By David Futrelle
Chuck Woolery is probably best known for two things: 1) being the host of the dating show Love Connection back in the 80s and early 90s and 2) his off-brand cartoon superhero head.
In the last several years, Woolery has staged a comeback of sorts, this time as a right-wing podcaster and Twitter provocateur with more than half a million followers. He’s especially fond of railing against the alleged evils of abortion.
Last night, he offered this deep thought on Twitter:
Why, yes, Chuck, it is. And that’s a good thing. It’s good that women can choose to have children, or not, on their own schedule and for their own reasons, rather than having such a major, life-changing decision left to the whims of nature and less-than-100-percent effective birth control. (Or some dude poking a hole in his condom to prove to himself that his boys can swim.)
The ironic thing about Chuck’s current stance on abortion and the sanctity of pregnancy is that, despite his recent comeback, his true claim to fame remains his former gig on a dating show whose original run ended a quarter of a century ago,
The Chuck Woolery incarnation of Love Connection — in which one shallow, attractive idiot chose another shallow, attractive idiot from a menu of three shallow, attractive idiots and went on a date with them — was basically all about enabling casual sex for cheap entertainment. Though they couldn’t talk about sex directly on the show — instead relying on salacious innuendo — so many of the contestants did have sex that the staff had a cutesy term for it: “boink dates.”
Which is fine, of course, but it seems a little out-of-whack with Woolery’s recent ravings.
In any case, with all that sex going on — the show ran through 11 seasons and more than 2000 episodes — it’s at least possible that some of the women who appeared on the show got pregnant as a result of their Love Connection dates.
If you”ve ever caught a rerun of the show, you know what a horrifying prospect that would be; these were lust connections, at best, and it’s hard to imagine that many of the, er, relationships that came out of the show lasted more than one or two more dates. This is exactly the reason why we need to protect reproductive rights in the first place: no one should be forced to raise a child spawned from a casual hookup — especially with someone from Love Connection.
Woolery has other, well, intriguing ideas about reproductive rights and politics in general, the most original probably being this take on the voting rights of babies.
I don’t know about that. But if we allowed babies to vote all of our politicians would probably be kitties. Or possibly big lovable monsters. I’m actually ok with that.
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