Listening to The Ed Schultz Radio Show yesterday, I was dismayed by the way Schultz framed his discussion of the issue with callers. While it was clear that Schultz was conflicted in his own mind, the questions seemed to come from a right-wing playbook. Most disturbing to me was the constant bleating, "What if this was your kid?" Since I didn't hear anyone call in from Portland yesterday, I honestly wonder what possible relevance a question like that has. We are discussing an issue of public policy here, not an individual's feelings about their children, or how that parent chooses to raise their children.
Underlying this is the narcissism of so much of the public discourse fed by the right. Please understand I am talking about narcissism as a clinical psychological illness, a personality disorder that manifests itself in a variety of ways, but whose most salient feature (for our purposes here) is the lack of any sense of self resulting in a constant shifting of focus to the self to prevent the public disappearance of the self. In other words, a narcissist fears he or she has no center, no self; fighting this sense of nothingness (what cultural critic Christopher Lasch called The Minimal Self) leads the person with narcissistic personality disorder to always move any discussion to his or her own self, in order to assure him-/herself that in fact he/she exists.
So much for the abstract. In the concrete, this means that constantly attempting to shift the focus of a complicated (and largely irrelevant) public policy issue to one of the personal feelings of a person addressing the issue is a non-sequitur. For myself, had I been a caller in to Schultz' show, and had he posed the question to me, I would have answered, roughly, as follows:
How I would or wouldn't feel were it my child is not the issue. The issue is whether or not the school nurse, as a public health care professional and provider, should, in the course of his or her duties, act in such a way as to protect the health of an individual. In a perfect world, such a discussion would be impossible. We do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world where children make bad decisions; we live in a world where parents do not listen to their children; we live in a world where parents hurt their children; we live in a world where children, effectively, have no parents. In these cases, it becomes necessary for someone to act in loco parentis in the interest both of the child and in the interest of broader public health concerns.
As the parent of a Middle School child (although here they just call it "Upper Elementary"), I applaud the decision of the Portland School Board to act realistically and responsibly for the sake of those children who do not live in a perfect world, and in the interest of the broader public health. Because, you see, it isn't about me. Or my daughter. It's about acting in the public interest, and the best interest of the public.
