlikely that the GOP would ever create an ad using - fer instance - Billy Graham, or Muhammed Ali - to rebut the Fox ad, but perhaps it should. Maybe the Rev. Graham should make such an ad and proclaim that he’d rather deal with the cards he has been handed than destroy human embryos - beings of identifiably human species - to get out of his situation. THAT would certainly enliven things, wouldn’t it? Don’t you think? The Democrats would be filled with umbrage at the implied message within, that they are craven and selfish and faithless. PLEASE NOTE: I do not call Mr. Fox craven, selfish or faithless for wanting and hoping for a cure - I am merely positing a theory of how such an ad would be perceived. I will, though, call Fox a little disingenuous in how he is portraying the research and the politics of the issue he has raised. Such an ad would provoke a response that would be ugly, ugly, ugly, for sure…but it might make the Democrats understand what it feels like to have their positions and beliefs so portrayed. It might, finally, put an end to the “scorched earth” crap that has ruled politics since…well…1992. And it might finally blow an everlasting hole in the “sympathetic victim” political ploy - one clearly promulgated by the lawyers who have overrun politics. The “sympathetic victim” sways juries, so he will sway voters, too. It’s time to stop it. I don’t want public policy built on the emotionalism of our own tender sensibilities any more than I want a good but misguided, feisty email opponant to tell me he doesn’t want to fight me any more because now that he has seen my childhood victimization he can’t dislike me so much; “now you’re more human to me,” he says. You know what I say? Screw that! If two years and almost 4,000 posts have not amply displayed my humanity - if I cannot be “fully human” to this guy until I am given some sort of credibility via victimhood, then it seems to me he (and his ilk) needs to consider that he has put entirely too much faith in defining people by convenient labels (Conservative! Liberal! Christianist! Victim!) rather than by the content and exposition of a persons character. The sufferings or privileges of a person’s past should have no bearing on whether or not you will deign to give them an ordinary measure of respect, and victimhood should never confer instant credibility (or unquestioning moral authority) on anyone, and I will not accept the empathetic and well-meaning gesture of my correspondant. I am still the exact same person I was last week, when he considered me more than worth a good tussle, and I will be damned if anyone is going to kid-glove and soft-focus me. Put up yer dukes, pally…you and me ain’t done fighting by a long shot, and don’t you dare freaking pity me and just roll over, or I’ll hammer you senseless. And that is precisely the issue with Michael J. Fox. He is misinforming a lot of people on a serious scientific issue, and he is hoping to sway their thinking based upon nothing but their sympathies. And he cannot be fought with because to fight with him is to be “mean” and unfeeling. So, we’re supposed to just lay down and concede, deciding that “because we feel badly for Fox, everything he says is unassailable and only heartless bastards would dare to ask him straight questions.” If you want to enter an arena of ideas, you can’t stuff your glove with “don’t you feel bad for me” brass knuckles and then call it a fair match. You cannot sucker-punch your opponant by playing on a ref’s sympathies. And I’m a little disappointed in Fox, that he is content to do so. And I’m disappointed in the rest of the people who are content to let him. Sorry, but to my way of thinking, emotionally surrendering to Michael J. Fox’s ads simply because he’s suffering is to show him - and our whole democratic process - tremendous disrespect. And hey, I should know, right? You should listen to me, because I’ve suffered too…so I must know what I’m talking about. On a more satirical note PPB has a parody of the original Fox ad. Pretty irreverent. Crossposted at: Captains Quarters Blog http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/10/26/fox-on-couric-tonight/trackback/ 14 Responses to “Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhood” |
October 26th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
I’ll still battle you anchoress :-).
I think the way to combat the emotional appeal would be with a wave of facts, such as you’ve presented. Something that sets the tone as “it’s a shame this is happening to him- but there are better ways to cure than what he’s proposing. You could even summarize in “sound bite” isms the research and where it’s coming from. DON’T mention the religious/spiritual aspects-that’s an appeal to emotionalism too, you know. Just that there are better, more promising therapies which, with investment, contain far greater promise.
October 26th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Well, thanks, Steph, I’ll battle you, too…except that’s hard, cuz I loves ya so much! But to pursue your point. You contend that bringing religion into a question emotionalizes it. I think that might be true in some cases, not others…my question to you is, as someone who does not believe that an embryo is a human being, does my statement that an embryo is “a being of indenifiably human species” hit an emotionalist button with you? Because I would think not, but I’m curious.
October 26th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I’d like her to ask:
“Mr. Fox, did you go off your Parkinson’s meds before your appearance tonight?”
October 26th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Rush did back-peddle somewhat afterward. The fact is you don’t see Fox on a television show exhibitng that much movement. Only when he’s showing, for whatever reason, what the disease does - untreated, I believe - does he move so much. So for me, yes, he’s playing off our sympathies for a political purpose.
I wish him well, and hope a cure is discovered soon. But his one of own advisors supports ASCR and not ESCR. He needs to pay attention.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Anchoress, you are awesome!
I cannot help but contemplate that this emotional zeal exhibited has as much to do with a wholly secular mindset as anything else. If you don’t believe in God and a hereafter, then you cannot accept that your suffering here can be but a prelude to an everlasting life that is painfree and glorious after your death.
And so, the secular left fights tooth and nail, and by any means to hand (fair or foul) to maintain their tenuous hold on this life which is, after all, to a person of faith, only a way station.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
What a wonderful dissection!
The fundamental virtue that the appeal to emotion ignores is that of Prudence (which has nothing to do with caution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence) Prudence is the first of the cardinal virtues (for more details, read the foremost Thomist: Josef Pieper http://www.amazon.com/Four-Cardinal-Virtues-Josef-Pieper/dp/0268001030)
Without this, rational man is lost, for without it there is no respect for what is or what will result. The fundamental problem with the left, which I’ve been watching from close quarters since I was 10, is that (for them) to speak good is to be good, whereas it is the right who are required to be the party-poopers. They get the lines like: that won’t work; get real; what’s the evidence; fine words butter no parsnips and similarly boring and practical sentiments, whereas the left get to emote all over the place. This, by the way, is why there are so many in Hollywood and television.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Anchoress,
I loves ya too
To put it simply, yes. Emotional in the sense that, by stating it as “indeniably human” is an subtle way of implying that it then should get all of the same rights as humans. Whether or not that is the intent, I think that’s how it would be taken-which brings it back to the old right to life/right to chose question, which is, on both sides, largely an emotional issue.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Changing The Debate On Stem Cells
Right now, those who support embryonic stem cell research, generally, those on the Left, are attempting to change the debate, just like they attempted with illegal immigration.
When the debate on illegal immigration boiled over, those who supported ill…
October 26th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
The Michael J. Fox ad controversy: one more on a long list of shameless attempts by the left to stifle the debate
First, I’d like to compliment Brian at Iowa Voice for his post on this issue, which I think is pretty definitive. Only one minor quibble I have with it: a few people are attacking Fox beyond discussing how misleading the ad was, the merits of hi…
October 27th, 2006 at 2:00 am
Fox v Heaton in the Stem Cell Debate
My recent blog has generated a lot of heat for my position on Fox using his illness to promote certain democratic candidates. Also in play however is the anti-stem cell response featuring among other Patricia Heaton. The ad featured 5…
October 27th, 2006 at 9:22 am
[...] The Anchoress (and others) are posting about the hypocrisy of Fox’s ad for Ben Cardin -The Anchoress » Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhood. It also has been reported in the Washington Times that Senator Talent of Missouri supports non-embryonic stem cell research. This effort by Michael J. Fox appears more and more to be about politics, and not science - even questionable science. [...]
October 27th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Michael J Fox, Missouri, and Amendment 2
I didn’t have a lot of reaction to Michael J Fox’s ad for embryonic stem cell research and Claire McCaskill when I first saw it. Surprise, surprise, surprise, a political ad that doesn’t tell the whole truth. Personally, I found…
October 27th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Friday Afternoon Links
National Health Service update. Protein. Equally poor care for all, as only government could provide.Religion is thriving around the world. Atheists are puzzled. Dinesh D’SouzaDirty old toad-suckin’ dog. NPR. Shoot, I ain’t sucked a toad since I was…
October 29th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
[...] ANCHORESS: Michael J Fox fighting for bad science; Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhood …. (theanchoressonline) [...]