At least the decent thing happened, but I believe that’s it’s too little, too late: Jan Brewer vetoed the odious (and this marks the second time in a week that I’ve used that word) SB 1062.
I said pretty much everything here, last Saturday. So I’m glad the damned thing is off the table, but I’m still sad because…
– I can’t believe that anyone thought this was a good idea.
– I’m appalled that three of my own state legislators bought into this pile of crap.
– Worse still, I’m appalled that enough people in Arizona exist to have voted idiocy like this into office.
– There’s a great chance that this whole mess was started just so certain legislators could continue to get campaign donations from ultraconservative groups. And that our Governor waited as long as she did to veto because she didn’t want to piss off the ultraconservative side of the voters.
I have lived in Arizona for over forty years, and I don’t know anyone who has ever espoused anything this stupid. And it’s stupid, too, since there was no need for such legislation. Everything covered by this bill is already protected by statute (the state senator who responded to my email admitted as much), the legislature has ignored all kinds of other pressing issues to vote on this?, and once again we just look like a bunch of yokels.
Which is not a nice thing to say about yokels.
But what has really tipped me over the edge is this article, from The New Yorker. Well, not the article so much, but the people who quoted from it liberally (ha ha, see what I did there?) today, without noting that it was a satirical blog (it says so, right on the page).
And it’s not so much that they didn’t notice it was meant to be satirical (who among us hasn’t been burned by The Onion?) but that when they DID notice it, they didn’t retract it. They buried this new information in the comments section, with the note that ‘#$%@^ conservatives talk like that anyway.’
It’s been passing around on Twitter, from people I usually admire. I’m afraid to look at Facebook. I don’t want to see which of my trusted friends have said this, or laughed with their friends who said it.
Well, Everyone Who Quoted The New Yorker Today, I have many conservative acquaintances who like to forward shock email stories about The Evil Liberals. And when I point out that their shock email is incorrect/not factual/satirical, guess what many of them say?
‘#$%@^ liberals talk like that anyway.’
Congratulations. You all talk like that.
© E. Stocking Evans 2014
Mom, Interrupted 
Yes, one is left to wonder just exactly who benefited from this kind of legislation (AZ SB1062: a bill that would codify in law what has already been codified in the U.S. Constitution). The bill would have done nothing to protect religious freedom; except to make it look like religious freedom needed protection. And to the other side of the argument, the bill did not single anyone out for discrimination. To question the alleged impetus for this bill: why would anyone want to buy a cake from someone who didn’t want to bake it for you? But then the folks who foisted this crap on us aren’t looking for us to be rational; they’re looking to exploit our emotions in what amounts to a legislative shakedown.
By introducing bills that ‘threaten’ the status quo, legislators garner the attention of wealthy folks who feel strong enough on either side of a given issue that they’ll express themselves with the mother’s milk of politics: money. Our elected leaders aren’t there to make things better; they’re there to milk you for whatever you think is important enough that someone will send them some scratch for. That’s why nothing ever gets fixed. If they actually did what we sent them to the capital to do; they’d be left with nothing to milk. That would be like Jack trading in the family cow for some magic beans; and everyone knows how that ended. And these career politicians (the three you’re referring to have been a perennial presence on your ballet since you moved into their district 20-years ago) have retirement plans to feed too you know.
Amerika!