By Andrew Stewart in Rhode Island’s Future
Whenever I see the Stenhouse name
appear in the headlines, I know to lower my expectations by an average of
.190 and pull out the tin foil hat.
For those of you just tuning in, Stenhouse has a long record in
trafficking in racism, sexism, and just plain stupid. He is the champion of Astroturfed
fake populism that promotes a rich man’s agenda, with private funders who talk
a big game but are not brave enough to show their faces in public.
Instead we are left to deal with this pompous has-been and a select few
frothing-at-the-mouth Know-Nothings who are so revved up they should not be
allowed near sharp objects, along with a great majority of good-intentioned
people who sadly do not realize they have been played by a con man.
There was the time that he claimed HUD was Stalinism, a lunatic bit that was really about making sure
those brown people from Spanish are not allowed to afford decent living
conditions.
Or the time he said Rhode Island had
outlawed light bulbs, which really was
about him denying climate change.
In moments of desperation when I lose hope, I
have to simply remind myself that Mike Stenhouse exists and moronic
statements fall from his mouth like sand in an hourglass.
Now we have Mike out on the trail again, promoting a notion that
is as stupefying as it is dangerous. Apparently Mr. Swing-and-a-Miss is revving
up parents by trying to encourage them to not get the HPV vaccination for
their kids, insisting that inoculation against cancer-causing genital
warts will bring about all sorts of huge side effects and infringes on
religious/personal autonomy.
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| One of Stenhouse's few legislative accomplices is local state Rep. Justin Price (R-Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter). Price is the leading contender for the title of Stupidest Legislator in the RI General Assembly |
Apparently Mike wants government so small it can fit
inside a woman’s tumor-encrusted cervix. That also would mean that someone
affiliated with his whacked-out agenda is getting some action, but I
digress.
Is there something wrong with the HPV vaccine? The CDC says 8
percent or fewer people who are vaccinated with Gardasil experience side
effects.
By contrast, the American Cancer Society says that 4,100 women will die from cervical cancer in
2015 out of the estimated 12,900 diagnosed with it.
Likewise, HPV is one of the
most common-occuring STIs known to medicine. Not being a woman, I am personally
unclear about how it would feel to have tumors growing on that particular part
of my anatomy, but I highly doubt it is like walking in a quiet green
meadow (a space akin perhaps to outfield when Mr. Stenhouse takes the
plate).
The anti-vaccine crowd has existed for some time now on the
fringes of the internet, populated by hoaxers, hucksters, and a Kennedy.
Yes,
they are the gift that just keeps on giving, for it was that doofus Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. that began the whole idiocy about children’s booster shots causing
autism with an over-wrought and under-thought
article for Rolling Stone (they
don’t, and the original doctor that
proposed that theory was later stripped of his medical license in the UK).
How a washed-up and perpetually silly GOP prima donna ended
up in the same clique as the one of the Cape Cod Commissars is anyone’s guess,
but it becomes obvious as the days go by that Kennedy and Stenhouse need
the attention or they might be forced to do the unthinkable and get real jobs.
The fact I even have to write about this topic is probably
leaving my editor befuddled. I can hear Bob Plain now, “what in the name of good gravy do RIFuture readers care about this
fool?” I keep looking at the MOVE TO TRASH button longingly as I
write this.
But here’s the rub: Stenhouse has people falling for this nonsense!
There is a group of parents who are actually saying
NO to the vaccine just as the school year is beginning and those
hormone-addled teens at risk for infection begin to mix and mingle in the
hallowed halls of education.
And while I do think that Tea Partiers have been a
tumor on the body politic, I certainly would not wish cervical cancer on their
daughters. And I am likewise all in favor of religious liberty, I think it’s
totally wrong that France forbids Muslim women from wearing the hijab. But this
is not an issue of religious liberty, it is a con.
I have listened to Stenhouse give an interview on
B101, a veritable ode to obnoxious
self-importance and false panic that is going to result in kids being put at
risk for a chronic illness that cannot be cured.
He begins with a lot of
obfuscation and nonsense about the issue being ‘very complicated’ and that the vaccine causes more
trouble than genital warts, both of which are demonstrably untrue.
“Why should Rhode Island be just the second state in the nation to
mandate this and why should we have been the only one to have done it by
executive fiat?” Batten
down the hatches, Gina Raimondo’s apparatchiks arrive at midnight! The Block Island Gulag nears completion as we speak!
We get conspiracy theories about the CDC, who
historically are too underfunded to do much of anything, the argument that an
STI has nothing to do with sexually-active teens, and even a segue into teacher
union bashing and advocacy for home schooling.
Mike wanders way into right field when he compares poor Sen.
Josh Miller, who is in fact Jewish, to a Nazi, a not-so-subliminal message that
brings to mind Mr. Burns ordering “Smithers, release the
hounds“.
I knew B101 broadcast the
golden oldies, but I had no idea they also gave airtime to 1950’s-era John
Birch Society soap operas.
Next thing you know, Stenhouse will be rambling on
incoherently about fluoride in the water supply and how Keynesian economics are
a Commie plot while TC and Kristen get a traffic report.
Why no one is going
after the radio station’s broadcasting license after spreading false information
about a communicable illness to the public and promoting violence toward an
elected official is itself a small scandal.
The HPV virus is not like pubic lice or gonorrhea, it lasts for
the rest of your life and can result in cancer. If a woman infected with the
virus goes into labor and delivers a baby through a cervix that has HPV warts
on it, the baby can be blinded.
If the newborn comes into contact with the
warts in utero, they can risk of blood infection and suffocation caused by
warts forming in the air passage. You want the freedom to inflict this on
infants? Stay classy, Stenhouse.
In all likelihood, Mike has discovered the cause of
vaccines after making a fool of himself protesting the Affordable Care Act.
And
into the mix he has pulled people who would otherwise vomit if they knew his
wretched agenda, folks who are also going completely nuts for Bernie
Sanders and were counter-protesting the anti-choice rally a few
weeks ago my colleague Steve Ahlquist covered. This thing has grown some serious legs and is making people who
usually would make sane decisions team up with the perfect example of
the village idiot.
So I am not writing this as a report on Mike Stenhouse as much
as a public safety bulletin.
The young women of this generation are being given the
opportunity to once and for all be nearly rid of the pain caused by cervical
cancer. The underlying logic of the opposition to Gardasil is not liberty, it
boils down to the usual nonsense about pre-marital sex and whether women
should have control over their own bodies.
Even if you are a parent who is
trying to encourage chastity until marriage, you should get your daughter
vaccinated, one cannot be certain that a rapist wears a condom. And considering
that 1 in 4 women in college experience some form of sexual assault before
graduation, this is a real issue to take into consideration, not false-flag
alarmist drivel.
As for qualms about personal autonomy and government
over-reach, I agree that those things exist, but not in this instance.
I am all
in favor of a public discussion of reducing the Pentagon budget and closing
eight or nine hundred of the foreign bases that make up our
tottering imperial footprint, especially considering that we could clothe and
feed the homeless while giving free college tuition to everyone if we spent our
money on sensible things.
But mandatory mass-innoculation against potentially
fatal illnesses is part and parcel of a responsible social safety net. The
people who say otherwise are those who need the wider population sick and
distracted so they cannot properly participate in our democracy and raise these
real concerns.
Thankfully, Rhode Island has a high percentage of inoculations
caused by the fact that, lucky for us, Stenhouse’s brand of idiocy is not as
contagious as HPV. We can be proud of that fact and should encourage that trend
to continue.
Stenhouse may have repackaged this to sound like ‘freedom’, but
cervical cancer is not liberating. It is a painful, sad illness that takes too
many women at too young an age. No woman deserves a potentially lethal illness
because they have sex outside of marriage.
If Mike Stenhouse wants genital
warts, more power to him, I will pay good money to see that snuff film. I will
even volunteer the labor to film and edit it for free, putting my Film Studies
BA to a good public use.
But he has no right to insist others,
particularly minor children, be made susceptible simply because he needs to
score a few political points. So talk to your friends, share this story with
vaccine opponents, encourage young women to get vaccinated, and let’s make
Stenhouse strike out here as badly as he did in the big leagues.
EDITORIAL
NOTE: Following the publication of this story, some
readers have come forward and argued that the human papilloma virus clears up.
This is a true statement, genital warts can clear up on their own. However, as
with every other virus known to man, once it is in your body, it does not go
away. If one’s immunity were to weaken, it could result in a recurrence of
warts. It also does not serve as a guarantee that the virus will not
cause cancer at a later date. The CDC recommends everyone get vaccinated
to avoid this disease.