Missouri: Crazy, Much?

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Having ripped my former state of residence, New Jersey, I sorrowfully must turn to my state of origin, Missouri. I read that the new majority leader in the Missouri statehouse is an “unapologetic birther.” The creepy Roy Blount won the U.S. Senate seat easily over Robin Carnahan. Although some Dems won in their congressional districts, the state really does seem a lot “redder” than it used to be.

The state wasn’t always crazy; it gave us Harry Truman, after all. One of Missouri’s most distinguished senators was Stuart Symington, a Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 to 1976. Symington was a vocal opponent of Joe McCarthy and also refused to speak to racially segregated audiences in the South when he ran for the presidential nomination in 1960. That was one reason he lost the nomination, I believe.

Now, Missouri sends Roy Blount to the Senate. Like I said, creepy.

Of course, the statehouse has long had its share of whackjobs. I remember that while I was a student at the U. of Missouri journalism school, class of 1973, the state legislature seemed to spend most of its time debating a ban on large Woodstock-type rock concerts in the state (as if). But even in the 1970s it was not at all impossible for a New Deal-style Democrat to win elections. Apparently this year the state legislature spent most of its time denouncing health care reform and thinking up new ways to restrict access to abortion.

In a particularly brilliant move, this year the legislature passed an abortion restriction bill that, among other things, “requires abortion clinics to post signs that promise state-backed assistance should a woman carry a child to term and assistance in caring for that child once born.” Then in separate legislation they cut funding for the programs that provide those services.

But then there’s New York. I have lived in New York state for ten years now, and I still haven’t figured out how Albany functions. However, I’ve come to realize no one else understands it, either.

9 thoughts on “Missouri: Crazy, Much?”

  5. Hmmm, I wonder how far an AM radio station signal will travel in the flat heartland?
    My guess is that no matter where you drive around there, if you turn on your AM or FM radio, Rush, Glenn, Sean, and the others ‘lesions on the brain’ are on every click. Probably from hundreds and hundreds of miles away, too, flat as it is over there.
    Hell, they were on all over the place in the South, I mean everywhere, and there are some hills and mountains there. Searching for a Liberal voice on the air down there was like looking for a unicorn. You may have heard that such a creature existed, but you knew deep down that it was just a rumour. Finding an NPR station was like a lover sending ou an unexpected dozen roses, or a small gift.
    I’m sure that talk radio isn’t the only conservative infection that’s sickening the body politic in Missouri, but I’m sure it’s at least one cause.

    PS: I always kind of liked The St. Louis Cardinals – “The Gashouse Gang,” “Stan the Man,” Bob Gibson, “The Wizard of Oz (or, Ah’s),” Whitey Herzog, etc.
    Well, their Manager, Tony LaRussa, and their best player (and one of the greatest hitters I’ve ever seen), 1st Baseman Albert Pujols, who’s Dominican, went and testified before Congress IN FAVOR of AZ’s draconiam immigration law.
    One hopes that the great Pujols isn’t ever stopped ‘driving while brown’ and without a license when they play the Diamondbacks, or else in a few years we may hear about a great 32+ year-old Polish 1st Baseman coming out of the Minor’s, Al Pujolski, who’s reminds you of some other great hitter, but you just can’t place your finger on it.
    Scratch the Cardinals off the list of NL teams I’ll root for, at least until Tony’s gone. I don’t know what’s on Albert’s mind, but then there aren’t a lot of great baseball players that are MENSA members. More like the group I’m with – DENSA!

  6. “requires abortion clinics to post signs that promise state-backed assistance should a woman carry a child to term and assistance in caring for that child once born.” Then in separate legislation they cut funding for the programs that provide those services.”

    Pretty much encapsulates the whole GOP modus operandi.

    “And Mark Twain!”

    I prefer to think of him as a Connecticutt-er. But, then again, he never wrote a book about rafting in Long Island Sound.

  7. c u n d gulag,
    I used to travel by car from coast to coast fairly regularly. You can go for a couple of days without being able to hear anything but religious programs and conservative talk radio when you are in the middle of the country. Excepting only college town radio stations, for the most part.

  8. Here in cheeseland we’ve become a whole lot redder too. We went from having Progressive Russ to having (Fill in appropriate nickname here) Ron Johnson. Our statehouse has gone from being all dems to being all reps. I comfort myself with the fact that republican ideas are just wrong, and they’re using the same ones as before. Cut taxes to raise revenue for the gov’t, (which has only been debunked about, what, a brazillion times) and a smaller gov’t approach, which usually means giving jobs to their equally inept cronies and basically screwing everything up. Give it a couple of years, the young folks will return to the polls for Obama 2012, and balance will be returned.

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