Somebody else says this...

...so I don't have to. Erik at Alter Destiny attacks Jeff Suppan and other "celebrities" for going on TV to oppose stem cell research. From the NY Times article...

In a video copy of the ad, produced and distributed by an anti-amendment group called Missourians Against Human Cloning and posted on the Internet, Mr. Suppan’s face appears in the first 10 seconds. He is not wearing a baseball cap in the ad.

"Amendment 2 claims it bans human cloning, but in the 2,000 words you don’t read, it makes cloning a constitutional right," Mr. Suppan says in the ad. "Don’t be deceived."

It was very disorienting for me to pull up MSN.com last night and have a headline of "Battle of the Stem Cell Stars" staring at me with pictures of Limbaugh, Michael J. Fox, and...Suppan. Those three get equal coverage? Somebody who actually suffers from Parkinson's disease has to share a picture with an asshole/drug addict and a B-level pitcher?

Someone else apparently in these commercials is Mike "I promise I never took steroids...my body must be breaking down like this because God wanted it this way" Sweeney. Yeah, that might have made an impact five years ago...when he was actually capable of a) swinging a bat without pulling a muscle, and b) swinging a bat and actually hitting a ball. But nonetheless, Sweeney is an intellectual giant who's been known around Kansas City as a wonderful religious family man. That doesn't make him smart or a good judge of, well, anything. Case in point:

Back in 2003, The Butterfly and I went to a Royals/A's game that happened to be "Babushka Night". The first however many in attendance got a free Royals Babushka doll. During a break between innings, there was a funny segment in which members of the Royals were all asked what the heck a Babushka doll is (it's a Russian nesting doll). Most players had no guess whatsoever, but Sweeney took a stab: "I bet it's Jewish." Your anti-stem cell spokesperson, ladies and gentlemen...

Quick question for you, Jeff and Mike and Patricia and Jesus...I mean Jim Kaviezel: since you're anti-stem cell, I assume you're pro-all things Dubya and pro-habeas corpus slaying. And when somebody talks about the slippery slope of "if you're allowed to take _____'s freedoms away, you could take anybody's away," you roll your eyes and say that that person is paranoid. Well, I haven't read the 2,000 words that Suppan's read (though I'm pretty sure he didn't read them either), but I'm pretty sure that, in a bill whose intent is to find cures for cruel, as-yet-incurable diseases, I'm pretty sure the intent wasn't to secretly legalize cloning and/or creating Frankenstein when nobody's looking. And when you tell me it's a slippery slope, just realize that I'm going to roll my eyes and say you're paranoid.