Pelosi and health care: channeling Churchill and The Runaway Bunny
Nancy Pelosi will fight for you. That is, she’ll fight against you.
Or maybe she’ll do both simultaneously: she promises to muster nearly-Churchillian determination in order to pass health care reform.
And whatever she does, remember, she does it for you:
We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in but we’re going to get health care reform passed for the America people.”
It doesn’t matter what the American people might happen to want. The federal government has become an invader, storming a fort that the people have tried to barricade against its assault.
More apropos than Churchill to the Pelosi quote is the children’s book The Runaway Bunny. Although it has its charms, the book used to give me the willies, actually. It features a young bunny who wants to escape a mother he/she is angry at. But the implacable maternal bunny declares her intent to pursue her hapless (and beloved) offspring to the ends of the earth.
For those of you unfamiliar with this classic, here’s a good description (from a sermon, of all things). I think you’ll see the resemblance; Pelosi is our very own mother bunny:
“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’
‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’…”
The little bunny taunts his mother with hints about running away. No matter where he threatens to go, she promises she’ll be there to find him. When he says he’s going to become a fish and swim away, she answers, “Then I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.” When he comes back with, “I will become a bird and fly away,” and there he is, sprouting wings she counters, “Then I will be a tree that you come home to.”
His fantasies of flight get even more extreme as do mother’s responses. “I will become a sailboat and sail away from you.” The picture is of the bunny’s ears becoming huge sails. But mother bunny is right there. “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.”
In the end, little bunny realizes there is no shaking mom and he capitulates. “‘Shucks, I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.’ And so he did. ‘Have a carrot,’ said the mother bunny.”
You can run, but you can’t hide. But maybe, in the end, there’ll be a nice carrot for you.
With Obama and Pelosi ignoring fundamental political realities, it’s hard to imagine a successful ending for Obamacare.
They both seem to think that passing this monstrous bill is basically a matter of will power and speech declaration.
I never could stand that book about the bunny, but I always thought there must be something wrong with me. Glad to know I might not be the only one…
tarragon rose: the mother bunny as Inspector Javert.
Neo-neocon, now that thought really gives me the shivers!
Agreed that it’s creepy. Even worse: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.
“Isn’t childhood just another name for Stockholm Syndrome?”
— paraphrasing some show on HBO I saw a few months ago
“Isn’t childhood just another name for Stockholm Syndrome?”
That’s bang-on! It’s also the story IMO behind cults and tribal politics.
Perhaps a topic for another day — why are so many children stories either creepy or cloying?
Then there’s the Harry Potter series which manages to be both.
And did anyone see Coraline?
Here is Obama’s latest take on health care:
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/01/angry-obama-lashes-out-at-house-republicans-tells-them-i-am-not-an-idealogue-video/
It’s centrist.
In the play Wit, The Runaway Bunny figures prominently. The mother bunny is seen as a metaphor for god.
I think most kids come to a point, during their childhoods, when they decide it’s time to run away. I know I did. I must have been all of 7 or 8. I announced my intention to my mother, packed my small card-board suitcase with 2 or 3 t-shirt and a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, and headed off down the street. My mom stood on the porch and waved good-bye. I turned the corner onto an adjoining street until Mom was out of sight, and decided to turn around and go back. She welcomed me home with a hug and told me she was glad to have me back.
It was pretty wise of her to let me decide on my own both to leave and to come back. It was both freeing, in that I made the go and return decisions myself, and it gave me a negative view of home (in that I got for myself a view of what the absence of home might mean. It was the absolute opposite of what happens in The Runaway Bunny, which smothers and masters.
I must disagree about The Giving Tree, thought. Of course it wasn’t published until I was an adult, so that’s different just for starters. But I find it wonderfully moving every time I read it. Of course, the tree is just a tree, and not a surrogate parent or a host.
President Reagan said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”
Isn’t that so true.
Can’t say I ever had a problem with the runaway bunny (or his mom, rather), but I think that many kids like a certain level of creepiness in their literature and entertainment. Think Roald Dahl (sp?). Or A Series of Unfortunate Events.
When I was little I had a thrilling fascination with the child catcher and his wagon in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and I turned out OK.
I think 😉
Little Rabit Foo Foo hoppin’ through the forest,
Scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head.
Down comes the good fairy, and she says
“Little Rabbit Foo Foo, I don’t want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head.
I’ll give you three chances,
And if you don’t stop I’ll turn you into a goon.
Next morning
Little Rabit Foo Foo hoppin’ through the forest,
Scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head.
Down comes the good fairy, and she says
“Little Rabbit Foo Foo, I don’t want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head.
I’ll give you two chances,
And if you don’t stop I’ll turn you into a goon.
Next morning
Little Rabit Foo Foo hoppin’ through the forest,
Scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head.
Down comes the good fairy, and she says
“Little Rabbit Foo Foo, I don’t like your attitude!
Scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head.
I’ll give you one more chance!!!
And if you don’t stop I’ll turn you into a goon
Next Morning!
Little Rabit Foo Foo hoppin’ through the forest,
Scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head.
Down comes the good fairy, and she says
Little Rabbit Foo Foo I don’t want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and booping them on the head.
I gave you three chances and you didn’t stop:
Poof – you’re a goon!
Moral of the story of foo foo pelosi?
Hare today, Goon tomorrow!!
When I was little I had a thrilling fascination with the child catcher and his wagon in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and I turned out OK.
yes… but then it seems he went to work for journalism after being a lawyer. i think his name is krauthhammer….
Meanwhile, The Catcher in the Rye — an odd version of the Bunny Mother — JD Salinger died Wednesday.
As many people have noted, the people are getting what they voted for, good and hard.
You have to have some sympathy for poor ol’ Nancy. Here she is having to work 36 hours a day to get Bolshevik HealthCare pushed through all because the rubes and hicks out there are too dumb to know what is good for them. Quite a burden for anyone to carry. As for Nancy following Churchill’s example – you can peruse all of Sir Winston’s speeches without finding any reference to the “stupidity” of the British people. Life is hard sometimes for geniuses like San Fran Nan.
Mr. Frank
I voted for the team with common sense, experience and the right prescription.
Can I get what i voted for yet?
Yes, I know ∅bama ran his own campaign so therefore he had experience too.. ! NOT
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.
> We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in but we’re going to get health care reform passed for the America people.”
By **all** means, parachute in!!!
Here, Nancy…
Let Me Pack Your ‘Chute…
.
Obloodyhell,
set fire to the oil in the moat, put in the 10′ stakes into the ground, and dont forget to fill the in betweens with bouncing bettery ap munitions.
that list presumes that the recipients sit around watching with mint julips in their hands in deck chairs… “lovey, whats that? looks like air mushrooms”…”o dont be silly cosmo, those are silk parachutes”. “parachutes, why parachutes, the gate is open”
I’m sorry but likening Pelosi et al to ‘The Runaway Bunny’ is being far too kind in my opinion. My entry would be more like “The Thing” one of the scariest movies I ever saw as a child and it was only when that ghastly creature was completely destroyed, killed, DOA was there any abatement of the extreme anxiety it engendered, as it threatened to take over the world.
the thing was never killed…
it was frozen and then placed in the artic 🙂
i am surprised that no director thought himself genius to do a part II after there has been one remake (poor).
then again how could a remake compete with steve mcqueen?
there is an article up talking about obamas psychopathic lying. and i was thinking how the maladaptation (or throw back) of sociopathy had never encountered film and taping. it requires the looseness and unsure quality of normal human memory to operate. and in true broken mind fashion, the behavior remains regardless of new situation that would stop or slow someone who was doing such by choice for advantage. compulsion vs advantageous by choice.
What’s going on in their elite-Washington-rulemaker brains? Do they really believe that telling us again and again “It’s a WONDERFUL plan” will make us forget that
(1) it’s going to cost trillions,
(2) it will create unelected/unaccountable “government panels” (what standards must these panelists meet? is there any recourse if they deny a treatment?) who will metaphorically stand between patients and doctors, interfering in personal health-care decisions,
(3) it will FORCE citizens to buy insurance even if they don’t want it,
(4) it will FORCE private physicians to accept less and less in claim payments (as Medicare currently already does) until finally doctors won’t be able to afford staying in private practice (which will thus force everybody into the Government system),
(5) finally, most important, it’s a HUGE government program which will INEVITABLY be riddled with the same waste-and-fraud issues that our Congress-Critters deplore in the existing Medicare and Medicaid programs. So, instead of “just” costing $1.2 TRILLION dollars, it will balloon (just like Medicare did, look it up) into a bloated bureaucracy costing AT LEAST three times as much.
And they want us to “appreciate” all they’re trying to do for (read: to) us little taxpaying peons? Feh.
Artfldgr Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
the thing was never killed…
it was frozen and then placed in the artic.
I believe you are thinking of the original “The Blob”.
(One of the classic pictures ending with “The End?”)
–
Oh. All I know was there was some sorta fight-to-the-death scene that seemed to resolve that awful creature thing into oblivion for all time. Whether it’s true or not, it’s settled in my mind