11.17.06
It’s becoming a tradition…
… in the Bu$h administration, it seems, to hand-pick for administrative appointment the precise kind of people who will be the biggest prickliest possible burrs under the saddle of reasonable egalitarianism. The harder they are for anyone else to remove from their hand-picked posts, the better, too, so that the burrs will stay in place as long as possible, and for the remainder of the Shrubidency at the very least.
The latest in this long and infuriating list is a guy named Eric Keroac. You’ve probably never heard of him before. (That’s another Bush hallmark: if you pick people no one knows, it’s less likely that people will have reasons to complain about them. Except, er, not in this case, that’s for sure.) Here’s a little bit of what the WaPo has to say about Eric Keroack [Link]:
The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”
Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.
Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”
The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month’s midterm elections. President Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and this week renominated six candidates for appellate court judgeships who have previously been blocked by lawmakers. Democrats said the moves belie Bush’s post-election promises of bipartisanship.
The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman’s Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.
“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness,” the group’s Web site says.
You know what’s really demeaning to women? Assuming that not having any voluntary control whatsoever over their fertility ennobles them.
You know the address to write to about this, right? 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., 20500.
I always have the feeling I should be using really short words when I send nastygrams to Shrub, but have yet to actually give in to the temptation. You do as you will on that score. But do be a good patriot and write and tell Mr. Bush that he’s making a wrong choice, won’t you? The wellbeing of your fellow countrywomen is on the line.