Mostly unnoticed

Are you tired of the monotony of what American mainstream media considers entertainment these days? Stories about people who have entirely too much money and what they spent it on or the recent trend of OMGLOTSOFBABIES? If plastic surgery escapades and songs with a total of five words set to a faulty synth and a bongo no longer hold your attention, let me direct you to a new, much more entertaining set of individuals: the Mississippi legislature.

It's the ultimate reality show - you chose the cast, you chose who comes back each episode session, and it all takes place in a mansion downtown. Really, it's a shame that their antics go mostly unnoticed by the general population because I have no doubt that there has been more creativity expressed in this legislative session than on Billboard's Top 40 for the last five years.

For example, HB 1079 was labeled as "AN ACT TO... REVISE THE DEFINITION OF SEX OFFENSE IN THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION LAW; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES." Now, the immediate line of thought is "Sex offender? Hey I think sex offenses are bad!" And it would be correct, sex offenses are bad. Sadly, MS law doesn't really care too much about sex offenses (more on that later). The point of this bill is to demonize people living with HIV:

Section 41-23-2 relating to a knowing and willful violation of a lawful order of a health officer by persons afflicted with a life-threatening communicable disease of causative agent thereof when such order deals with Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and/or any other sexually transmitted disease;

How creative!! Intentional transmission is not nearly the leading cause of infection in the state. In many cases, people transmit them because they don't know they're sick to begin with. All this bill really does is encourage people not to get tested and open up lots of legal loopholes to make life even harder for people living with HIV. In one of the most suspenseful episodes of the season it PASSED THE MS HOUSE, only to be shot down very luckily at the last minute in committee. One of the most climatic moments of the season, it looked like the cast was willing to actually teach people how to not get STI's to begin with, but a twist ending shot that bill down.

The epitome of legislative artwork, though, is Mississippi's consistent attacks on women's access to healthcare. Were it not for the pro-choice activists and a few allied committee heads, the legislature would've gotten away with all of it's ridiculous demands including: requiring an unnecessary certification for abortion providers, body-jacking post-abortion pieces of human tissue from underage pregnant women for use as evidence whether they surrender such tissue or not, totally disregarding confidentiality laws if there's an abortion involved, and, my favorite, defining embryos as children and making them adoptable in the state while 1,700 pre-fab children wait to be adopted from foster care

In addition to being far more interesting than anything American Idol's ever done (I just offended a lot of people) it has a key factor that no other reality show to date has come up with: the winners don't just get record deals, they become law.