The dumbest thing I have ever heard...

Ah, the holidays. A time for tradition, whether gathering around the fire for some Christmas carols and eggnog or filing away your grandfather urinating on the tree under repression or denial. A time when the stress and constant grinding press of Christmas is all too often mistaken for the "magic" of the season. Showing the self-restraint not to dish out a British mobster-style beatdown to the little old lady who just cut you off, for the parking space you weren't even interested in to begin with, does not qualify under "peace on earth and goodwill toward men (or little old ladies). That goes 365 days a year, not just when we start singing carols about it.

The holidays are also a good time for the sappy announcement. This is only amped up each year by the steady stream of commercials for jewelry chain stores and the asinine made-for-TV "entertainment". You have your standard holiday engagement announcement (the less on that the better), the always popular impending child announcement (we all know the turkey doesn't always put people to sleep...), and so on and so forth. Notice how you never see the TV ads where somebody comes out of the closet, or waits until everyone pops that first bite of Christmas dinner into their mouths before announcing the divorce?

And I suppose, on top of all the other hot mess, the holiday season is a time for contemplation, whether it be how to deliver (or break) the news, or whether or not you are going to test the airbags out on that little old lady's Cadillac DTS. An in a telling sign of the times, you can pretty much contemplate how you want the apple of your eye to shine on down the road, catalog shopping for that custom-made kid that seems to be in vogue somehow, to people as much money as hope, or arrogance. Then, of course, you knew once we started gaining little bits and pieces here and there of the ability to play God, the idiots were going to wander onto the field start demanding stupid new rules along the way.

The Human Tissue and Embryo Bill, currently in Britain's House of Lords, would bar parents undergoing embryo screening from picking one with an abnormality if a healthy embryo existed. You know how it is. The coffee you drink may be hot, the cutlery set you just received may be sharp, and the cruise control in that car in the driveway, the one with the bow on it? Yeah, it will not drive the car for you. So, it hardly comes as a surprise that somewhere, somehow, someone should have to be told, as a matter of law, that they cannot purposely select a child to be born with a disability. That's where the government comes in, and then...

...here come the protests. No matter how oblivious or disconnected from reality one would have to be to argue this point, bless them , they are out there. Jackie Ballard, a former director-general of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and MP, said deaf parents should be allowed to screen their embryos, so they could pick a deaf child if they wanted to.

Well, that just about the dumbest argument I have ever heard. Pun intended. Ballard, now the chief executive of the Royal Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People, or (mercifully) RNID, thinks the slim number of deaf parents who may want a child that is deaf as well should have the right, because being deaf is a cultural identity. WTF? Being deaf is a disability. If you can rise above it and live a productive and/or meaningful existence, more power to you, and damn well so. Declaring it a cultural identity just opens it up to the overwrought political correctness that too many times diminishes an issue just by its mere mention. Ballard's stance is that "we should not destroy that cultural identity by preventing children from being born deaf. Britain has seemed to achieve an odd parallel to the United States. Someone who was in charge of animal rights thinking humans should be purposely allowed to be born deaf makes as much sense as putting a thoroughbred sports exec in charge of disaster management. And it is roundly impossible to say, or even think at this point, that Ballard is doing a heckuva job.

As cockamamie as Ballard sounds, if you can believe it, there are others who fall into her puzzling line of logic. Several organizations are collaborating to force changes to the bill to allow parents to pick abnormal embryos, including the British Deaf Association. The stance taken by the organizations is that the bill is discriminatory, as it prevents a couple from selecting a baby with a disability on purpose, and rightfully so. Amazingly enough, no one seems to mention how discriminatory it is for the newborn to get dealt something like a disability, and from the people who purport to love and know what's best best for the kid. after, they took the painstaking lengths to bring the kid into the world, didn't they?

Ballard's last bit of erstwhile wisdom came in the form of "we would like to retain, as far as possible, parental choice, but it has to be in conjunction with a clinician so that people know exactly what they are choosing." That's the problem even a former MP should be able to spot. Just because people know exactly what they are choosing, regardless of the context or situation, it does not necessarily make that choice right, ethical, decent, or legal.

I would go on, but I'm afraid to say it may be falling on deaf ears. Again, pun intended. Good thing this is typed, so I don't have to yell.