I Feel a Foul and Frigid Wind (Every time Rick Santorum Opens His Mouth)

8/2/2005

Acclaimed psychology professor Paul Rozin is an expert on the origin, evolution, and meaning of the emotion that we refer to as “disgust.” I’m grateful for his mastery of the subject because of the existence of Rick Santorum. That’s because the Senator evokes in me a level of antipathy that merits clinical observation and analysis.

If you caught Santorum’s boffo performance on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos last Sunday and tasted the bile rising in your throat, you too may be a candidate for this important clinical study.

I am holding out hope that we may yet discover a redeeming value in Pennsylvania’s junior senator. I’m thinking maybe we can find a way to militarize his smarminess and deploy him in Iraq as a weapon of mass revulsion.

But back to Sunday, and Santorum’s “This Week” appearance. He became unhinged upon being asked what in the hell he was talking about in his new book, “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good.” In case you’re among the tens of millions that have not had the chance to take in this didactic tome, know that Santorum resurrects the old saw about bra-burning bimbos on a crusade to degrade and humiliate the stay-at-home mothers of America.

Under withering interrogation ("can you name one or two of these radical feminists who are on this crusade?"), Santorum became flummoxed.

SANTORUM: Well, I mean, you know, you have–you go back to, what’s her name, well, Gloria Steinem, but I’m trying to remember – I can’t remember the woman’s name. It’s terrible. Anyway…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it’s kind of an important point. Because you paint this broad brush: radical feminists, village elders. Name one.

SANTORUM: There’s lots of– no, there’s lot’s of – well, Gloria Steinem. There’s one. I mean, there’s lots of writings out there…

Gloria Steinem? Gloria Steinem? Memo to Ricky: The 71-year old Steinem’s heyday was in the 1970’s and she’s not published a book in ten years.

Of course Santorum’s agenda really has nothing to do with beating up Steinem, it’s all about the most feared woman in America, Hillary Clinton, and his book’s title “It Takes a Family” is a not-so-veiled swipe at Clinton’s bestselling, “It takes a Village” in which she had the temerity to say that “children exist in the world as well as in the family [and] will only thrive if their families thrive and the whole of their society cares enough to provide for them.” Revolutionary stuff of the sort that only a right-wing nutjob like Santorum could twist into a threat to motherhood.

Sensing this, Stephanopoulos probed on.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you believe [Hillary Clinton] is a radical feminist?

SANTORUM: Yes, I do. I mean, read her work and what she’s done on children’s rights. I mean, that’s radical. I’d love to have a serious debate. If she’d like to have a serious debate about her view of how society should be ordered and structured–I believe her view is one that says government is top-down.

Odd that Santorum is calling out Sen. Clinton on the issue of “top-down” government intervention into the domain of the family. Especially since he recently joined with her to introduce something called the “Children and Media Research Advancement Act” which aims to spend lots of government money to produce information that the government can then use to tell parents to tell their children to put down their Xboxes and get their lazy asses out on the playground.

Of course if you are looking for consistency in Rick’s rhetoric about keeping government out of family business, keep looking. It’s like the quest for the Holy Grail.

Take, for example, his demogogic swandive into the Terri Schiavo fiasco a couple months back. To assuage concerns that Big Brother would not become a partner in end-of-life decisions, Stantorum stood on the floor of the United States Senate and embraced an amendment that limited the Schiavo bill to the Schiavo case, saying: “It applies only to her, to no one else. It sets no precedent. Thanks to Senator Wyden’s amendment, it sets no precedent for any other action.”

Days later, basking in the TV lights in front of Schiavo’s Florida hospice, Santorum sang from a different hymnbook, and told the adoring crowd that “I wanted to make sure that there were adequate safeguards in place and that’s why I would be supportive of some sort of broader piece of legislation.”

It seems Santorum only wants government to run your life when he’s running the government. And this is principle among the many, many reasons the man evokes such a sense of distrust and disgust when I witness his hypocrisy in action and imagine the horror of him being inaugurated President in 2009.

Professor Rozin theorizes that “disgust evolves culturally and develops from a system to protect the body from harm to a system to protect the soul from harm.”

And based on this theory I can only conclude that the best way to save our souls is to ring up Bob Casey, Ricky’s opponent in next year’s senatorial election, and offer our alms and best wishes.

Copyright © Eyewitness Muse, All Rights Reserved