October 12, 2004

Christopher Reeve and politics, the Ten Commandments and politics.

Is the death of Christopher Reeve a gift to Kerry and Edwards? Watch them weave Reeve into their usual material about embryonic stem cell research.

Is the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari in two cases about the constitutionality of public Ten Commandments monuments a gift to Bush? Expect the Ten Commandments to take its place next to the usual material in his speeches about "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

UPDATE: That first link is just to the main Drudge page, which was featuring remarks by Edwards taking advantage of Reeve's death to push the stem cell research issue. That story has now dropped down and still doesn't have a specific link. Here's a story today, in the Boston Globe about Senator Frist criticizing Edwards for the use of Reeve's death this way. What is interesting is that mainstream news did not run the story that Edwards was doing this. Only when Frist criticized him did the story break. The linked Globe article has the Edwards quote: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

ANOTHER UPDATE: According to the WaPo, which notes that Frist called Edwards's use of Reeve's death "crass, opportunist" and "shameful," Edwards's press secretary, Mark Kornblau, said "What's crass and shameful is that Bill Frist is doing the dirty work of right-wing blogs and Rush Limbaugh." Hmmm ... so maybe now whenever a political figure criticizes another, he can be attacked for not only sounding like a blog, but behaving like some sort of puppet of the blogs. There really is an absurd fear of blogs setting in, isn't there?

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