Karen Brauer: Whining, unprincipled, lying pharmacist. Part 2.

And after reading part one, you can probably see where I'm going with this. Our previous definition of "principle" referred to the idea that someone is willing to stand by their beliefs and, more importantly, is willing to accept the consequences of those beliefs. Which brings us to "Pharmacists for Life" president Karen Brauer, who isn't willing to do either and has no principles whatsoever although you'd never know that by reading the mainstream press.

Check out this excerpt from a March 28, 2005 WaPo article:

"Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life. That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic oath that medical practitioners should do no harm," said Karen L. Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions.

Wow. Based on that wording, you'd think that Brauer took a principled stand based on her religious and moral beliefs. And you'd be dead wrong, based on this snippet from an interview with sanctimonious, right-wing gasbag Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: I got you. Now, when the customer complained, what happened there? Did you refer that customer to somewhere else?

BRAUER: I asked -- I -- she did not complain to me. OK? What happened is, she came in for a refill. I informed her that we did not carry the drug at the time. And I offered to call a copy of her prescription to the pharmacy of her choice.

O'REILLY: And then she complained. But did you -- how -- why would she complain about that, if you didn't have the drug on hand?

BRAUER: Somehow she found out that this pharmacy actually did have the drug at the time.

O'REILLY: So you lied to her.

BRAUER: Yes, I did.

Ooooooh ... that's not quite the impression you got from the WaPo article, was it? Rather than taking a direct, principled and public stand based on her moral compass, Brauer simply lied about the availability of the drug. She wanted to adhere to her religious beliefs, but she had no intention of dealing with the consequences of those beliefs. So she lied. That's not principle. That's cowardice.

It's the same kind of cowardice you see when public figures stand up, put on an air of nobility and say things like, "Regardless of who was actually at fault, it happened on my watch and I'm prepared to take full responsibility," when, of course, they're not prepared to do any such thing. When was the last time you heard something like,

"Yes, I understand that others may have been guilty but, as this happened under my administration, I should have known better and I am taking full responsibility for ... excuse me? What? What do you mean, I'm fired? Jesus Christ, when I said I'm taking full responsibility, I didn't really mean it. I meant, I'm just saying that so I look good but, fuck, it wasn't really my fault, was it? Why take it out on me?"

So Brauer, the unprincipled liar that she is, still has the gall to stand up and say she's doing this based on her moral compass. Is that rich or what?

BY THE WAY: If you read both the WaPo article and the O'Reilly snippet carefully, you'll have noticed yet another example of Brauer's total lack of principle. In the O'Reilly interview, she describes the incident as:

BRAUER: I asked -- I -- she did not complain to me. OK? What happened is, she came in for a refill. I informed her that we did not carry the drug at the time. And I offered to call a copy of her prescription to the pharmacy of her choice.

So while Brauer was not willing to fill the prescription personally, she seemed to have no problem passing it on to another pharmacist who would. And yet, here's Brauer in the WaPo article, taking a noticeably more uncompromising stand:

Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.

In other words, Brauer once again put aside her precious principles for the sake of expediency and out of sheer cowardice to avoid what would have been the inevitable confrontation if she had said something like, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but not only am I not going to fill this prescription, I'm not even going to refer you to another pharmacist who will."

It's not like it matters anyway. While Brauer's supporters might want to make this into a religious principles case, it's really simpler than that. She lied to a customer, and that should have been more than enough justification to fire her sorry ass.

To paraphrase a war cry heard from the lunatic right wing only a few years ago, "It's not the religious principles, it's the lying."