BONER CANDIDATE #1: ALL THEY WANT IS FREE HEALTH CARE
In his speech on the House floor this past week on a bill that would have prevented the military from covering medical expenses related to transitioning, Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) made a strange comparison. Speaking about the Ottoman Empire, which occupied Turkey and parts of surrounding areas from the thirteenth to twentieth centuries, King said, “What they did in order to keep them from reproducing was that they did reassignment surgery on those slaves they had captured, that they had put into their janissary troops.” The janissaries were an elite corps in the Ottoman military who, among other things, were forbidden from marrying, passing wealth on to their children, or growing beards. By the mid-nineteenth century, they were permitted to marry and have children. And the janissaries were not castrated. This is just a common modern myth. King went on. “And that reassignment surgery was they took them from being a virile, reproductive male into being a eunuch. That’s a lesson of the military — the Ottoman military — from two, three, 400 years ago.”
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BONER CANDIDATE #2: AUNT JEMIMA….THAT’S FUNNY. RIGHT?
Lexi Carter of Memphis, Tenn., is still trying to understand why her doctor called her “Aunt Jemima” — twice — after he claimed it was a “blunder.” (Photo: WMC News) A Memphis woman is planning to file a complaint with the state medical board after her doctor called her “Aunt Jemima.” Lexi Carter said she could barely believe it when it happened the first time — but then he did it again, she told local news station WMC. Carter said her dermatologist, Dr. James Turner, greeted her by calling her the racially charged name — which also happens to be a brand name of breakfast food products. “He had a young girl — physician’s assistant trainee, a student — with him, and he looked at me and he goes, ‘Hi, Aunt Jemima.’” The name Aunt Jemima has a long history in American culture. Its roots are firmly in the minstrel show period — when white performers wore blackface — and is a remnant of plantation and slave culture. The name, character, and history all have racial undertones, to say the very least. How a modern-era doctor could believe calling a patient this name would be a so-called “blunder” isn’t clear, but that’s precisely what the doctor said. When he was contacted by local news, Turner admitted to calling the woman “Aunt Jemima” and released a public apology to Carter: “Ms. Carter is one of our very dear patients and has been for years. She is one of many African American patients and I count it a privilege to be their doctor.
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