“Stuck Like Glue”

This catchy song by Sugarland has been in my head a lot lately, and I don’t have a problem with the lyrics. They describe the ups and downs of a long-term relationship. The music video, however, is the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a while.

Jennifer Nettles is obsessed with a man who wants nothing to do with her, so she and bandmate Kristian Bush kidnap him and take him to a warehouse where she’s set up house for them. The video ends with Nettles punching the camera after her “boyfriend” has received a call from an attractive woman.

In case you can’t see how disturbing this scenario is, turn it around: picture a man obsessed with and kidnapping a young woman, forcing her to eat birthday cake and punching her when a young man calls her phone. Not funny at all, right? Which is why it’s not a bit funny in the video, either. It’s hard to see why Sugarland thought such a concept was a good idea, and it’s soured my affection for the song.

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The world spins madly on

I had a pang of conscience immediately after posting a tweet this week. It was regarding HR 3. I said pro-choice activists should focus their attention on the 200+ members who weren’t co-sponsors of the bill — “because obviously #dearjohn and his ilk are nuts.”

I felt bad afterward that I had used “nuts” so casually because I read something not that long ago saying that use of terms such as nuts, crazy, schizo, psychotic, and insane for people without mental health issues can cheapen serious health problems. I know people who struggle with their mental health, and I wouldn’t want to belittle them at all. Am I taking political correctness too far?

Craig Ferguson made the point a few years ago, when Britney Spears was acting erratically, that he would not be using her problems as fodder for his act, because clearly she was unstable. He considered most celebrities fair game, but didn’t think it was appropriate to poke fun at someone who had lost her grip on reality.

So what do we call people who might be technically sane but whose ideas are far outside the mainstream? People like Chris Smith of New Jersey, who says abortion isn’t health care? Or Sue Lowden of Nevada, who proposed bartering chickens for doctors’ appointments? Sharron Angle, who thinks rape victims should make lemonade out of lemons by carrying their rapists’ children to term? Do we find a new language that doesn’t have connotations of mental health?

This conversation is also timely because terms such as these come up after tragic shootings such as the one in Tucson on Jan. 8. People have said Jared Loughner, the shooter, is disturbed, deranged, crazy, insane. I watched a video he made while walking around his community college, and something was clearly wrong. He wasn’t in touch with reality. However, I think it’s easy to dismiss him as crazy or psychotic when the only difference between him and many other mental health patients is that he was violent.

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I think it’s a discussion we need to be having. For hundreds of years, people with mental and developmental issues were shut away in institutions so society could pretend they didn’t exist. In 2011, we know better, but we can also be doing a better job to acknowledge that there shouldn’t be any shame or stigma attached to mental health.

Title courtesy of The Weepies

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“Pro-life” double talk

The radical conservatives in the House of Representatives have proposed several pieces of legislation that are cruel and demeaning to women. HR 3 and HR 358 essentially take this nation back to the Dark Ages when women were considered property instead of equals. Why is it that radical conservatives are only concerned with protecting the life of the unborn and don’t seem to give a damn about the living? For example:

Why are they supportive of war and military action?

Why are they supportive of the death penalty?

Why are they against affordable health care for all?

Why don’t they support restrictions on the sale of any type of guns, including assault weapons?

Why don’t they support limiting the sale of rapid-fire ammunition magazines?

Why do they want to water down or scuttle environmental protection standards?

Why do they propose legislation that would allow women to die instead of receive a life-saving abortion?

Why do they support loosening standards on food and work safety inspections?

Why do they propose cutting social programs while boosting military spending?

Why do they never advocate or propose programs on behalf of the hungry and the homeless?

These are just a few examples of radical conservative double talk. They may claim they are “pro-life,” but in reality, they are clearly pro-death (unless you are not born yet).

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