Sep. 29th, 2002

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Nancy (notwithstanding the fact that she'd rather watch people die uselessly than criticize a Republican) fights (in a ladylike way) for stem cell research

Mrs. Reagan believes that embryonic stem cell research could uncover a cure for Alzheimer's, the disease that has wiped out her husband's memory. She was dismayed, friends say, when the White House took issue on Monday with a new California law that encourages embryonic stem cell research.

Her advisers say Mrs. Reagan's sense of decorum and party loyalty inhibit her from publicly challenging a Republican president.

Instead, she is expressing her frustration through emissaries.

"A lot of time is being wasted," she told a friend last week who was given permission to pass her words on to The New York Times. "A lot of people who could be helped are not being helped."

...

Last Wednesday, frustrated scientists testified before Congress that the president's restrictions had stymied stem cell research, or as Dr. George Q. Daley of the Whitehead Institute in Boston put it, threatened to "starve the field at a time when greater nourishment is critical."

That evening, Mrs. Reagan appeared on the CBS program "60 Minutes II" in a taped interview with Mike Wallace, 84, who has known her since the 1940's. Mrs. Reagan told Mr. Wallace that her husband no longer seemed to recognize her. She spoke eloquently of her loneliness, but she did not discuss her anger.

"I didn't know or I would have asked her," Mr. Wallace said after the interview was broadcast, referring to Mrs. Reagan's efforts on behalf of embryonic stem cell research. "But she is always reluctant to do anything that could be perceived as anti-Republican."


Well, isn't that special.

Others in the former president's circle were less circumspect:

A Republican legislator recently told Michael Deaver, a Reagan adviser and confidant, that some conservatives contend that Ronald Reagan would never have approved of embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Deaver said he retorted, "Ronald Reagan didn't have to take care of Ronald Reagan for the last 10 years."

(And who better than a former Reagan administration official to know exactly how hard that is?)

Full disclosure: Nancy Reagan has always lofted my hackles. The anti-drug campaign she was the frontwoman for was ineffective, a waste of money, a fig leaf for a counterproductive drug policy which has targeted minorities while not reducing drug use and a huge disservice.

She is on the side of the angels with this one, however. If Bush had an issue with the "lives" of fetal cells, he'd shut down the fertility industry and risk the wrath of the careerist yuppie hordes, or shut down privately funded research. Fat chance. No, publicly funded research is not going forward because

a) Bush is an idiot

b) the approved stem cell lines, the few that aren't compromised, are privately owned

and

c) it's red meat for all those folks he isn't going to ban abortion for and piss off voters.

Now, I think those of us who are old enough to have seen Mrs. Reagan in action have cherished memories about how delicate and refined she can be when the issue really means something to her. Remember when her husband was first elected and she wanted the Carters to vacate the White House while he was still president so she would have time to redecorate before she had to move in?

So, you know, rah, Nancy. Glad you're all worked up about this. Speaks well for you. And, you know, I'd hate to see you forced by the exigencies of the situation into indelicacy.

Of course, I also hate to see what's happening to your husband happen to other people because one of the few people who can put their borrowed aura in the conservative community to work to change the president's mind [sic] and the consensus of his less-intellectual constituents is too mindful of the girlish proprieties to do it.

Otherwise it kinda looks a little like this whispering campaign is more about changing the hearts and minds of the people who are wondering when you're gonna get off your tastefully dressed ass and do something.

from Amygdala. The story, that is. The dyspepsia is my own.
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
Oh, snerk.

----

So I'm visiting mom in the mountains, and we go up the hill to one of the bungalows (it's an old farm in the Catskills that an extended family used as a summer retreat - outbuildings out the wazoo, although not, thankfully, outhouses) to get some yarn I was storing up there and you know that expression about things being as numerous as stars in the sky? (wiseass city kid)Oh, as many as that? (/wiseass city kid)

Well, I'm here to tell you, because as a bloggiste I presume that everything I personally missed the first time is equally a mystery to everyone else, that there are a lot of those things up there. The whole sky is full of them. I saw all the Pleiades, I think, and a fair stretch of the milky way.

I thought about forming up a mob and burning down civilization, but instead I looked for a while and went to bed (science fiction reference).

Damn, it's quiet out here.

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