Republicans' ODD Behavior, Part 1

He's just expressing his inner two-year old. Credit: Saberpoint.com

In my day job, I teach in a so-called "alternative" school, where we get kids who, for one reason or another, can't or won't function in a "regular" school. They display a variety of issues, but one of the most prevalent, and most frustrating for both student and staffer, is the disorder known as ODD — "Oppositional Defiant Disorder." According to WebMD: "ODD is a condition in which a child displays an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant, hostile and annoying behavior toward people in authority. The child's behavior often disrupts the child's normal daily activities, including activities within the family and at school." The difference between the "normal" kid being occasionally defiant and the kid believed to have ODD is, basically, frequency of outbursts. If a kid tells Dad to go to hell once in a blue moon, he's a normal kid. Once or twice a month, the kid's a jerk. Normal, but jerky. If it's an everyday occurrence, the kid may have ODD.

All this is well and good, but what does this have to do with the price of politics in America?

Well, I've been doing a bunch of short articles (we call 'em entries — tomato, toh-mah-to) for the History Commons, where I'm a site administrator and writer/researcher. The articles document the incredible ranting and screaming at forums for discussion of the Democrats' proposed health care reform legislation. Yes, it's a big scary deal, and yes, the House legislation is complicated and makes for a terrible beach read, but that doesn't justify some anti-reform protesters acting like a bunch of crazed screech monkeys.

In fact, the more I've read about and researched these outbursts and tantrums, both from ordinary conservative shills health industry lobbyists concerned but misguided citizens, and from the knuckleheads these concerned conservatives sent to Washington, the more I've thought about some of the things I've seen from my kids. Why not make some comparisons? The kids' names are, obviously, redacted to preserve their anonymity. The lawmakers, however, get to have their name emblazoned in long-lasting electronic pixels for all to enjoy.

It might be productive to reprint WebMD's list of symptoms first, just for a point of reference.

• Throwing repeated temper tantrums
• Excessively arguing with adults
• Actively refusing to comply with requests and rules
• Deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others
• Blaming others for your mistakes
• Having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment
• Being spiteful and seeking revenge
• Swearing or using obscene language
• Saying mean and hateful things when upset

For those keeping score at home, frequent lying is also a behavior often associated with ODD, but that actually comes under the rubric of conduct disorder, which is basically a disorder that looks, acts, and feels like someone with a future as a long-term felon. Since ODD sometimes becomes CD, we can add it to our list without too much fear of being scientifically inartful. Besides, I need it in there.

• Frequent lying

And on a brief but serious note, please understand that I do not mock the diagnosis of ODD nor do I belittle the children suffering from it. They are more miserable than the adults who find their behaviors so difficult to manage. It's a legitimate disorder and one that is hard to live with.

Betsy, Bride of Chucky

Back in February, industry shill Betsy McCaughey, who recently got punked so badly on The Daily Show that she resigned from her post as director of Cantel Medical Corporation, wrote a blisteringly erroneous op-ed that warned old folks that President Obama wanted to reform health care so they would die quicker. Betsy used this same whopper in 1994 to help derail the Clinton administration's health care reform plan, and was so successful that fifteen years later, when another Democratic attempt to fix health care threatened industry profits, health care moguls reanimated McCaughey from her cryogenic vault to unleash her convincingly dishonest rhetoric on an unsuspecting public a second time. Betsy gets a diagnosis of frequent lying for her troubles.

Pitchforks and Torches

Fast-forward to June 22, when Democrat Tim Bishop of New York has his town hall on health care reform disrupted by angry anti-reform protesters. The crowd gets so enthused by their own rowdy behavior that it takes five police officers to get Bishop to his car before he can get the Mussolini treatment from the industry defenders concerned conservative citizens. (Interestingly, a few weeks later, conservative poster boy Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that it's those evil union thugs, not his own crowd, indulging in Mussolini-type stuff, a classic example of what I like to call the "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" school of debate. More on El Rushbo later.) We'll give the fine upstanding conservatives at Bishop's town hall a multiple symptom diagnosis of throwing repeated temper tantrums, excessively arguing with adults, deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others and having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment. Wow, Ritalin all around!

Dead Baby Juice

On June 30, one of my favorite bits of the entire summer snarl festival is provided by a glassy-eyed protester at a town hall hosted by Mike Castle of Delaware. Castle is a Republican, but I guess he doesn't have the Fox News Seal of Approval stamped on his prefrontal lobe, so he, too, gets some lip from a saucy crowd. Castle is treated to a smorgasbord of conservative lunacy, including a claim that Obama's "socialized medicine" will be worse than 9/11, controlling carbon dioxide emissions will destroy the area's poultry industry and will result in taxing trees (don't ask), global warming is a "hoax" and Castle is a "traitor" for believing in it (and in evolution, says one adventurous audience member), Obama is a Kenyan (everyone's seen this clip of the woman waving what she says is her birth certificate, but what I think are her travel papers from the planet Mzokgwsupyxl), and more. But my favorite, the one that makes me laugh every time I think about it, is from one memorably unwrapped audience person who goes off about the conspiracy behind AIDS and "swine flu." According to Our Hero: "The virus was built and created in Fort Dix, a small bioweapons plant outside of Fort Dix. This was engineered. This thing didn't just crop up in a cave or a swine farm. This thing was engineered, the virus. Pasteur International, one of the big vaccine companies in Chicago, has been caught sending AIDS-infected vaccines to Africa. Do you think I trust — I don't trust you with anything. You think I'm going to trust you to put a needle full of dead baby juice and monkey kidneys? Cause that's what this stuff is grown on, dead babies!" I've suggested to my son's best friend, an aspiring metal guitarist, that he rename his band "Dead Baby Juice." Don't laugh, your teenager may buy their CD a year from now. If he or she does, you can blame me for your loss of tooth enamel as you grind your teeth to the beat.

Dead baby juice. Damn, there's nothing I can say that adds to the intrinsic sick humor of that one. ODD doesn't feature "screaming meltdown delusions" as a symptom, but I think we can safely make an assessment of excessively arguing with adults, deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others, having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, and saying mean and hateful things when upset.

Them Yankees Gon' Kill Folks

Almost two weeks later, Republican Paul Broun, a stalwart Johnny Reb from Georgia, had his own Kodak moment on the floor of the House, where he told listeners that "Obamacare" was "gonna kill people." Broun hit his stride when he spouted: "[T]his program of 'government option' is being touted as being the panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price is gonna kill people." He goes on to say that those hotbeds of commie socialism, Canada and Britain, have public health care because they "don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society" (reminiscent of American military spokesmen like William Westmoreland saying it didn't matter how many Vietnamese civilians we killed because "they don't value life like we do"). Nice job, Beauregard. Let's tag him with deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others, having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, being spiteful and seeking revenge, saying mean and hateful things when upset, and frequent lying. I could say more, but I'd have to give myself the diagnosis of swearing or using obscene language.

The Revenge of Betsy, Part XVII

Betsy McCaughey, doing her best Jason-returns-from-the-grave bit, returned on July 16 to take another bite out of our collective brains. Lurking behind the door with a butcher knife, Betsy lurched out, ripped off her hockey mask, and, via Fred "Vlad the Undead" Thompson's radio show, told the American public: "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner." These sessions will help elderly patients learn how to "decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care ... all to do what's in society's best interest or in your family's best interest and cut your life short." The St. Petersburg Times's crack bunch of debunkers in their PolitiFact brigade called McCaughey a "howling liar" — wait, that's my phrase. But they did find her to be "factually challenged." Let's paste the following gold stars on her forehead: having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, being spiteful and seeking revenge, saying mean and hateful things when upset, and frequent lying. (Limbaugh hopped up on the Betsy bandwagon by echoing her claims a few days later, making him the Renfield of this little horror show. Next: Limbaugh eats flies on the air and croons, "The blood is the life!")

Breaking the President

The next day, GOP Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, another member of the Army of the South, told the press that he intended to see that the battle over heath care would "break" President Obama. Jim doesn't get any symptom diagnosis. Instead, we can label him a potential conduct disorder sufferer and alert the authorities to keep a close eye on him. When he's cornered, he will most likely attack, probably with biting and scratching, so police officers, keep those taser guns handy.

Liar, Liar

RNC chairman Michael Steele trotted out the old "Obamacare is socialism" canard a few days later. For that alone, we could just say he's following the lead of the bigger kids on the playground and let it go, but then he accused Obama of being involved in a "cabal" with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, Rasputin, E.T., and David Icke's lizard people to exert absolute control over US health care: "Many Democrats outside of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Waxman cabal know that voters won't stand for these kinds of foolish prescriptions for our health care. We do too. That's why Republicans will stop at nothing to remind voters about the risky experimentation going on in Washington." No, most Democrats, and a good number of Republicans, won't stand for slobbering idiocy from elected (and non-elected) leaders. At least not forever. Okay, Rush Limbaugh is an outlier. Let's give Michael a symptomology of deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or better yet, deliberately trying to scare the hell out of others; having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, being spiteful and seeking revenge, saying mean and hateful things when upset, and frequent lying.. He's an even bigger liar than most of his colleagues, because in 2006 he tried to fool voters into believing he was a Democrat. I thought you'd get drummed out of the GOP for that. Instead, he's the party leader. Should we go for a multiple-personality disorder defense here?

Decreasing the Surplus Population

Two big-gun House Republicans, John Boehner and Thaddeus McCotter, up the "deather" ante that Betsy the Serial Liar started by telling Americans that the Democrats' reform legislation would lead to "government-encouraged euthanasia." If they keep telling scary stretchers like that, Obama won't have to worry about killing off the old folks, Boehner and McCotter will drive them into fear-induced cardiac arrest. Boehner and McCotter are awarded stickers for deliberately trying to annoy or upset others and frequent lying..

Exterminating the Less Productive

Betsy, the Queen of the Undead, rises again to accuse two of Obama's senior health care advisers, Ezekial Emanuel and David Blumenthal, of wanting to euthanize "less productive" members of society. Boy, the seniors were just getting over their anxiety attack over Boehner and McCotter's pronouncement of doom when Betsy lays this one on them. And she gets extra points for naming the two people about whom she's lying. Like her Congressional confreres, McCaughey gets noted for deliberately trying to annoy or upset others and frequent lying.. (And extra credit for sheer bloody-minded persistence. I'm starting to think less Dracula and more the creepy little guy in Saw. Or Farmer Vincent in Motel Hell, who plants his victims in the ground and lops their heads off with a combine. Did I really watch all this stuff when I was a kid?)

Bull-Goose Crazy

Texas Republican Louis Gohmert may end up in lockdown for his own apparent disorder. On July 24, Gohmert makes his covert way into the studio of conspiracy junkie Alex Jones, who himself has accused Bill Clinton of being behind the Oklahoma City bombings, and that 9/11 was planned in Washington and Tel Aviv. Gohmert and Jones engage in a game of "conspiracy one-upmanship," each one trying to out-loon the other. Gohmert says Obama is gonna implement him some socialism and kill old folks. Jones begins comparing Obama to an off-the-cuff list of the world's despots. Gohmert says the government wants to strap condoms on wild geese. Jones says Clinton and his staff of Dr. Mengele clones want to sterilize all of us by dumping chemicals in our drinking water, implementing a "eugenics control grid over us," andcreating "youth brigades, national service compulsory in a group outside the military under the Democratic party control in the city year in the red and black uniforms ..." Gohmert, realizing he might be outgunned in full-bore howling insanity by Jones, resorts to the nuclear option of conspiracy theories, comparing Obama to Those Nazi Guys. Obama's policies were "done in the 1930s," he says. But, as Jones has him on points, he extends his comparison even farther, saying, [I]t's not the only place its been done. It has been done throughout history." Jones, a veteran loon pugilist, comes back with, "Mao did it." Obviously realizing that he is in the presence of greatness, Gohmert can only agree. "Well, that's exactly what I was thinking of. This is the kind of the thing we got to stop. We got to get back to the roots, the basics." After some mutual congratulations and admiration, Gohmert slinks out of the building through the parking garage, staying out of the range of the black helicopters and orbital surveillance satellites, and takes four taxicabs back to his underground compound.

I have to say, Gohmert and Jones may fall outside the category of ODD sufferer, and probably need adjoining cells in the Arkham Asylum. However, let's see what applies here: throwing repeated temper tantrums (closest thing that applies to the slavering, squealing paranoia those two gave us), excessively arguing with adults, deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others, having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, saying mean and hateful things when upset, and frequent lying.

Monkey Island

On July 27, conservative/moderate Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) holds a town hall that turns into a three-ring circus of screaming, howling, poo-flinging, and other behaviors more apt to be seen in the monkey house of your local zoo. Americans for Prosperity, some of the folks responsible for letting the primates out of their cages, are indecently pleased with the results, and calls for more demonstrations of tantrum behaviors at purportedly serious town halls. The ODD symptoms at this little shindig include: throwing repeated temper tantrums, excessively arguing with adults, actively refusing to comply with requests and rules, deliberately trying to annoy or upset others, or being easily annoyed by others, having frequent outbursts of anger and resentment, being spiteful and seeking revenge, swearing or using obscene language, and saying mean and hateful things when upset. (Let's note that there were plenty of decent people on both sides of the debate in this town hall. It only takes a few yahoos to disrupt an entire event, a fact of which AFP seems to have built its entire summer program upon.)

Part 1 of 2

My, we're just scratching the surface, aren't we? This could be the longest Examiner article ever. Let's be smart instead. Look for Part 2 soon.