 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Contents on this page were published in the June, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright © 1993 WFP Collective, Inc.
WHERE LOSERS
ARE THE WINNERS
I had a dream recently that I threw a party and invited all the latest Dufus of the Month candidates.
KIRO News Director Andy Ludlum got an invitation because he showed on live TV a close-up shot of that hostage-taker holding a knife to the throat of a Safeway cashier.
"This is a ratings period," The Seattle Times quoted Ludlum as he searched for justification. "I feel good about our coverage."
Also getting invitations were Snohomish County PUD board members, who, with four other PUDs, have organized a $450,000 public relations campaign to fight Bonneville Power Administration's proposed double-digit electricity rate increase. One billboard reportedly shows a lachrymose 3-year-old boy with the caption, "Everybody's sad about BPA's whopping increases."
(It seems that large institutions have discovered the marketing potential of small children. The Seattle Commons committee you may know, are asking grade-schoolers to donate money to help pay for the increasingly unpopular public-private development on the north end of downtown.)
And what party would be complete without the Perot-noid organizers of the Initiative 601 and 602 campaigns? Like their boot-camp-coiffed mentor, petition peddlers from these two movements have oversimplified the problems of budget balancing by seeking to replace real-life decision-making with calculator-based public policy. We've seen a similar effort eviscerate the state government of Oregon. Call me optimistic, but I think Washington lawmakers and agency heads are mature enough to learn from the 1992 and 1993 budget-cutting nightmares.
Everything was going fine at my party until the keg of Ballard Bitter started running low. While most of us wanted to just pass the hat, the 601 and 602 people wanted to make sure that each person's contribution was based on his or her adjusted-gross income averaged over the past three years. Snohomish PUD officials called their kids into the act, propping them up to say their college fund couldn't absorb another withdrawal. With the half-drunken getting a little impatient over the bickering, things got rough around the keg. Ludlum sent for KIRO's live-cam unit and preempted his own news broadcast to show the partiers throwing salmon dip and hummus at each other.
With my eyeballs now speed-skating across my eyelids, supreme Dufus and former state Supreme Court Justice William Goodloe stormed in, just in time to tell the more liquored-up members of the party that they should be reaching for their Bibles instead of their condoms.
I started hoping that Freddy Krueger would show up and rake my eyes out so I wouldn't have to look at Goodloe anymore. Once awake, I thought my nightmare was over.
It wasn't. Heeeee's Baaa-aaaccckk!
Someone needs to put a hockey mask on this guy's face and give him a pick axe because I swear he's Jason from Friday the 13th. He's actually worse, because Goodloe seems to want to kill more people - real ones, at that - than Jason ever did on the screen.
Goodloe now is offering free legal representation to young people who either got pregnant or were infected by HIV while using a condom given to them by the "school system, Health Dept., or other state agency," according to a newspaper ad he placed May 24. Goodloe says he needs the propped-up plaintiffs to bring product-liability lawsuits against government agencies, two of whom he's already sued. (Last year, Goodloe sued the state Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Seattle School Board in hopes of preventing teens from having access to condoms at public schools.)
Goodloe says condoms given away through schools should have labels saying they have a 17 percent failure rate; doctors say the rate falls somewhere between 2 percent and 16 percent.
Though Goodloe apparently isn't after money, his method is identical to tactics used by some anti-choice extremists. Several pro-life groups - one calling itself "Save the Women" - place ads in college newspapers and elsewhere looking for women, preferably young and vulnerable, who have experienced emotional or physical pain following an abortion. The
groups try to persuade women to sue clinics, doctors and anybody else involved involved with their abortions, with the hope of winning big monetary settlements intended to drive abortion practitioners out of business.
Like Goodloe, "Save the Women" dangles free "help" in front of the desperate. But the plaintiffs in both cases actually pay a heavy price - the emotional and self-esteem costs of being used by a puppeteer disguised as a benefactor.
You're following in golden footsteps, Bill.
Like his anti-choice brethren, Goodloe is dangerous. Because of the extremes to which he is willing to go, Goodloe actually might be more dangerous than the litigious pro-lifers. He might wind up exploiting a young person who is dying of AIDS, while women with abortion side effects usually are not in life-threatening situations. What else is Goodloe capable of doing?
As "Save the Women" is not concerned with a woman's safety, Goodloe's "Morality for Youth" organization is concerned with neither morality nor youth. Goodloe is a grandstander. We'd call him a sociopath, but he might sue us. So we won't.
We thought we'd seen the last of Goodloe when the Seattle School Board voted last year to distribute condoms to students through school health clinics. His polemics and tactics were as ineffective as they were embarrassing. Someone needs to tell the guy that teenagers are not going to keep their hormones in check because of what he is saying. Nor is any public policy decision likely to be made based on his arguments.
Goodloe seems to have forgotten what it's like to be a teenager. His hyper-idealistic abstinence message shows how out of touch the man really is. Condoms or no, young people are going to screw. Even with Goodloe's inflated 17 percent condom-failure rate, isn't an 83 percent chance of protection better than a zero percent?
We wonder what the failure rate would be of a condom stretched over Goodloe's head while in mid-rant. Do you think he'd need an extra large?
|
|
|
|
|