"I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good"

[Josh]

In my opinion, there are two great modern christian musical satirists. And they both happen to share the same last name, though not related:

Terry Taylor and Steve Taylor.

Terry, frontman of Daniel Amos, the Lost Dogs, etc.. of course, is my favortive lyricist hands down.

But Steve Taylor is a definite favorite as well.

When it comes to satire, both of them are famous for strings of albums in the 1980's which perfected the art of Christian satire taking aim at nearly everything wrong with American society and the Christian ghetto. Topics under fire included 1980's materialism, abortion, bias in the media, video games, the dangers of politics, the "Christian music industry", rules against alcohol on christian college campuses, televangelists, health-wealth perversions of the gospel, and the list goes on...

Anyway, Terry Steve Taylor's culmination album came in 1989 entitled I Predict 1990.



The name of the album took a sarcastic shot at the spate of end-times prophets that littered the Christian subculture in the 1980's, though some misunderstood it and thought that Taylor was actually predicting the end of the world in 1990. Some folks also thought that the happy/sad theater faces on the cover were tarot cards and boycotted his album.

The first song on the album, highly satirical, sarcastic, and, imo, hilarious, got Taylor into further trouble amongst that crowd of people who always seem to have difficulty distinguishing the voice of the author from the voice of a character in the medium the author is using.

It was entitled, "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good" and in light of our other conversations I thought I'd share the lyrics with you in all their non-PC glory. It's the story of a slightly off-kilter ice-cream man who embodies all the ins and outs of the abortion conflict. Here's a song that everyone on all sides can get offended by and completely miss the actual point!

I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good
Steve Taylor

I have the road in my blood
I drive a custom van
I play the tunes
I'm the neighborhood ice cream man
So don't you mess this boy around
The other day when the clinic had it's local debut
Some chicks were trying to picket
The doctor threatened to sue
I don't care if it's a baby or a tissue blob
But if we run out of youngsters
I'll be out of a job
And so I
I did my duty
Cleaning up the neighborhood
I blew up the clinic real good
Try and catch me coppers
You stinkin' badges better think again
Before you mess this boy around
I've hung in Saigon just to see the special effects
I've hung from gravity boots for my napoleon complex
It's time to close
Ohhh.... There she blows.
History In the making
You picked a fight.
I pick dynamite
I blew up the clinic real good.
Preacher on a corner
Calling it a crime
The ends don't justify the means anytime
I stood up on my van
I yelled "Excuse me, sir
Ain't nothin' wrong with this country
A few plastic explosives won't cure"


Wish you could hear it.
BTW, if you like 80's music, this album rocks! I've got a copy if anyone wants a listen.

[Margot]

Y-o-w-z-a!!!! You know that stuff is not just whistling Dixie out here in the Grove. (Come to think of it, maybe whistling Dixie is not the best example...) All I'll say about that is I've run into a few folks who would say something to the effect of: "Now THAT"S my kind of song!" (especially the last two lines.)
As one of my superiors says: you can almost hear them banjos playing in the distance..........

[Josh]

Hmmm... as I was reading this tonight a "dog abuse death" breaking news story from Forest Grove came on. Maybe you've got something there....

[Margot]

Oooh--just heard about that too.
Dang. The Homies aren't looking too bright this week...
I still love the Grove, and will defend it to the end, I just don't always understand it.
--As my husband likes to say, once again, the moral of the story is: Stay in School.

[hume]

"Terry Taylor's culmination album came in 1989 entitled I Predict 1990."

I absolutely agree. Stone-cold classic, his best stuff. Except that's Steve, not Terry

There's an abortion thread elsewhere that goes on for 4 pages. Not inclined to resurrect it. And yet, can't keep from throwing in my two cents somewhere ... (it's a disease, frankly).

One post in that thread included this comment:

"the branch of government most likely to affect this most important of issues [i.e. abortion] is the Judicial branch."

I'm not a lawyer, but (famous last words) ...
it struck me while taking some pre-law courses in college that we -- as ordinary Americans -- get very little good information about the way the courts work. It's remarkable how radically different the Third Branch is from the other two. Seriously, it's a different beast entirely, and it runs according to its own logic.

In a nutshell, the belief that Republican presidents could appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade is, well, let's just say that Josh's reference to winning the lottery is spot-on. Judges do not take precedent lightly. Judges who sit on the Supreme Court are practically obsessed with precedent. In the Court's history, it HAS struck down a number of its prior rulings. But this is extraordinarily unusual. And more than that, the Court can't overrule itself without giving quite substantial reasons (which are carefully laid out in various judicial theories). By "substantial reasons," I mean subsantial legal or Constitutional reasons, not personal beliefs (for better or worse, that's the way it works).

*** Here's the core idea ***
(the part that surprised me, and surprises most Americans who learn about it):

S.C. justices, unlike Congressmen, are not free to "vote their consciences." They don't simply vote up or down on anything; rather, they are required to give quite lengthy and convincing legal support for their decisions. People sometimes remark on the irony of presidents like Reagan appointing supposedly conservative justices who turn out to be "liberal" or centrist. But this is mostly due to the same misunderstanding: appointing a conservative judge is totally different from appointing or voting for a congressman. The judge can't just follow his/her beliefs, whatever those might be. (You don't believe me. I'm serious.)

Roe v. Wade was decided based on the legal idea that our Bill of Rights includes an implied (though not explicitly stated) protection of "the right to privacy." When a pro-life S.C. Justice considers this case, he or she understands that it would be difficult (perhaps impossible) to strike down Roe v. Wade without fundamentally altering this concept of a Constitutionally protected "privacy." That has implications far beyond the abortion issue. Many other cases in totally unrelated areas of society have been decided one way or the other based on this right. Striking down Roe would have a rather severe cascading effect throughout the law (and society). Add to this the fact that no S.C. Justice will EVER overrule a prior Supreme Court decision without some serious professional soul-searching, and you start to realize how difficult it would be to overrule Roe v. Wade.

Liberals are as confused about this as conservatives. Folks on the left (points towards self) tend to demonize guys like Justice Scalia as knee-jerk reactionaries. But Scalia's actual voting record is fascinating: on many occasions he has sided with issues that you'd expect him to despise (and that he probably does despise). This is not because he's a closet liberal (hah!), it's because the facts of the case, combined with THE PRECEDENTS SET BY OTHER S.C. CASES, left him with no choice but to vote as he did.

I don't know whether Republican politicians have been cynically garnering votes from Evangelicals, knowing all the while that the abortion issue is essentially set in legal stone. Probably most of them are sincere (but I'd be suspicious of those Republicans who have a law degree -- they probably know better).

[Josh]

"Terry Taylor's culmination album came in 1989 entitled I Predict 1990."

I absolutely agree. Stone-cold classic, his best stuff. Except that's Steve, not Terry

D'oh! Too much Terry on the brain in general! ;D

[christopher]

Hi Hume,

I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but I wonder then why the politicians get so uptight with the picks of the sitting prez, even to the point of filibustering the nomination.

thoughts on that?

[hume]

S.C. nominations make for good political theater. Senators can count on lots of attention whenever it comes time to pick a new judge.

Note that I don't mean to suggest that all judges are alike, or that left/right leanings have no meaning in the law. Most of the time, when the Supreme Court considers a case, the justices are not forced to consider striking down one of the Court's own established rulings (in fact, the Court normally just refuses to hear a case if it amounts to a request to do this). Typically they're deciding how to apply the logic of a prior case to the one before them. A president's pick certainly can influence the outcome of these sorts of routine cases.

However, it's pretty desperate to hope that a president could find real (i.e. qualified) judges who are just itching to overturn established cases like Roe.

[robin]

However, it's pretty desperate to hope that a president could find real (i.e. qualified) judges who are just itching to overturn established cases like Roe.

Hi Hume,
I wonder about this last statement. Why would you find this desire or hope to be "desperate"? It seems to me that the Supreme Court is the only branch of government that can effectively overturn Roe V. Wade.

Now to your point about precedent. "Stare decisis" is always mentioned as a guiding principle by nominees during the confirmation process, but that does not limit a Justices responsibility to review cases where it is the conviction of the Judge that past cases were decided wrongly.

Take for example Justice Thomas. During his confirmation in 1990 he said "stare decisis provides continuity to our system, it provides predictability, and in our process of case-by-case decision making, I think it is a very important and critical concept."

this seems to fit well with your earlier statements. However, in 1992 Justice Thomas, after the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood V. Casey, writing in dissent with three other Justices said regarding Roe v.Wade that it was "wrongly decided" and could and should be overturned "consistently with our traditional approach to stare decisis in constitutional cases.".

I have no doubt that "Stare decisis" is central to the actions of the court. However, there are Supreme court judges who today believe that Roe V. Wade was wrongly decide, and therefore "Stare decisis" would not be the driving factor in deciding whether to overturn or up-hold Roe V. Wade. Liberals and Pro-abortionist alike recognize this to be true, and therefore, as Chris pointed out, fight vehemently to keep conservative justices off the bench. Why do you think Roe V Wade is the central theme in the nomination process? Are Liberals just paranoid? I think not.

We are, in my opinion, one Justice away from seeing the tides turn in favor of overturning Roe V. Wade. It is sad to see that we will now need to wait at least 4 more years before adding that Judge to the bench.

Roe v. Wade was decided based on the legal idea that our Bill of Rights includes an implied (though not explicitly stated) protection of "the right to privacy." When a pro-life S.C. Justice considers this case, he or she understands that it would be difficult (perhaps impossible) to strike down Roe v. Wade without fundamentally altering this concept of a Constitutionally protected "privacy." That has implications far beyond the abortion issue. Many other cases in totally unrelated areas of society have been decided one way or the other based on this right. Striking down Roe would have a rather severe cascading effect throughout the law (and society). Add to this the fact that no S.C. Justice will EVER overrule a prior Supreme Court decision without some serious professional soul-searching, and you start to realize how difficult it would be to overrule Roe v. Wade.

By the way, since when did right to privacy mean that so long as I something in private it is protected by law or the Constitution? Can I abuse my children in private? Can I rape a woman in private? How about kill my child in private? Oh wait, I can kill my child in private, so long as part of them has not fully exited the mother. The privacy argument was a flawed in 1973, and its flawed now. As you can see, there are things that are illegal whether you do them in private or not, and murdering children should be one of those things.

However with all that being said, it may not mean a whole lot. I never took pre-law courses in collage. I mean that light heartedly.

[Josh]

It seems to me that if something as tenuously implausible as Roe vs. Wade can become precedent out of thin air, then anything should be possible- even a reversal.

Still, I have to say, I do share your cynicism at the prospect of the Supreme Court intervening, which is why I think if there's ever going to be a chance of reversing the law, we need to convince the masses that it needs to happen. That will mean hard work changing people's minds, one on one, through real conversations, not primarily through political statements.