How can anyone watch this and take Rick Perry even slightly seriously. The man is a walking joke. I mean, he isn’t even smart enough to change the subject or otherwise deflect the issue. Which would be fine if he actually answered the question, rather than just stubbornly claiming that abstinence-only sex education works, when there is no evidence to support his claim, and plenty of evidence against it.
And oh man, especially at the start of the video he sounds just like Dubya. And I’m not saying that because of the Texas accent (I have lived in Texas). Especially the little laugh at 0:48.
9 Comments
I liked “I’m trying to make a comparable here,” right at the end.
The most significant problem displayed in this video, in my opinion, is that Perry was answering an entirely different question than was put forth, and even with a series of explanations by the host he did not grasp that.
The question he was answering was, “does abstinence work to prevent pregnancy?” The answer to that question is yes, and an obvious yes. No sex, no pregnancy. And this is the dumbfounded explanation he was trying to give…because in his brain, it was like someone told him “even when kids are abstinent, they can still get pregnant!”
That is terribly frightening to me. To me, this is a clear lack of intelligence and inability to comprehend.
This disconnect might explain other things as well, like the drug war. If we make drugs illegal and tell people not to do drugs, then they won’t do drugs and all will be well with the world. What, we are spending billions of dollars on it with no positive effect (aside from the incarceration of millions of democratic voters)? You have statistics from other countries that shows legalization plus free treatment clinics works much better than our policies? NONSENSE!
Tenthirtytwo you’re absolutely correct on Perry’s disconnect between what the question is asking and the question that he thinks is being asked. He equates teaching safe sex practices with telling kids to go and have sex.
Notice that for the entire last half of the video, he is bumbling through trying to compare the steroids testing with sexual education, and comes up with maybe one or two complete sentences including the “I’m trying to make a comparable here.” The interviewer did a great job of taking Perry off of his talking points while Perry did a miserable job of… well… thinking.
Yeah, that comparison to steroids testing was strange. They spend some money on it and actually find some kids using steroids. They spend some money on abstinence only education and increase the teen pregnancy rate. So, steroids works, even if inefficiently. The abstinence only sex education does not work. I believe he just argued the opposite of what he intended.
It does make me wonder about these people. Do they really not prepare to answer questions like this? His response was like someone who had never actually had thought about these policies before or had to answer a simple question about them. How does that happen?
He gets a little ruffled and out of sorts without his cowboy hat and gun belt.
I think Rick Perry is awesome, and we should all change party registration to Republican so we can vote him in as the nominee. Unlike Bachmann who I do not believe can win the nomination even if we help, we might be able to push Perry to the top, and then convince him to pick Sarah Palin for VP.
That would be the easiest way to guarantee Obama a second term!
Man, Perry’s been nailing that Southern fundamentalist character: “I’m gonna believe what I wanna believe and ain’t no facts gonna stop me! Yee-hah!”
TENTHIRTYTWO, you nailed it perfectly. My pea brain was struggling to put into words what you did. Thank you.
The problem is, many Americans are not going to parse the issue as you did, amazingly. Perry is a very shrewd character and this kind of response will appeal to people who don’t take the question apart. We know this because George W. Bush was cut from the same cloth and it worked for him.
“You’re either with us or you’re against us.”
No nuance there. Easy to digest.
repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra repeat the mantra
The real problem is that while abstinence itself works, getting teenagers to be abstinent does not. So we must find alternatives to keep them from knocking each other up.