The last word on Aqua Buddha from the indispensable, Charles Pierce ....
The Five Minute Rule regarding the public pronouncements of any member of the extended Paul family is well-known around this shebeen, but to recap for people who may have joined this blog in progress, the Five Minute Rule states the following: while listening to any member of the extended Paul family, things will make sense for exactly five minutes. However, invariably, exactly at the five-minute mark, any Paul will say something either so unmoored from reality, or just so overwhelmingly insufferable, that you will think yourself the victim of an elaborate con that you ever saw anything of merit in what they were saying. Just in a single interview on CNBC on Monday, we had two serious violations of both ends of the rule, both by Senator Aqua Buddha, The Most Interesting Man In Politics (t/m Time Magazine), brogressive hero, and likely presidential candidate.
First, the unmoored from reality. Rand Paul, who is a physician, has signed aboard with the anti-vaccination crowd.
And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines," he said.
Then, he said.
"The state doesn't own your children," Paul said. "Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom and public health."
Technically speaking, of course, you don't own your kids, either. It's been illegal to own someone in this country for going on 150 years now. The proto-Paul families of that era never got over that fact, of course. Some of the fans of the present day Paul family aren't over it, either.
Coming after Chris Christie's similar comments over the weekend, it is now incumbent upon us to ask whether the anti-vaccination theories are on their way to becoming one of those conservative conjuring words, like "Keystone XL pipeline" or "school choice." This is especially true since both Christie and Paul have framed their remarks with boilerplate conservative defenses of parental rights and personal freedoms. So is the measles virus the new handgun? Will dozens of sick kids in California join dozens of dead kids in Connecticut as the price we have to pay for our freedoms? Are we going to Teach The Controversy on this one, too. Is this, like The Bell Curve was for Andrew Sullivan and The New Republic, Open For Debate? It's one thing to dance away from science on global warming. It's quite another to have one of our only two political parties line itself up against medical science. If the voices in your head and the clamor of your own ambition can drown out the simple fact that we had measles defeated in this country in 2000, and now, after a long stretch of know-nothing propaganda, measles are back with a vengeance, then you can quite simply use politics to defeat public health in the lives of us all. For a physician like Rand Paul, the son of Crazy Uncle Liberty (!), who also is a doctor, lending your credibility to the quack healers of the Internet bespeaks a certain contempt for learning that has become all too common.
Now, the second bit. The Overwhelmingly Insufferable. Aqua Buddha's real flaw as a candidate is that he demonstrably is not as smart as he thinks he is. In that same interview, host Kelly Evans threw a couple of sharp questions at him about his economic proposals and, when she declined to take bullshit for an answer, Aqua Buddha decided he'd had enough of this uppity female.
In discussing Paul's plan for a tax "holiday" for companies bringing back cash from overseas, Evans said that research shows that plans like Paul's cost more money than they save over the long term. When Evans interjected, Paul raised his finger to his lips and said "shhh." "Calm down a bit here, Kelly, let me answer the question," he said.
In deference to Jonathan Chait, I will decline to refer to what Paul did there as "mansplaining," and instead, fall back on the old standby, "Jesus, what a dickhead."
Later on, Evans asked him about a story in The Washington Post about the curious history of the medical career that Aqua Buddha obviously is so willing to prostitute in exchange for three points in the next Iowa Poll. (You don't even have to squint very hard to see the through-line between Paul's "rebellion" against the ophthalmological establishment's insistence on "credentials" and his joining the parental-rights side of what shouldn't even be a debate about vaccination.) In response, Aqua Buddha went to that old Republican standby -- the monstrous liberal press.
Yeah, CNBC is the liberal press.
Once again, you are mischaracterizing and confusing the whole situation," Paul said, saying he led an effort for recertification regardless of age. "So you have taken something and you have twisted it and so did the Post." When Evans interjected to ask specifically about the members of the board, Paul replied, "You have taken an interview and you've made an interview into something where we got no useful information because you were argumentative and you started out with so many presuppositions that were incorrect...Part of the problem is that you end up having interviews like this where the interview is so slanted and full of distortions that you don't get useful information. I think this is what is bad about TV sometimes. So frankly, I think if we do this again, you need to start out with a little more objectivity going into the interview."
But he'll keep The Government from droning you at Starbucks, though, so you can catch the measles from the kid behind you in line.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Rand_Paul_Gets_His_Dander_Up
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