Surely, some people are just too stupid to run for government?

I am of course directing my blog this week at the Missouri Representative for Senate Todd Aiken. If you don’t know who this guy is, he is the Republican who this week raised two highly contentious issues that one can only guess Mitt Romney didn’t want to have bought up with only a few months to go before the November 6 2012 elections. On top of this he also did this whilst setting his statements against the most ludicrous and ill-founded science known to man.

Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that so many in the land of the free are opposed to abortion. To me a women’s right to choose is a fundamental freedom, and so I often find myself bemused by the controversy that this causes in the States.

This blog however is not about the prolife argument. I am not a politician, nor do I wish to be one. I am also not an American. This blog is about the absurdity of Todd Aiken, and his comments, and about how he can possibly be taken seriously as a Representative for Senate following on from what he’s said.

I like to think that the PM and MPs in this country are relatively intelligent, after all they have important decisions to make – you know, like what to spend their expenses on! Similarly I like to think that Congressmen and Senators in the US are intelligent, again they have important roles to fill – I’ve watched the West Wing, and also that debt ceiling isn’t getting any lower.

So you’d think, that when voting in a Representative for Senate or Congress the State doing the voting will want to choose a candidate that they feel will surely not only represent them well but who can also do the job. I’m not persuaded that I’d vote for a man who clearly has no idea how basic biology works, in fact I might want to see a transcript from his high school days. Did he even go to high school, and if so did take biology?

Todd Aiken said – with a certainty that despite his back pedalling has made it hard to retract from; that a woman’s body would shut down and prevent a pregnancy from happening in the case of a legitimate rape. Now aside from all the certified doctors, pharmacists, health practitioners, nurses, biology teachers, and anyone with common sense in every country around the world suddenly and collectively saying “huh!” You also heard the same thing from voodoo doctors, witch doctors, and the whole cast of the TV series Doctors!

I honestly didn’t still think that it was possible that people still thought this kind of thing, much less said it out loud. Yet for some of prominence to say it, for someone seeking a position of responsibility and leadership to say it, well I was astounded and incensed. Not only was what he said biological balderdash, but I can only assume that it was also unimaginably hurtful to any woman that has found herself pregnant as a result of the horrific ordeal of rape

Let’s not forget though, Todd Aiken made another faux par. He also used the word legitimate when determining when a women’s body would shut down or not during the course of a rape.

I’m just thinking about our judicial system now, and I can’t help thinking that the courts have been a bit slow over the years. In fact what have they been doing? Why have they been trying to struggle with evidence, and all the difficulties of he said she said. Judges and Lawyers have obviously never realised that Mother Nature, has already resolved this highly contentious issue for them. Who needs CSI? All you need to know according to Aiken is; is the rape victim pregnant?

I shouldn’t be flippant about this in all seriousness though, because what Todd Aiken has said is detrimental to all the work that prosecutors, counsellors working with victims of rape, and anyone who works with victims of rape going to court, do on an everyday basis to put the people who commit this atrocity behind bars. Yet I have read that apparently that Representative Aiken is in meltdown. I wonder if that’s the body’s natural response for when the mouth has made a legitimately stupid comment.

The title of my blog was; surely, some people are just too stupid to run for government? I don’t know the man, and I honestly wouldn’t wish to, but there is a chance that he isn’t stupid at all. It’s possible that he is instead simply ignorant, but regardless. Stupid or ignorant, I feel it matters none. To my mind, neither of these seem like the qualities that you’d want to vote for if you were selecting a representative for Senate for your State. 

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

It’s a good job Accurist weren’t the sponsors of the closing ceremony!

Now according to my television planner, last night’s closing ceremony was supposed to be done and dusted by 11.30pm. Yet at 12.10am the fireworks hadn’t even started – oops!

I have to say by 11.30 I’d honestly had enough, but I’d felt that I’d already invested two and half hours of my life so I was adamant that I was going to see it through. I also did really want to see Take That, and I was eventually disappointed that they only did one song. Although possibly for the best – was Jason Orange feeling okay? He seemed to acting very odd and not in line with what the other three were doing. Or maybe he was just doing a little bit of show boating, a quip there for anyone who was tuned into channel four for the evening and was watching the Wedding Crashers!

Okay, so the closing ceremony. This morning I’m trying to be objective. I’ve had the night to sleep on it and this morning I’m trying to evaluate it fairly.

Overall I think it was fun, a little weird in places, too long, and once again quintessentially British. Although I was absolutely dumbfounded when McCartney wasn’t rolled out at the end, isn’t that what we do? Perhaps not, perhaps Queen were wrong and the show can’t always go! At some point it does have to come to an end, and perhaps Seb Coe was worried that if the closing ceremony went on any longer Boris Johnson would pull the plug siting the boroughs noise restriction hours.

A couple of my favourite parts of the closing ceremony came from two of our musical best who are no longer with us; the great John Lennon and the brilliant Freddy Mercury. How awesome (please when you read the word awesome can you imagine David Hasselhoff – aka the Hoff, on America’s Got Talent saying awesome, as American’s just say it so much better than us Brits,) was it when the audience participated with the recordings of Freddy Mercury?

I personally thought it was amazing! Actually, I thought it was even better than that. The man was truly something else and is a legend. Brian May and Roger Taylor were also pretty cool, but I don’t think they needed Jesse J. We will Rock You is so iconic that I thought she brought nothing to the stage, apart from in my opinion a huge fashion faux par.

I thought that The Who did well closing out the closing ceremony, but I can’t help feeling the McCartney will be feeling disgruntled about that! I thought that the Spice Girls were okay, although I feared a little for their safety when their taxi’s started belting them around the stadium. I mean come on fellas, these ladies are now in their late thirties early forties and most of them are mums! Yet credit where it’s due, I thought Victoria Beckham looked very good. As for that matter did Kate Moss. In fact Kate Moss has now looked that good since, well, actually pretty much since I can remember and I’m starting to find that annoying in a ‘does she have special genes’ kind of way?

What else? Oh, the Pet Shop Boys! That part of the evening mixed in with Madness’s performance made me feel like that moment when you wake up and you can hear your alarm going off but you can’t quite place where you are! That goes in my ‘a little weird in places’ category, as does Annie Lennox’s performance, but I doubt that will surprise many people reading this. One Direction made me want to vomit. They are just so sickly sweet it actually hurts my teeth, but in fairness I suppose that might be how my age group felt when Take That were big the first time around!

George Michael, Fat Boy Slim, Eric Idle, and Russell Brand I’m putting into quintessentially British, with a slight cross over into a little weird. Ray Davies though, I’m not sure what to say. I love the Kinks, but I think his day as lead vocalist may have come and gone.

So that’s it on my summary and opinion of the closing ceremony. It was not all bad, but not all good. I’m so British! And on that I’ll just quickly add that at least it didn’t rain, but it is awfully close today that I think we could do with a shower.

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk