I May Be The Only Person In America To Feel Some Sympathy For Thomas Mitchell

Not many Americans know who Thomas Mitchell is. But in Las Vegas they do. He's the powerful, somewhat deranged publisher of Nevada's biggest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The New York Times it's not, but Mitchell's own blog on the paper's website is crackpot central. Last week he made a jackass out of himself advocating repealing the 19th Amendment, the one giving women the vote. (Conservatives have been gung-ho lately on repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments, but Mitchell is the first loon I've heard publicly call for taking away the right of suffrage from women.)

[W]e must repeal the 19th Amendment. Yes, the one granting suffrage to women. Because? Well, women are biased.

Just look at the poll results in today’s newspaper.

Men favored the attractive former beauty queen Sue Lowden over the graying Harry Reid by 22 points, while women shunned their gender mate, choosing Reid by a 2-point margin. Which proves women favor Democrats... Men are consistent. Women are fickle and biased.

His right-wing paper has no women on its editorial board, and it's a paper that had to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit with a former female editor who was passed over for a promotion. All major news decisions are made by men. The female city editor and news editor report to Mitchell. So why do I feel sympathy for this somewhat malevolent nut-case?

I'm thinking that he might not actually know any intelligent women. (7.4% of Nevadans are Mormans-- more than other state other than Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.) Maybe all the women he knows are like Sue Lowden, who he holds up as an icon of femaleness, or at least political femaleness. Lowden is something of a national laughingstock because-- as the primary GOP opponent to Harry Reid-- her healthcare plan has been, basically, to try to barter with your doctors and hospitals. She thinks people with cancer should bring some chickens to the doctor in return for their treatment. She's clearly delusional-- as you can see in the video below-- but this is what conservative Republican men in Nevada think women are all about. In fact, yesterday Lowden's campaign sent Mitchell's paper a letter from a Republican doctor, which of course Mitchell duly published, which claims that he has "bartered with patients-- for alfalfa hay, a bathtub, yard work and horse shoeing in exchange for my care."

Let's hope the former beauty queen turned gambling executive isn't suggesting that women pay for their care Chicken Ranch-style. It could be some GOP scam, though, which gives doctors a way to evade paying taxes, especially if the chickens are pregnant or there's no accurate way to weigh the hay. In any case, this is surely not a serious plan-- although it probably works better than what Boehner and Ryan and Blunt came up with (nothing)-- that the GOP wants to present as an alternative to a health care reform plan... is it?

This is the degree of seriousness with which conservatives take the healthcare crisis for ordinary American working families. Harry Reid may have some shortcomings, but he combines the best traits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt compared with Sue Lowden. And Thomas Mitchell... he needs to get out more. (And, yes, I know, Reid is a Morman too. That wasn't the point.)