We continue our long-overdue analysis of the right wing movement in the United States. When a friend mentioned that George Bush mentioned the Dred Scott case and the fugitive slave law in the 2nd presidential debate with John Kerry, I thought it odd. The initial suggestion was that this was an incredibly ineffective way of pandering to black voters — by coming out against slavery, 150 years after the fact. In fact, it was yet another example of Bush using code-language to speak to his constituency, as the ahead-of-the-curve (liberal) bloggers figured out immediately. The anti-abortion right’s plan is to use Supreme Court appointments to eventually overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal. They see themselves as abolitionists — just like the Dred Scott decision defined Blacks as non-human, the Roe v. Wade defines foetuses as non-human. Bush was telling his followers in code that he would use his Supreme Court appointments to overturn abortion rights. Katha Pollitt spelled this out in a Nation editorial.
And in keeping with being behind the curve, I’ll also mention that I watched Jon Stewart take on the clowns at Crossfire on CNN, and enjoyed it. It was still limited by the ridiculous format of the show, and Stewart relied as much on his quick wit and charisma as he did on a structural critique of the media that the poor “partisan hacks” (that’s what Stewart calls them) just couldn’t answer, but it was a very good 13 minutes. You can check it out here, or read the transcript on the CNN site.
