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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (103292)	3/27/2007 10:57:19 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361358

Alter: Don't Judge the Edwards Family ______________________________________________________________ The rush to condemn John and Elizabeth Edwards is misguided. Take it from this cancer survivor. WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY By Jonathan Alter Newsweek Updated: 6:16 p.m. CT March 27, 2007 March 27, 2007 - I'm paid to judge other people, but some things should be beyond judgment. I'd put John and Elizabeth Edwards's decision to keep campaigning in that category. Anyone who, like me, has had cancer knows this. Tony Snow, whose colon cancer has spread to his liver but who plans to come back to work, gets it. Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, herself a breast-cancer survivor (and, like me, in remission), said as much on the TODAY Show Tuesday. When it comes to cancer, judge not, lest you be judged someday, if you should be so unlucky. Judging is different than asking tough questions. Katie Couric's interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards on "Sixty Minutes" was, as the couple themselves said this week, entirely in-bounds. Couric was simply airing the issues, which any good journalist must do. This was not "inappropriately harsh," as one critic on CBSNews.com put it, but an extremely useful contribution to the de-stigmatizing of cancer and the healthy national dialogue now taking place. But parts of that conversation have been offensive-even appalling-to anyone who has actually grappled with a deadly diagnosis firsthand. I don't mean to pick on Jane Ridley, a New York Daily News columnist. She was simply expressing publicly what a lot of people have been thinking and saying in private. Here is what she wrote about John and Elizabeth Edwards on Tuesday: "Driven by ego, this wealthy man who indeed has everything-including a second, designer family started when his wife was 48 and 50-stands firm, no matter the cost. Ambition has blinded his judgment and Elizabeth's, too…Someone has to be the adult and say ‘your health comes first.'" It's hard to know where to begin with this tripe. Maybe Ridley or someone close to her has had cancer, but I seriously doubt it. No one who has been in that awful club would write this. First, she suggests that John Edwards was stubborn about staying in the race, when it's clear he would have left it instantly had his wife said she needed him to. (Should her condition deteriorate, this may yet happen). Second, Ridley implies that Elizabeth Edwards's in vitro fertilization treatments-driven by her husband's ambition for a "designer" family-caused her cancer. While the odds of cancer rise with late pregnancies, there is no evidence that it was causal in this case. Ridley adds that Edwards was "desperate" to have more children because of the death of their son, Wade, in a 1996 car accident-as if, in some way, she should have known she might have this coming. This fits a familiar pattern of thought among people who have not suffered from cancer: there must be some explanation, some cosmic justice at work. That's a common way to make sense of cancer-blame the victim. This is not nice, not nice at all, even in the case of smokers (a group to which Edwards does not belong, to the best of my knowledge). Cancer patients do it to themselves all the time, which is not helpful. But when an outsider indulges in this spurious logic, the effect is doubly cruel. No one can make sense of cancer because cancer makes no sense. It is random and non-logical, whether genetic or environmental in origin. Ridley's core argument-a fairly common reaction-is that the Edwards's invocation of service "rings hollow to every mother in the land." Every mother? This isn't about ambition trumping love of children and it takes a lot of nerve to suggest that it is. It's about how to cope with the worst news imaginable. Ridley and the other know-it-alls around the water cooler are essentially telling Elizabeth to give up. "If I had given up everything that my life was about, I'd let cancer win before it needed to," Elizabeth told Couric. She said she wasn't ready to "start dying." That's not ego speaking, but a genuine reaction to her predicament. No one can say how you-or anyone else-will react until actually faced with a devastating diagnosis. In my case-and Tony Snow's, Laura Ingraham's, Jay Monahan's (the late husband of Katie Couric) Elizabeth Edward's and hundreds of thousands of others-the choice was to try to hold onto as much of our old life as humanly possible. Don't judge that. URL: msnbc.msn.com

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (103292)	3/27/2007 11:28:37 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361358

What To Do (Hic!) Steven Weber 03.27.2007 The Bush administration checklist of disgrace lengthens faster than the penis of a minister on crystal meth. I won't go into my Cranky Liberal rant, moving down the list with a grease pencil, ticking off each egregious offense against the gullible, too-trusting American people. Instead I will offer my Cranky Liberal response to those who have said "Yeah, you're mad. Big deal. What do we do?" And keep in mind I have just finished a cool glass of white wine, so make of that what you will. Fuggit. It's five o'clock here. I'm an adult, dammit. Here goes: So what to do? First, triangulate your news sources. Since most of the news services are owned by Thomas Nast-like caricatures of swollen carpet baggers and cigar-sucking plutocrats, one must sift through the news like a grizzled miner panning for the bleak glitter that, once refined, can be turned into an ornate broach on the freckled bust of an aging dowager. Check and double check. Next, if one must watch television news, don't be cowed by the finger wagging, bespectacled conservative spokesmonkies with their pinched nostrils and pursed, disapproving lips. They hold intimidation close to their hollow bosoms as a sacred tool to be used upon inferior creatures such as myself who give two or more shits about what happens to the planet and the people who scrabble across its surface looking for--dare I say---a roof over their heads, enough to eat and a better world for their children and themselves. Icky Liberal drivel, I know. Add grenadine and you've got a recipe for diabetes. As I said, fuggit (I could say "fuck it" but there's something James Jonesian about the euphemism "fug", wouldn't you agree? Just go with me here. I recently drank white wine, you know). Now, that said, don't be so sure that the hip, cool progressive pundits are so pure of heart either. They're all part of the same machine. They're just not as flinty as their tight-assed counterparts. And also they occasionally like to listen to Joan Armatrading. Next, read a couple of volumes of what I think is pertinent literature, stuff that bears an uncanny resemblance to what's going on in our country. Not dry encyclopedic recitation of dates and cities and whatnot. I mean the history THEY don't want you to read ("they" is written boldly, implying an Orwellian application of the third person pronoun. Hint hint!). Read The Grapes of Wrath, goddammit. Lots of love for fellow man, desperate people driven to desperate acts, even desperate acts of humanity, something rarely given any space in the media these days. Then read 1984, of frigging course (I used "frigging" there, not "fugging". I'm a little drunk. I had some white wine). THE Neo-Con blueprint. Clearly Irving Kristol used to read it to little Billy by the light of a campfire stoked with an andiron made from a human femur. Then, mount a local production of Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets. "Socialist drivel!" the Repooplican Conswervatives will cry. But guess what? It's about poor people who are pissed off and articulate and who are given a platform from which to rage a little before going gently into that good night, the same good night that Bush, Cheney and all the Boys in the Bund seem to forget they will be going into as well. Odets's characters speak passionately about life and love and pain and fear in long, mellifluous sentences as opposed to curt, cute sound farts that stick in one's brain until one needs to drink copious amounts of white wine to quell the Moebius bummer-loop of bullshit. Did I mention I myself recently had a glass of white wine? And that I'm wearing a bib? Then, armed with that small amount of counter-culture, observe and react. Be mad. Be glad. Whatever. Express yo'self. Talk it up. Create a groundswell of progressive opinion that surges over the rails of the Neo-Con yacht and sinks it for good (or at least keeps it marooned on a coral reef as a future attraction for scuba divers and tourists interested in early 21st-century Conservative arcana, the yacht having an Anne Coulter figurehead: eyes popping, teeth bared, forward-thrusting clavicles slicing through the nesting krill like Ginsu knives through tomatoes. Jesus. I'm getting dizzy.). And lastly, and I might be foolish for saying this: TURN OFF THE TELEVISION. At least for a day or so. Let the absence of radio waves act as a soothing balm on your battered brain. Ponder. Chew your food. Toss everything around and see if makes salad. God evolved you into having a mind, dammit. Use it! Okay. I'm done now. I said I wouldn't rant but I guess I just proved how sloppy even a well meaning Cranky Liberal can be. And you know, Ive had a teensy taste of white wine. I even forgot the apostrophe on the previous "I've". I am feeling no pain. Pull up a glass and join me, won't you? huffingtonpost.com