My Political High Horse

Boyfriend and I decided to check out the Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History yesterday. We headed uptown in this gorgeous weather (and it has been GORGEOUS) to see the man himself's original just about everything- preserved specimens, notebooks, journals, letters, magnifying glasses. They had various fossils that Darwin used to develop his theory about the evolution of man.

What was most interesting about this exhibit however, was that there was not A SINGLE corporate sponser. Generally with this kind of thing they would have to have someone paying for everything, and that someone would usually be a huge corporation that would not only contribute money but be able to say that they helped educate the future generations. Not this time. The money was given by private donors. Without them, I doubt the museum could have put on this exhibit. Live Galapagos tortoises can't be found just anywhere. I'm pretty sure most people didn't even notice that there were no signs advertising Cingular or Chase Bank Manhattan. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't just read an article in the New Yorker about why there were no corporate sponsers. Maybe you can guess, or maybe you weren't even aware.

Bush. Our president doesn't believe in evolution. Not that this should matter in theory, because state and religion are seperated, right? Or are they? IN an age where science, Judaism, and feminism are actually once again struggling causes, Bush would not support the exhibit. He also strongly "discouraged" corporations from supporting anything that doesnt mention intelligent design. The museum refused to mention anything about Creationism or Intelligent Design because they are NOT scientific. They have no basis except in that of a few men who in 200 AD decided to write a book telling people how their lives should work. Bush, being a man and an exaggerator himself, fully agrees with the Bible and believes everything to be as it is written, but cannot except the evidence that is literally right before him.

As with the HPV vaccination, which will now go through a grueling process to be approved, thus guaranteeing that more than ten thousand women will contract cervical cancer before the vaccine is pushed through and hundreds of thousands will contract the HPV virus itself, Bush believes the only right way is his way. Never have we had a president with so much information at his feet and yet so little going on inside his head. His solution to the HPV virus was to push abstinence only education and tell people to only have one sexual partner in their lifetime. While it's true that this would prevent the virus, with a divorce rate of more than fifty percent and many girls sexually active before their 16th birthday it's unrealistic. But Bush doesn't seem to believe in realism, does he? He has hindered science more than any other president before him, turning the country into an evangelical machine.

The Darwin exhibit is only one of many examples of this. But I hope that the public attention continues to grow.