Another Ridiculous October Surprise?
Deborah Venable
10/25/06
Just
when I think I’ve seen it all in the political campaign circus, something
bizarre begs to differ with me. This
week dawned to a YouTube
link
plastered all over the Internet, so I clicked on it and viewed it - not knowing that it would become a focal
point of many conservative discussions before the first day was over. I viewed it twice because I could not
believe what I was seeing! Actor,
Michael J. Fox was doing a thirty-plus second campaign ad for Claire
McCaskill,
a Missouri Democrat running for the Senate against incumbent Republican, Jim
Talent.
Mr.
Fox suffers from the debilitating disease known as Parkinson’s, characterized
by varying degrees of a loss of muscle control. No one with any human empathy would wish this or any other
ravaging disease on anyone, especially a pleasant young man in the prime of his
life with a very visual career.
Unfortunately, Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with it several years
ago.
I’m
not going to pretend here that I have followed Mr. Fox’s battle with his
disease over the years, but I do know that he has continued to work, with
medication, and has sponsored much research into a cure for the disease. It has come to light that he has appeared
before Congressional hearings on appropriations etc. These things are not uncommon for celebrities who find themselves
in personal battles, and with the star quality to draw attention to needed research,
to help themselves and others fighting these battles with terrible diseases and
injuries. I don’t blame them a bit for
using their notoriety to open pocketbooks for their causes.
But
this is not what I see happening here.
Now,
it seems, Mr. Fox is actively involved in other campaigns for Democrats who are supposedly supporting embryonic stem cell
research against Republicans who are not.
So, now we get down to the nitty gritty - back to that liberal need to
promote embryonic stem cell research as the cure-all for every human malady
known to man. In the 2004 election
cycle, Christopher Reeves was the ball carrier for that team. Michael J. Fox has inherited that honor in
this one.
I
could write reams on this subject, and have in the past, but let’s tell this
story like it is. The research IS being
done – no matter the very real moral issues involved. The only thing that is being stemmed, no pun intended, is Federal
Taxpayer Dollars to pay for it.
(Remember President Bush’s ONLY veto?)
Very
valuable research with extremely hopeful results, (although not necessarily in
the fight against Parkinson’s) is being realized in the field of adult stem
cell research and umbilical chord cell research. (That’s AFTER a baby is allowed to live and be born.) Embryonic stem cell research is not
producing the same hopeful results – but liberals INSIST that it be allowed,
utilized, and taxpayer funded!
Enter
Rush Limbaugh. For the last couple of
days, Mr. Limbaugh has talked at great length about the Michael J. Fox
political campaign ads. He had the same
take on the subject as I did when I viewed the first ad. He also brought to my attention the fact
that Mr. Fox has admitted he purposely “goes off his medication” for personal
appearances, specifically in Congressional hearings. We can certainly assume, then, that these ads were made under the
same criteria – in order to illustrate the extreme ravages of Parkinson’s.
Rush
simply stated that a compassionate person would not be off base wondering if
perhaps Mr. Fox wasn’t being used in an exploitive way by the Democrats in
these campaign ads. It didn’t take the
media long, however, to go after Mr. Limbaugh with a vengence.
This
is an unfolding story, and you can bet that it gets played for all it’s worth
in the liberal media. Leave it to the
conservative to get blamed for truthfully commenting on the plight of a
misguided liberal. What else is new?
For
two excellent articles on this subject see Pandering Suffering For Political Gain and
The Unconscionable Claims Of Michael J. Fox – both published at the American Thinker
today.