Mothers, Lock Up Your Gay Sons!

Recent reports indicate that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is standing by a 15-year-old statement in which he favored "isolating" individuals with HIV. Said Huckabee:

We need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.... It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.

Huckabee also suggested that we were all being a tad bit too PC back in the '90s.

While I can't dispute that the '90s were an uber PC time that I'm glad to see gone, not locking up AIDS patients isn't a matter of being politically correct. Huckabee invokes quarantining of days past to claim a precedent, but what he fails to realize (then and now) is that there's a big difference between, say, the Bubonic Plague and AIDS. Or TB and AIDS. Or Bird Flu and AIDS.

The likelihood that any of us are going to accidentally contract HIV by getting on the subway with an AIDS patient is incredibly slim. Or, at the very least, you'd have to be trying pretty hard. But if I were on the Metro with a Bubonic Plague victim, someone with consumption, or a convalescing chicken, I would probably get the disease. That is to say, before we run around deciding to lock people up, how about checking about whether or not a disease could be transmitted through casual contact.

I've watched enough Mr. Belvedere to have seen the episode where Wesley's little friend has AIDS. Mr. Belvedere calmly explained to Wesley that it was okay to have the little friend spend the night over at the house. Was Mr. Belvedere telling Wesley that they should call the Department of Homeland Security and have the little friend locked away just in case his HIV mutated into some kind of airborne retrovirus smörgåsbord? I don't think so.

Oh and, by the way, Huckabee tried to get all semantic about this, indicating that "isolate" didn't really mean "quarantine" didn't really mean "lock up." Um, yeah.

Buy a thesaurus, Huckabee, even though you probably would tell the bookstore clerk that the thesaurus was a funny-looking dinosaur. Oh wait. You don't believe in dinosaurs. Sorry.

So, if you're keeping track of Huckabee's list of crimes, here's where I'm at:

• Creationism
• Very bad movie title could serve as his campaign slogan
• Inability to define "PC"
• Poor grasp of English language
  
• Ignorance of disease transmission mechanism
• Didn't see And the Band Played On...

Shades of the Terror Alert System

Back in the day, my childhood cartoons were interrupted by tests of the Emergency Broadcast System (this is only the test). I haven't seen one of those in a long time, but who needs it when we have 24-hour news networks, especially when these networks proudly bring us our Terror Colors. Call it what you will: Terror Alert, Color War, Presidential Approval Rating Meter, or Homeland Security Threat Advisory Level. What remains at the heart of this nifty graphic is the fact that the Bush Administration has created a pint-sized interpellation system meant to inspire our loyalty to the State Apparatus.

And this little system is what came to mind when I read the following GIGANTIC headline on The Washington Post homepage: "IRAN IS MAJOR THREAT TO GULF, SAYS GATES." Gates--that's Bobbo not Bill--kindly informs us that Iran might restart its nuclear weapons program AT ANY TIME. Thus, we need CONSTANT VIGILANCE! (Okay, no, he wasn't quoting Professor Mad-Eye Moody. But he could have done.)

By "MAJOR THREAT," I think he means "Islamic State." "AT ANY TIME" means Iran might have a nuke in three years were it to restart the weapons program right now. How unsurprising that this alarmist announcement comes right on the heels of the NIE report on Iran. And judging by the poll in the righthand column, I know what most of you think about that particular piece of news.

While the U.S. government is running around complaining about Iran having nukes, why aren't they worrying about.... say.... Israel? Pakistan? Or, better yet, themselves. In recent years, the United States has shown itself as criminally disingenuous. No doubt it's always been that way, but its revelation on the global stage has been nothing short of embarrassing.

Excuse me while I go renew my recently-expired British passport. I'm taking suggestions for places in the EU where I might take refuge.