Shepherd-Goldberg-Cossack

OK, so it's not Tinkers to Evers to Chance.

Jonah Goldberg posted Ah, The Genetic Memory Defense quoting Newsbusters' Ken Shepherd, quoting Rosie O'Donnell on the right Rev. Wright.

Goldberg's excerpt (with emphasis from Newsbusters) read:

GIFFORD: That we introduced AIDS into the black community?

O'DONNELL: But Kathy you know what it's like for someone to pull one quote out of context for you. He was comparing it to when the government did give syphilis to black Americans for 40 years. What he was saying is in his history, in his genetic memory, he knows what it's like for the government to infect his own people. Because he lived through those Tuskagee experiments. And that's what he was talking about. You can't sort of pull the quote. He didn't just say, you know, "the government made AIDS."

Now, piling on Wright has become a sport for fun and profit, and Rosie O'Donnell is another favorite target of the blogosphere. I can't quite believe I'm defending Wright OR O'Donnell, but there you go.

Rosie O'Donnell was saying, Dude remembers the revelation of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, he knows what its like for the government to infect his own people. Now, if I'm remembering rightly, Tuskegee's great sin was mostly failing to disclose to the people who had syphilis that they did, in point of fact, have syphilis. It wasn't like "Hey kids come in for your vaccine and oh by the way we're not really vaccinating you we're shooting you up with some pure grade syphilis."

With that said, umm, is Jonah Goldberg really saying the idea that a government would conduct medical/biological/pharmalogical experiments on people is nonsense? There's the Japanese experience in WW2. There's the Soviet experiments in Kazakhstan at the Semipalatinsk region. Hey, there's the USG, fiddle farting around with administering lysergic acid to people. And if vivisection, radiation exposure, and LSD isn't enough, let's not forget our good friend Mr. Electricity. Hook up the jumper cables, watch her twitch!

It's a funny, funny day when a serious conservative commentator is reduced to saying that governments do not do bad things.

Or maybe it's just the American government that doesn't do bad things.

I hear that's what the Founding Fathers thought. That's why they had a unitary executive with a long list of powers and authorities, and why the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not delegated to the Executive.

Oh wait, that's not it at all.

So yeah. I'm down with Wright, and down with Rosie O'Donnell (which I can't believe I would ever say). I don't think the USG created AIDS in a lab with the idea of destroying blacks in America. But that doesn't mean they haven't done things equally horrid.

Trust the government? What's American about that?