According to a host of political blogs and other media outlets, before Louisiana Republican Congressman John Fleming removed The Onion’s piece headlined “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex” and his comments, “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale,” from his Facebook page, it had gone nearly viral.
Fleming’s opposition to abortion and Planned Parenthood is old news, (psst ... so is The Onion’s story; it initially ran May 2011). The Minden physician has voted against federal funding of Planned Parenthood and has spoken out against abortion. So no doubt he was tickled pink with The Onion story and in his zeal self-righteously posted it on his Facebook page.
Oops!
Anyway, one of the obvious issues here is that for some unknown reason Fleming, one of The Ind’s Pooyie! 2011 winners, is not aware that The Onion is but one big spoof on the news. Seems he took the bait verbatim. That is not a good sign considering the Republican is a learned man, a medical doctor, in fact. He is also chair of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs.
Then again, did the Minden Republican really fall for The Onion’s story?
Perhaps Fleming is fully aware of The Onion but chose to use the story to his own ends and causes to fire-up his pro-life base. It wouldn’t be the first time in this day of willful content misinformation and incendiary political advertisements that a known inaccuracy was allowed to grow legs to further an ideology.
If that’s the case, then Winston Churchill’s saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” works in Fleming’s favor. Let’s hope the congressman is one to let the facts get in the way of a good story and comes back with a face-saving explanation for his initial reaction on his Facebook page.
It’s a Gotcha moment to be sure – but exactly for whom does the joke toll?
Sure, Fleming’s blunder put Louisiana politicians in a bad light yet again. It also reflects negatively on Louisiana residents as a whole because the congressman, after all, was voted into office. And to the nation, it doesn’t matter whether you voted for him or not; we’re all painted with the same brush.
The Onion re-ran its Abortionplex piece to coincide with the hoopla over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s recent defunding (reversed last week) of Planned Parenthood. By the way, Karen Handel, an official with Komen and former Republican candidate for governor of Georgia with a platform that included defunding the Peach State’s Planned Parenthood, resigned today in the wake of the fiasco.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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