Missed It

 Lost in the whirlwind that has been the past few weeks' tumultuous news blizzard was the announcement of a Vice Presideential candidate. Not the author of an elegy to hillbillies and furniture paramour JD "Just Delicious" Vance, but Nicole Shanahan.

No? Doesn't ring a bell? Well, imagine my embarrassment when I found out that this pronouncement of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s running mate was made in my own back yard. In Oakland. RFK Jr. picked Ms. Shanahan, a former Democrat like himself because, "Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party. Our values didn’t change. The Democratic Party did.” 

And just what values does Shanahan bring to this contest? She's a billionaire philanthropist, which is a great cover if you happen to be a super hero, and she heads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes. She comes from "hardscrabble beginnings" in urban Oakland, with a mother who immigrated from China and an Irish and German-American father “plagued by substance abuse” who “struggled to keep a job.” 

Well, now she's got a job, helped along by a hefty divorce settlement she received after her marriage to Google co-founder Sergy Brin went kerflooey in 2023. She donated four million dollars to an RFK Super PAC that funded a thirty-second ad during this year's Super Bowl for which Junior ended up apologizing to his family. Now that she is a part of the ticket, she can give unlimited amounts of money to their campaign. She is also an apologist for her running-mate's anti-vaxx garble. In her acceptance speech, she spoke about her overall passion to help fight “chronic disease,” referencing her own struggles with fertility and her five year old daughter, who she said has autism. Shanahan cited “toxic substances in our environment,” “electromagnetic pollution” from devices like cellphones and the lack of research surrounding long-term effects of childhood vaccinations.

And please, pay no attention to The World Health Organization which credits childhood vaccines with preventing as many as 5 million deaths a year. 

And whatever you do, don't listen to the story about how the top of her ticket left a dead bear in Central Park. Because he was coming home late from a day of falconing. That just might take the steam out of the caring and sharing about returning to our "hardscrabble roots."