A ‘whackadoo’ week
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
To the editor:
This has been another “whackadoo” week, i.e. nutty or just plain crazy, in American politics. On the congressional level, 4th District Congressman Steve King, Iowa’s long time national embarrassment, spouting off about what would happen if Red States and Blue States were involved in another Civil War. Sorry, Steve, really glad you no longer represent us, making light of violence in this country, especially gun violence, is not funny.
Then there is the Governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, another elected crazy, who proudly proclaimed that he had deliberately exposed his nine children to chickenpox, a highly contagious disease, so they would get the disease and become immune. Not necessary to expose your children to chickenpox, just get them vaccinated.
In a radio interview, Bevin said, “Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox … because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure everyone of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it.”
Making light of what was surely a miserable and possibly a dangerous illness, Bevin said, “his children were miserable for a few days after contracting chickenpox but they all turned out fine.” For a parent to deliberately set out to make their children sick seems at best to be *whackadoo, and, at worst abusive.
Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the CDC noted that “complications from chickenpox can include bacterial infections, pneumonia, and encephalitis — inflammation of the brain.” In addition, there are high risk groups for complications that can include “infants, adolescents, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.”
Adults who have had chickenpox as children, i.e. Bevin’s nine children, are at a greater risk for shingles.
Not to be “outwhackadooed,” Trump has been carrying on a feud with a man who has been dead for seven months. For Trump to slime John McCain, an American hero who devoted his life in the military and in government to the service of this country, is beneath contempt.
Note: I recognize that “whackadoo” is not really an acceptable use of English, but it does seem to fit those three examples. Mary Kathryn Gepner Benton
