A Republican dynasty

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
A Republican dynasty				June 9, 2007

Strange things are going on in the animal kingdom.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that a calf had been born with six legs. Following that came the story of two gay male flamingos who adopted and hatched an orphaned flamingo egg. Last week we heard that a female shark had given birth to a sharklet parthenogenetically. No male, no sperm, no nothing. She did it all by herself.

Arsenogenesis, which is the ability of a male to give birth without recourse to a female, is a different trick altogether. Zeus pulled it off a couple of times when he gave birth to Athena from his head and to Dionysus from his thigh, but that’s about it for the males. It’s tough when you don’t have a womb.

All of which brings me to Brenda Pogge.

In the unlikely case that you don’t know of her, she is one of three Republicans running for the 96^th House seat recently abandoned by Del. Melanie Rapp. .

Pogge, along with Sheila Noll and Dick Jones, will participate Saturday in what’s called a “firehouse” primary. Why it’s called a firehouse primary I have no idea. Maybe they ritualistically baptize the winning candidate with buckets of water.

I must admit that if I were voting in this firehouse thing, I would definitely raise a hand for the Pogger, since she’s obviously hip when it comes to parthenogeny and Republican women.

If you go to her website, you’ll see that Pogge draws a distinct line of descent from Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1^st) to herself. With Pogges’s help, Davis wound up in Richmond and then ran for Congress. To take her place in the House of Delegates, Davis produced her own political sharklette, the Rappster, who now has parthenogenetically politicized the Pogger. The No. 1 reason for supporting her, says Pogge, is the maternal Rapp’s endorsement.

What we seem to have here is a self-perpetuating gynecological dynasty that is Freudianesque in its mythological implications.

But it gets better. As the figurative offspring of Rapp, Pogge adheres clonishly to the Rappsterian political agenda. “Brenda,” says her website, “believes that all life is valuable; the elderly, the infirmed and the unborn.”

While the notion that the elderly, the infirm and the unborn constitute “all life” seems rather restrictive, Pogge clarifies her intent when she postulates that “The Declaration of Independence establishes the right to life first, without which liberty and the pursuit of happiness are moot points.”

That certainly makes eminently good sense, since you obviously can’t have liberty or pursue happiness if you’re dead or just a gleaming sharklet in the eyes of your parthenogenetic mama. Or unborn, for that matter, though I hesitate to question the Pogger’s logic here, since all this linguistic blather simply boils down to the fact that she’s Rappsterously opposed to abortion.

Nor am I surprised that Pogge disingenuously relegates liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the point of mootness. Or that she doesn’t include gays and lesbians in her examples of “all life.” One of her proudest achievements is her association with the so-called Family Foundation and the fact that she received a Citizen of the Year award from an organization that believes in the pursuit of happiness only for the “traditional family.” Gays, lesbians, single couples or unwed mothers needn’t apply to pursue anything, and certainly not happiness or civil rights.

On the other hand, the Pogger has been warmly embraced by all our local sheriffs, and that should tell us something. I suppose it means that, at a time when we should be figuring out how to keep people out of jail, we’ll do all we can to chuck more into the clink for minor infractions and as a result of overbearingly punitive marijuana laws. And, incidentally, keep scores of sheriff’s deputies employed.

There is, however, one Poggeic truism that you can’t quarrel with: “The future legislation that comes out of Richmond,” says Pogge, “will be a direct reflection of those we elect to represent us.” And amen to that.

For the last several years, the House of Delegates has been an utter embarrassment to us all. While it has taken great delight in tinkering with sexual and other personal social issues, it has totally abjured its responsibility to provide for the common good of the state as a whole. Transportation, education and budgetary matters wind up in a shambles as a result of last minute attempts to strike deals between a more reasoned Senate and the freeloading, no-tax hooligans of the House.

Come to think of it, maybe this dynasty of Republican women should end with the Rappster. I don’t know that we can take two years of future legislative Poggery that mirrors the past.

Perhaps we should give Jones a shot. Or vote for the Democratic dude in November. Given Zeus’ problems, he probably hasn’t even considered self-reproduction, and he might even think that the baby flamingo is pretty lucky to have two loving male parents.