Todd Akin: Is He Any More Stupid and Insensitive Than Other Politicians?

This is apparently big news. I’ve been hearing about it just about any time I turn on the radio. Defending his stance against abortion rights, Todd Akin, the Missouri representative who is competing with Claire McCaskill for her Senate seat, said during an interview with a Saint Louis television station this past weekend that pregnancies do not result from “legitimate rape.” Besides the absolute ignorance of basic biology he displays with this statement, he’s also showing a great deal of insensitivity with the terminology of calling any sort of rape legitimate.

            So there is an outcry and calls for him to drop out of the Senate race against McCaskill. I tend to agree with the folks who say he should drop out of the race. A person who would say such a thing, whether or not you think that access to abortions should be restricted or outlawed, is too stupid to hold any sort of public office, from the U.S. Congress down to your local school board.

            But, compared to other congressional representatives, is Akin all that stupid? Despite some of the best science ever performed in the history of the empirical method, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe denies that there is any evidence for global warming. As a matter of fact, he goes so far as to say that all the science on climate change is a fakery, a hoax, perpetrated on the world by mendacious scientists. This is a scenario that, if it were a movie, would contain thousands of Doctor Frankensteins in cahoots with a sort of covert Trilateral Commission working with a great PR department.

            Obviously crazy or really stupid, maybe even paranoid. Where are the calls for him to resign?

            Then there is Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, a state in which mountaintop removal coal mining has destroyed hundreds of mountains, ruined ecosystems, and has been shown to cause kidney stones, tooth loss, diarrhea, learning disabilities, and some forms of cancer,[i] as well as numerous forms of birth defects.[ii] Rand said of the mining practice that, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.”

            People are getting sick and dying, and as far as Rand is concerned it all amounts to “missing a hill or two here and there.” I don’t think much consideration is needed to find this statement stupid and insensitive. Once again, where are the calls for his resignation?

            I could go on and on. The list of things said that are stupid and insensitive is long: equating Islam with terrorism; blaming poor folks for their plight; classifying vandalism as terrorism; calling any kind of coal production “clean.” There is a lot of stupid getting in the way of real political progress.

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[i] Holzman, David C. “Mountaintop Removal Mining.” Environmental Health Perspectives Vol. 119, Issue 11 11/1/2011 electronic journal

[ii] Ahearn, Melissa M. et at. “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996–2003.” Environmental Research Vol. 111 Issue 6. Aug 2011, p 838-846 electronic journal