Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

Seems like the winds of hypocrisy have been gusting rather strongly through the US in recent days and weeks. A favorite theme in the Beckarantz household has been the so-called "culture of life" being promoted by those colorful right-wing nut-jobs (Hannity and Co., etc.) What exactly does that mean? And "whose life is it, anyway?," as Richard Dreyfuss once asked. There is a local columnist named John Grogan who had a nice column in the Inquirer last week, asking us to value the lives of the living, for a change. A potent and simple idea, and something that I think about a lot, given the way the lives of many of my clients are assumed to be disposable, or "worth less" than the lives of the more advantaged.

And just to make sure that there is no room for a whiff of hyopcrisy in HIS culture of life, leave it to good ol' Tricky Rick Santorum to start blabbing about his new, "more nuanced" view on the death penalty. (Think anyone will call HIM a flip-flopper?) Doesn't this smack a bit of opportunism, in the wake of the Pope's death? You could say that he is trying to swing toward the middle in preparation for the '06 race, but do people really vote on the death penalty, and is Santorum really capable of swinging in any direction other than to the right of Ghengis Khan? Pennsyl-tucky is a strange state. Will it all come down to "God, guns and gays?"

Frank Rich, who I loved as a theatre critic for the New York Times, has become a wonderful cultural commentator, and in yesterday's paper, he had an especially insightful piece on the real flip-side of this so-called Culture of Life. His observations send chills up my spine, but they are astute.

And coming soon to a 24-hour news channel near you: "Radical secularism!" It's apparently sweeping the nation, according to the radical right (as reported to me by my husband, who is always a few steps ahead of me on this stuff.) Prizes will be awarded for the five cleverest definitions of this extremely baffling concept.