Apparently, Sarah Palin’s mocking fruit fly research in her stump speeches about those horrible earmarks that escape during the middle of the night to molest children and use up the last part of your toilet paper roll without replacing it. As Kevin Berger notes, anyone with a 5th grade education should be able to realize that “fruit fly” is pretty much a huge red flag that the research is genetic research.* Hostility to genetic research is really rich coming from Palin, whose mystique for the wingnut base wouldn’t really be possible without it. After all, if there wasn’t a process of genetically testing fetuses for abnormalities, Palin wouldn’t have found out that her baby was going to be born with Down’s syndrome, and then wouldn’t have had the choice to consider abortion, and then wouldn’t have been able to carry on and secure her status as an anti-choice martyr. Her ingratitude to the scientists who developed genetic testing should be a reminder of the giant hypocrisies to come if stem cell research turns up any treatments. I have zero doubt that the same people hollering about how stem cells are little bitty babies will be lining up to be injected with little bitty babies should they require it to treat or even cure a debilitating illness. And therefore these idiots can rail against science, because they know that the pro-science side is ethically bound to ensure services for everyone. You don’t have to sign a statement refusing to protest women’s clinics before you get an abortion—-no, you can sneak in one day and be back screaming about baby killers in front of the clinic the next. A long-standing opposition to stem cell research won’t mean that anyone will be refused life-saving treatments that come from it.
Remember how wingnuts were wailing a few weeks ago because the South Carolina Democratic party chair said Sarah Palin was picked because she didn’t have an abortion? In that time, the argument has turned to, “Vote McCain/Palin. Because she didn’t have an abortion, unlike you crazy sluts.” Seriously, the National Review published an article claiming that the nation has turned on Sarah Palin not because she’s a paranoid right wing nut who hates the majority of us because we’re not “real” Americans, but because she didn’t have an abortion and we’re all feeling pangs of regret over those crazy abortion parties.