Louisa Drew, grandmother of the Barrymores, as Mrs. Malaprop
These are anxious times for those of us who believe America will be better off once everyone has good health insurance. Problems with the Obamacare website mean that those losing plans can’t yet see what will replace them, a source of very understandable anxiety. But before giving up on universal health insurance, listen to what Republicans are offering as an alternative.
For instance, check out Sarah Palin doing a Mrs. Malaprop imitation in what one commentator has described it as “35 seconds of word salad.” (Thanks to Rachel Kranz for alerting me to the Palin comment.)
The [Republican] plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health-care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there’s more competition, there’s less tort reform threat, there’s less trajectory of the cost increases, and those plans have been proposed over and over again. And what thwarts those plans? It’s the far left. It’s President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care.
The parallel with Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals isn’t exact but, like Palin, Richard Sheridan’s famous character grabs frantically at fragments of thought in an attempt to sound intelligent. Here’s Mrs. Malaprop laying out the education she wants for a young woman:
Observe me, Sir Anthony. I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning—neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments.—But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts;—and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries;—but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do; and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know;—and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.
Would you confidently subscribe to the health care prescriptions of the one or the educational prescriptions of the other?
Your other option is hanging steady, knowing that the problems will be fixed and that you will get a plan that will be affordable and, even more important, reliable. Think of your current discomfort as a noble sacrifice for the 40 million who don’t currently have insurance. Don’t listen to the hucksters.
