Post-Rep. Marty Harty

Democratic Leader Terie Norelli's Statement on the Resignation of Rep. Marty Harty (4.00 / 12)

House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli issued the following statement after Republican Rep. Marty Harty (Barrington) resigned his seat in the New Hampshire legislature:

"The remarks made by Rep. Harty last week hurt thousands of New Hampshire families across the state, and Speaker Bill O'Brien has been silent on this issue. What is even more troubling is that the Speaker and Republicans in the House are putting these words into action by proposing cuts that will be damaging to the mentally ill, disabled, and children."
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by: TerieNorelli @ Mon Mar 14, 2011 at 21:01:11 PM UTC

Let me just suggest that some of this mean-spiritedness (4.00 / 1)

is just plain jealousy and resentment that young people are getting support and attention that the old folks never got.  So, they feel deprived and deprivation seems to be akin to abuse in that it seeks vengeance from someone else.  In this case, of course, the deprivators are long gone, so there's nothing for it but to take it out on the next generation.

Some African cultures seem to have addressed this inter-generational problem by formally designating children as the recipients of benefits that were owed to grandparents or other ancestors for the good things they had done.

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by: hannah @ Mon Mar 14, 2011 at 22:57:35 PM UTC

A Very Smart Lifelong Democrat... (4.00 / 1)

...who I will keep nameless, just E-Mailed me an interesting note.  He said, "We should try to get Rep. Harty to reconsider his resignation.  After all we need Republicans to say what's really on their minds."

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by: Rep. Jim Splaine @ Mon Mar 14, 2011 at 23:38:22 PM UTC

Tragedy (4.00 / 2)

It seems to me that this whole incident with Rep. Harty is a tragedy for all concerned.  Harty is very much a product of his time, a time when the majority of the population believed in eugenics and cruel and unthinking treatment of anyone who was different.

No I can't forgive him for what he said but I can understand how it happened.  I wonder why he, at 91 years of age, decided to run for the legislature, an office that he admits he was not able to fill in any kind of professional manner.  To me the real fault is with the Republican Party and those party leaders who asked him to run. I don't think that Harty is the kind of person who would run for public office on his own.  No, he had the support of the Republican Party who felt that he was a sure vote that they could control.

Now Harty has hurt a great many people with his unthinking statements and has presented himself as evil fool to the entire country, hell the entire planet.  But remember he is not the only one to blame.  The climate created by the Election of 2010 and this leadership of bullies is also to blame for this tragedy.  

His resignation is not something to be happy about but merely the last act of a tragedy that didn't have to happen and where many people were hurt.

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by: ProfessorMike @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 01:36:09 AM UTC

Let's remember what he said. (4.00 / 1)

This wasn't all about eugenics and forced sterilization.

He also wanted to send "defectives" to death in Siberia, and he said that he agreed with Hitler on unspecified social issues.

I really don't believe "a majority of the population" believed in that mix of noxious views.

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by: elwood @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 01:45:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Disagree (4.00 / 1)

Elwood, what I said was that in his time, the early half of the 20th Century, the majority did believe in eugenics.  That is why these evil laws were pasted.  I fought against these people in the 1970s legislature and there were a hell of a lot of them.

I hope that as a people we have evolved past this but the conservatives seem to want to bring all of these evils back.  They have to be stoped.

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by: ProfessorMike @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 02:46:26 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're missing my point, and I think you're wrong anyhow. (4.00 / 1)

First, my point was: his statements went beyond eugenics into sending people out to freeze and starve to death. I don't believe there was ever a majority for that.

Second, "eugenics" was more than forced sterilization, it was the notion that selective breeding (under the control of... well, somebody) would improve the race. I'm skeptical that this notion ever had a majority behind it. Sterilization was much more widely accepted, but more as "the least bad choice" for individual people, often relatives, who appeared unable to care for their own children. And the notion of eugenics, it seems to me, is just too abstract to command majority support.

I'll certainly agree that there was no majority rejecting eugenics. But Harty was an active proponent.

I don't think it's accurate to excuse his views by attributing them to a whole generation.

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by: elwood @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 10:17:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The Siberian Solution? (4.00 / 1)

I think the point Professor Mike is making is a valid one.  I don't know for sure what people felt of eugenics back in those days, or even now.  But I do suspect that people had and have their prejudice and the recent discussion about the former state  rep. who advocated a Siberian Solution will find some people in agreement.  

I do know that our attitudes toward others haven't always been generous nor kind.  Not too long ago, until the early 1970s in fact, many professionals classified being gay as a "mental disorder."  

It wasn't until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association declassified it as such, and it took another two years for the American Psychological Association to agree.  In some countries today, people are put to death for being gay.

One of my jobs in past lives was with the American Cancer Society, and I learned that until the 1950s the majority of Americans thought that cancer was something one could catch.  That made advancing the fight against cancer more difficult.  Families with members who had cancer kept it hidden, and neighbors avoided them.

And we all can remember that in the 1980s people living with AIDS were feared by many, and there were calls for quarantine.   When I was President of AIDS Response Seacoast, we successfully fought to get our offices located at the Portsmouth City Hall building with the specific reason to get that stigma and stereotype dismissed.  

When I was growing up in Portsmouth in the 1950s I saw very few people with disabilities, very few in wheelchairs -- about the only ones I saw were veterans who had returned from World War II or Korea.  There was very little handicapped accessibility in stores or streets and sidewalks.

Mentally challenged people, regardless of diagnosis, were sent to the State Hospital in Concord or Laconia State School and warehoused.  In 1969, during my first year as a House member, I toured both facilities and was amazed to see a population I seldom had seen on the streets.  Today many of those who had been hidden away in years past are now in the workplace --mainstreamed into our society and being productive, valued citizens.  

I also worked for several years in NH Special Olympics, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who started that organization in the 1960s, told me the story that she and her husband were warned that the athletes wouldn't be able to swim because they couldn't float, such was the ignorance and bias in those days even of professionals.  

Send them to Siberia?  Fortunately, I don't think here in America that notion ever caught on.  But for millions of people, it sure did.  We keep it from happening again by taking it on whenever it's spoken.

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by: Rep. Jim Splaine @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 12:32:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

they're coming out of the woodwork (4.00 / 2)

Kansas Rep. Virgil Peck appears to be Martin Harty's Kansas kin.

Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck (R) suggested Monday that the best way to deal with the illegal immigration problem may be the same way the state might deal with the problem of "feral hogs" -- by shooting them from a helicopter.

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by: susanthe @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 02:55:25 AM UTC

Ignorance Is Age-Less (4.00 / 2)

It just goes to show that ignorance is not assigned to a specific age.  You can be just as stupid at 41 as 91.  Or as Granny D. proved, tremendously intelligent and wonderful at 100.  

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by: Rep. Jim Splaine @ Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 12:40:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Harty's resignation didn't stop them from joking about eugenics (0.00 / 0)

Yesterday's St. Paddy's Day roast included jokes by O'Brien about the Harty/Eugenics controversy.  While I am a veteran of some edgy/tasteless St. Paddy Day events and other roasts, O'Brien's "joke" felt way out of place.

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by: maggie hassan 2 @ Wed Mar 16, 2011 at 16:39:31 PM UTC

How did this clown get elected in the first place? he is like 10 yrs older then god. (0.00 / 0)

Where the people in that district that desperate for leadership?

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by: unemployed roofer @ Thu Mar 17, 2011 at 17:00:04 PM UTC