Could someone please put Dan Patrick in a leaky rowboat and set him adrift on the high seas?
I’m not talking about Dan Patrick, the presumably perfectly nice syndicated radio talk show guy and one-time ESPN’s SportsCenter partner of Keith Olbermann – back before Olbermann became a cranky political commentator.
No, my ire is aimed at some bozo named Dan Patrick who currently draws a paycheck to serve as the lieutenant governor of Texas.
Presumably his main job – like those of other lieutenant governors, which is perhaps why thrifty New Hampshire never bothered instituting such an office – is to hang around unless and until the current governor abruptly has to leave office.
Waiting in the wings presumably leaves lieutenant governors with way too much time on their hands, which is no doubt how Texas’s Dan Patrick ended up on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight a few days ago.
Fox and MSNBC both seem to exist primarily to give small bore and/or washed up politicians megaphones and thus keep their careers alive, at least sort of.
Anyway, this Dan Patrick guy and Carlson were discussing COVID-19, the coronavirus – is anyone discussing anything else these days? – and the dire effect all the shutdowns are having on the country’s economy. The subject, naturally, turned to President Trump’s almost unseemly eagerness to forget this silly quarantining and “sheltering in place” and fling open the doors to our nation’s businesses.
“Full speed ahead and damn the consequences” seems to be the new message of the country’s captain, and Mr. Patrick is fully in agreement, even if the evidence at this time shows that older Americans – those over 70 or so – are the most likely to die from the disease.
“I am living smart… but I am not living in fear of COVID-19. What I’m living in fear of is what’s happening to this country. And you know, Tucker, no one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.
“My message is that let’s get back to work. Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country.
“Don’t sacrifice the country,” he added.
“Don’t do that. Don’t ruin this great American dream.”
Well, excuse me, Dan Patrick! You may speak for yourself. Not for others.
I for one do NOT want to go gently into that good night, not for grandchildren nor for any other presumably more valuable human beings. I suspect I am not alone in being unwilling to sacrifice myself on the stock market altar.
Some old folks, for example, don’t even have grandchildren. Others may not like theirs.
Advice columnists regularly field sad letters from disconsolate grandparents who are ignored by the ungrateful grandkids they lavish gifts on.
Who says grandchildren are inherently more worthwhile than grandparents? And who is charged with calculating the worth of these generations, these lives? Is there a list of questions we can ask, a set of standards life-worthy people should attain?
I should note that this Dan Patrick guy is – drumroll here – a conservative Republican.
A right-to-lifer, anti-abortion to the core.
Apparently “unborn” life is sacred above all others. Geriatric life? Eh, not so much.
Remember when Obamacare was in the offing, and conservatives, people like Dan Patrick, sounded a full-throated alarm.
Granny and Gramps would be forced to prove they were worth the expense of keeping them alive. The president’s proposal would – horror of horrors – result in death panels!
The contrast is delicious.
I’ve been told for years – by them – that conservatives are devoted to the sanctity and dignity of all human life. Now they’re busy lining up the ice floes to send us old folks all out to sea.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)