Conservative perverts and their polluted souls
by digby
Zunguzungu has posted a rather perfect example of everything that’s wrong with … everything. He discusses the work of Maria Gunnoe a West Virginia coalfield activist, sharing this video explaining it and the remarks she was scheduled to deliver(.pdf) before the House Committee on Natural Resources, along with a link to the slide show she planned to accompany her testimony.
It’s bad enough. But then comes this:
Maria was going to show another picture to the House subcommittee yesterday, this photo, which is a photo of a five year old child bathing in that kind of brown, poisonous water. The child is naked, as you normally are when you bathe. I’d invite you to click that link, and think about what, if anything, distresses you about it.
The photo was taken by photojournalist Katie Falkenberg, who gave it this caption:
Erica and Rully Urias must bathe their daughter, Makayla, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. Their water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The family attributes this water problem primarily to the blasting which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into their water, and also to the runoff from the mountaintop removal sites surrounding their home. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water in has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced.
Now, that photo of Makayla Urias is a photograph of a naked child, a child exactly as naked as nine-year-old Kim Phuc was when, forty years ago, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of her, while she was running and crying from American napalm. You’ve probably seen that photo. It’s iconic. The photographer got a Pulitzer prize for taking it.
Yesterday, on the other hand, Maria was told that she would not be allowed to show that photo. It was not appropriate. She had the blessing of the child’s parents, but Republicans on the subcommittee alerted the capitol police (according to Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for GOP panel members), and after the hearing, the capitol police took Maria aside for questioning about “child pornography.”
These people truly are vile. Click on the picture. There is not one thing even remotely sexual about it and only disgusting perverts would think there was. But the picture is obscene. And it’s that obscenity these horrible, horrible people are trying to cover up.
Be sure to rad the whole post to get a full picture of the horrors of this polluted environment — and the polluted souls of those Republicans creeps.
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