{"id":2025,"date":"2004-06-29T13:59:14","date_gmt":"2004-06-29T18:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2025.html"},"modified":"2004-06-29T13:59:14","modified_gmt":"2004-06-29T18:59:14","slug":"when-bad-photo-ops-happen-to-misguided-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/when-bad-photo-ops-happen-to-misguided-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"When bad photo-ops happen to misguided politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen some pretty bad Capitol Hill press conferences — I’ve even been to more than a few — but I’m really glad I missed this one<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a staunch opponent of stem-cell research, hosted a photo-op in which he had planned to denounce the drive for expanded research. The plan sounded simple enough: he would showcase two young women who had suffered serious injuries but benefited from surgery in which their own stem cells were used. Maybe it sounded good in theory.<\/p>\n

To punctuate his point, Brownback would point to their progress as a sign of what’s possible without embryonic stem-cells. Brownback spokesman Brian Hart said the intent of the news conference was “to show that these two young ladies can now talk, walk and shake hands.” Sadly, that isn’t what happened at all.<\/p>\n

A source who attended the news conference said the two young women, both still partially paralyzed, had severely atrophied muscles. Brownback asked one of them to “stand up” and show everyone what a success her surgery was. But she couldn’t, explaining that she didn’t have her leg braces with her and wasn’t prepared. “It was cruel. It was in really bad taste,” the source told [Roll Call].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait; it gets worse.<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise came when a reporter asked the father of Laura Dominguez, one of the patients, what he thought about President Bush’s 2001 decision against expanding stem-cell research. The decision came two weeks after doctors told the Dominguez family that Laura would be “a complete quadriplegic” from her car accident.<\/p>\n

“It was a complete slap in the face,” Dominguez said of the president’s position. The other young woman in a wheelchair loudly chimed in: “Why aren’t they doing anything?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Had it not occurred to Brownback or his staff to actually talk<\/i> to these women and their families before the photo-op?
\n
\nAsked about it later, Brownback’s aide said he remembers one of the remarks differently.<\/p>\n

Spokesman Hart says he doesn’t remember Dominguez calling Bush’s policy a “slap in the face.” Instead, he reported, Dominguez said, “It was like getting the wind knocked out of me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Behold, compassionate conservatism at its finest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen some pretty bad Capitol Hill press conferences — I’ve even been to more than a few — but I’m really glad I missed this one last week. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a staunch opponent of stem-cell research, hosted a photo-op in which he had planned to denounce the drive for expanded research. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}