The XX Factor

Sharron Angle’s Precious Bodily Fluids

I can’t be the only one who was disappointed when Sharron Angle beat out Sue Lowden for the nomination to run as the Republican candidate for Senate, challenging Harry Reid. I wanted Lowden, not because I thought she’d win, but because I looked forward to months of chicken-based taunting . But my disappointment was short-lived, because Angle is an even bigger win for fans of the Wingnut Olympics. There’s a plethora of goofball stances Angle’s taken for the opposition to choose from.

At first, Angle appeared to be a conservative beamed to us straight from 1932. She’s come out against the repeal of Prohibition (which she later retracted). She’s against Social Security and Medicare. If you pressed her, you’d probably get her to grouse that things have gone downhill since the 19 th Amendment, or that movies lost their spark once they introduced sound.

But sadly, my theory that Angle simply came to us after accidentally stepping in to a time machine in 1932 has been disproved. It turns out that Angle also staunchly opposed fluoridation , because she’s at least strongly influenced by the Bircher conspiracy theory about how fluoridation is a communist experiment in mind control. This conspiracy theory dates back to the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the government mandated fluoridation. It appears that Angle is less a time traveler and more a grab-bag of a century’s worth of right-wing conspiracy theories and screwy ideas.

Of course, it’s not like Harry Reid is a modern, up-to-the-minute kind of guy, as his unfortunate use of the term “Negro dialect” demonstrated. What the American public should demand is a televised debate between these two, or if that feels too new-fangled for them, perhaps a game of pinochle or kick-the-can.

Photograph of Sharron Angle by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.