It's one thing to get a steaming pantload of stupidity from wackos like Ann Coulter. But it's another, sadder thing when someone not usually known as an idiot starts to sound like a complete tool.
The resplendent Tucker Carlson, of MSNBC, strove to keep the ass-elbow differential factor obfuscated recently on
"The Situation" while interviewing Dr. Rebekah Guy and her attorney Sam Perkins.
At issue was the lawsuit filed by to force Wal-Mart to comply with a Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy ruling telling their pharmacies to stock
Plan B (levonorgestrel)—the emergency contraceptive often called the "morning-after pill." In other words, the lawsuit merely seeks to make Wal-Mart's pharmacies—regulated parts of the health care system—comply with the law, to quit denying women access to health care. But it's all boo hoo, poor Wal-Mart, from the Bow-Tied One.
Gasp! Those amoral liberals are telling merchants what to stock, he cries, right off the bat:
CARLSON: Doctor [Guy], why should government be telling businesses what they can and cannot sell? Or why should anyone be forcing businesses to sell things they don't want to sell?
REBECCA GUY: Tucker, the emergency contraception pill is not like stocking Colgate versus Crest toothpaste. A pharmacy is a medical—it's part of the healthcare system. It's dispensing medications that are crucial to patient care. It's—the prescription that a patient goes to a pharmacy with is part of a physician-patient contract. And a patient, when he goes to the medication, expects to be able to get that medication. It's really part of the healthcare system.
CARLSON: Hold on. You say it's part of the physician-patient contract. You don't own Wal-Mart.
Of course not! If she did, we wouldn't be having this problem! Besides, the Board of Pharmacy mandates that pharmacies stock all sorts of drugs—sort of the definition of a pharmacy, really—and Tucker's knickers never twisted. No libertarian ideals felt violated like a rape victim frantically searching for some Plan B.
No, no dudgeon was raised on high until defenseless little Wal-Mart had its virtue besmirched. What a coincidence that much of the right wing just happens to be actively taking Wal-Mart's side in trying to keep women from accessing contraception, abortion, or anything they might want to link to either of the two as part of their domineering and misogynistic delusions. One notices such things, is all. But it gets worse.
Oh yeah: Keep in mind that at one (unquoted) point, he accuses Perkins of using "rhetoric". Just keep that in mind.
CARLSON: ...I mean, the emergency contraception pill is not a pill that saves a woman's life. And moreover, here's I think the crux of it. It's controversial. Some people believe this pill is immoral. This is tantamount to forcing people to perform abortions. ...
Um, no, it's not:*
GUY: I'd like to address that issue, because emergency contraception is just that. It's contraception that works not through an abortion fashion. It's often confused with RU-486, which is an abortion pill. But emergency contraception is the same medication that is in most common contraception ["the pill"]...
Factual smackdown! Score one for women, freedom and sense. Then, after some more "don't trample on Wal-Mart's morals" sort of thing—would that be ironic or just Alanis-Morissette-ironic?—another factual smackdown:
CARLSON: [With this lawsuit] you're forcing people to commit an act they believe is immoral. And I don't know why you're doing that.
PERKINS: Well, Tucker, as a matter of fact, I don't think that either Dr. Guy or I is forcing anyone to do anything.
CARLSON: Of course you are. You're using the power of the state of Massachusetts to make people sell something they don't want to sell.
PERKINS: Actually, no. Who's making themselves something they don't want to sell is the board of registration and pharmacy, backed by the commonwealth of Massachusetts. No this is a regulated industry.
CARLSON: That's actually not true, Mr. Perkins or you wouldn't be involved in this lawsuit, which is forcing -- the state is, at this point, not enforcing it. You're trying to force the state to enforce it. And I'm not saying...
GUY: That's not true, Tucker. The Board of Pharmacy unanimously voted because under Massachusetts state law the pharmacies are required to stock medications that are commonly prescribed and needed by the community.
CARLSON
: I'm aware of that.
Ka-BLAM! He staggers, he bounces off the ropes, the ref's about to count a standing 8, but he shakes it off with a snarl! Then, Carlson absorbs a solid punch …
GUY
: And the Board of Pharmacy decided that this meets both of those requirements, and so it's now requiring Wal-Mart—not us but the Board of Pharmacy or the state of Massachusetts—to cover this medication.
… and, inner wingnut in full effect, he lunges in a furious blur of flailing fists, and he's on top of him now, Holy Fucking Toldeo, he's biting his ear!
CARLSON: You don't see—I'm not going to use the word "fascism," but you didn't see this as an authoritarian to force people to do something they think is immoral?
WAL-MART: Help, help, I'm being repressed!
Fascism? Fucking FASCISM? The man who was merely "bothered" by the Bush Dysministration's rampant illegal domestic spying and Quaker-monitoring has just accused the
Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy of fascism. "Unhinged" is a word that comes to mind, for some reason.
Oh, wait, he didn't. He said he wasn't "going to use the word". So clever, that guy. Similarly, I'm not going to say he throws rocks at Girl Scouts or wears
Depends, because it may not be true. But then again it could be, I don't really know, as I have no information myself, so we really don't know if he did or did not. But like I said, I'm not going to say that he throws rocks at Girl Scouts, I'm just not going to go there, because I really don't know, and even if I did, it would only be my opinion. One might say that, if it were true, however, then I would be forced, metaphorically, to put out a fatwa for his head—to wit: "Bring me the head of Tucker Carlson, that Depends-wearing asshat!"—but I'm not going to say that.
See how that works? But I digress (at length).
PERKINS: If you're talking about rhetoric, now you're getting a little bit of rhetoric yourself. It's true. The fact of the matter is that they're regulated industries of every type. Hospital emergency rooms have to treat people. There's no way in the world that a corporation that's licensed by the state of Massachusetts to provide pharmacy services has the right to pick and choose what kinds of drugs, in violation of state regulations, it can do.
The gay person who goes in, who needs some sort of medication to help with HIV, it's not up to the pharmacy to tell them "We're not going to prescribe, we're not going to stock this kind of medication."
And there is the crux of the matter—a health care provider, like a pharmacy, can't just decide to shove its morals down the throats of the public. If they can't resist that urge, they're in the wrong fucking line of work. In the meantime, Tucker keeps trying to miss the point he missed at the beginning.
CARLSON: OK. That is so far off the topic that I can't believe that's the final word. But sadly, we're out of time.
PERKINS: Actually, it's right what we're talking about.
CARLSON: It's going to have to be the end. It's not going to continue with that completely distracting point.
Translation: Dammit, you're taking me off the talking points! Stop making sense! Red alert! Cut to commercial!
How many kids are going to have rapists for daddies over the corporate implementation of patriarchal Christian fundamentalist evangelicalism? And if people seem to mistake a bunch of PharmDs for Mussolini, should we be all that surprised that they throw rocks at Girl Scouts? That's a purely rhetorical question.
I really wanted to say "Sadly, No!", but I'm not gonna say that.