Unless you are brain dead, you know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  This makes lots of people feel just wonderful about themselves because they believe they are helping to “fight” cancer.   This may come as a surprise to you, but some of us who actually have cancer thoroughly loath and despise this hoopla and exploitation of our dreadful disease.  Of course I would like to see a cure for cancer and I can certainly relate to my breast-cancerous sisters.  But, like everything else in America, cancer has become a “brand” to be marketed and exploited and I find all these “awareness” campaigns positively repulsive.  And breast cancer is the poster child for the whole cancer exploitation industry.

Believe me, for someone who has had to deal with melanoma, esophageal cancer, prostate cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, and two surgeries, a bunch of NFL football players running around in pink shoes is not going to make me more “aware” of cancer.  I can assure you, nobody is more aware of cancer than I am.

You will find that for several years a lot of people who actually have cancer share my opinion. When the Dallas Cowboys “pinked” their stadium for a game in October 2011, the New York Times wrote, “Like it or not — and some people don’t like it at all — the pinking of America has become a multibillion-dollar business, a marketing, merchandising and fund-raising opportunity that is almost unrivaled in scope.”

If you really want to know how despicable the cancer exploitation industry is, google “pinking of America” or go to Breast Cancer Action (www.bcaction.org).  I don’t think you will be surprised to learn that not a great deal of what you spend actually goes to cancer research and prevention? One example from bcaction.org will suffice:

“How much money goes towards breast cancer programs and services? For example, Yoplait donates 10 cents for every pink yogurt lid mailed back, meaning you’d have to eat three yogurts a day during the entire four-month campaign in order to raise $36 for the cause.” Of course, you will also have purchased 360 pots of yoghurt.  Pretty good deal for Yoplait.

Go on Amazon (which has 20 pages of cancer--predominantly pink--merchandise) or any promotional products web-site and you will find an extraordinary array of items to get you to spend money to raise cancer “awareness.”  You can get ribbons, jewelry, mugs you name it.  You might want to buy them in quantity, then sell them to make money.  (Most of the money raised by these promotional products and campaigns actually does not go to cancer research but you could make a buck.)

A lot of cancer “endurers” like me (I hate terms like “cancer victim” and “cancer survivor”) find it objectionable how cancer is exploited not only for blatant profit, but how it is also exploited to boost tv ratings and sell magazines.

You have all seen the tv shows that parade beautiful little children with chemo-bald heads smiling at the camera as the hosts gush all over them and tell you how “courageous” and “inspiring” they are.  No, they are very, very sick little kids who have no idea what’s happening to them and they are being paraded in front of tv cameras so whatever show it is can make you feel it is passionately caring (and get you to tune in again).  It’s cancer as show business!  

A recent People Magazine cover featured TV host Joan Lunden looking absolutely gorgeous despite her chemotherapy-induced baldness.  The cover headlines declared that Joan “fights cancer,” “I will beat this” and her “inspiring emotional journey.”  She is just smiling away and totally upbeat in the article.  It’s almost as if she’s saying, “Wow, cancer can be fun!”  Believer me it’s not.

Fortunately, October ends tomorrow and the pink onslaught will fade away until next year.  But, never fear, you can still “fight” cancer in November which is National Pancreatic Cancer Month so you can go out and buy yourself a lavender ribbon.

Post script:  If you really want to contribute to cancer research and prevention do what www.bcaction.org  recommends.  You can easily research organizations that truly expend their donations on research and give directly to them.  Many other types of cancer do not get much research money because they are not so highly promoted as breast cancer.  You won’t get a ribbon but you will know what you donate will be used for what it was intended.

You have no doubt noticed that the current Ebola hysteria has really whipped up the smash-bash-and-trash-the-government movement.  What’s interesting is that, while this has usually been pretty much the purview of Republicans, many Democrats and the so-called “liberal” press including the New York Times have all jumped on the let’s-hate-government bandwagon.  The Ebola episode has made it the news obsession du jour to expose CDC incompetence (and by extension everything governmental).  Since we love to deal in hyperbole in America, you could say this frenzied attack on the CDC is like blaming the Japanese government for Hiroshima hospitals not being prepared to deal with the atomic bomb. 

There are 5,700 hospitals in the United States.  The CDC does not manage nor control any of them.  It issues standards, regulation and protocols.  Yet what happened in Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has now been construed to be a catastrophic failure of the CDC.

Some unnamed, probably low-level nurse at Presbyterian Hospital did not immediately quarantine Mr. Duncan when he first came to the hospital.  Please note, it is the hospital’s responsibility to train personnel and enforce those protocols but somehow, according to the politicians and the press, the nurse’s erroneous actions were explicitly caused by the CDC.  Evidently it is the DCD’s fault that some health care workers did not know how to put on protective clothing properly.  Perhaps they were just dumb or their hospitals’ staff did not adequately train them, but, no matter, it’s the CDC’s fault.

Then, another nurse preparing to travel called the CDC and reported a low level fever which was not prohibitive according to "protocols" and some unnamed employee said there was no existing restriction on her travel.  And, once again, this becomes uncontestable evidence of a thoroughly incompetent government agency.

Predictably, we have the obligatory congressional hearings and screams for the agency head to resign.  This, of course, resolves nothing, but it makes good political theater especially in an election cycle.

Now all this mess could have been avoided if our country were run according to former congressman Ron Paul’s ideas.  He wrote a column declaring that this whole Ebola epidemic would have been better handled by private industry.  In his column, “Liberty, not government key to containing Ebola,” he posits that private airlines have a greater incentive to protect their customers than governments and that Firestone which established its own Ebola treatment center at its plant in Liberia clearly demonstrates that the free market is our best defense against Ebola.  And this guy ran for president and his son wants to.

But I am going to give the CDC the benefit of a doubt and assume it is doing its job to do everything possible to protect the American public.  In the meantime, I am going to jump in bed and pull the covers over my head.

JOURNALISM 2.014

Politicians of both parties heap extensive criticism on the “media” for causing problems in our current noxious political climate.  Personally, I believe the political parties are at fault but there is no doubt the media exacerbates the situation by distorting, misleading and lying when reporting the “news.”  Here is an example from the venerable New York Times (October 16, 2014) which was once believed to be an example of high journalistic standards.  This illustrates how the supposedly liberal Times also participates in the current media trend go to any length to denigrate and criticize government in general and the Obama Administration in particular.  Here is what the Times reporter wrote regarding the second nurse contracting Ebola:

“Hours after Dr. Frieden spoke, a federal health official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly, said that because it was thought that Ms. Vinson’s protective gear would have kept her safe and because her temperature was only mildly elevated, she fell into a category not covered by C.D.C. guidelines.

“I don’t think we actually said she could fly, but they didn’t tell her she couldn’t fly,” the official said. He said the error was on the part of the C.D.C., not the nurse. “She called us,” he said. “I really think this one is on us.”

Examine this passage.  It quotes an anonymous federal health official who was not authorized to speak.  This immediately puts into question the official’s credibility since he knows he is violating one of his organization’s rules and violates it anyway.  Conceivably there was a reason he was not authorized perhaps because he was not privy to all the information regarding the incident. Then the “official” states that technically the C.D.C. was not wrong in allowing her to fly since she was in a category not covered by C.D.C. guidelines.  Then he adds that the C.D.C didn’t say she could fly but also did not say that she couldn’t.  This is an absolutely, senseless, stupid, and meaningless statement reinforcing the suspicion that the “official” did not really know what he was talking about.  And then he concludes, “I really think this one is on us,” which is purely his opinion and not a fact but effectively places the blame on the government which, I can assume, was both the source’s and the reporter’s objective. 

I have a personal reason for deploring the state of journalism today—both print and broadcast.  When I studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s we were taught that reporters must stick to verifiable facts using the venerable 5Ws formula—Who, What, When, Where, Why and sometimes How.  Any opinion or political statements by reporters was forbidden. Speculation and opinion was the purview of editorial writers and columnists.  Reporters were required to be apolitical.

The above example is totally devoid of fact and is merely an opinion detrimental to the source’s own employer, and presumably shared by the reporter or he would not have included it.  In other words, I conclude both the source and the reporter had what we now call a “political agenda.”

When I was a correspondent for Fairchild Publications in Paris in the 60s I was assigned to NATO which at the time was headquartered there.  I got hold of a lot of sensitive information.  Of course we used terms like “informed sources” to shield our contacts but we did not have to justify why they were anonymous with excuses like “not authorized to speak,” “ongoing investigation” etc.  But what I reported from an “informed source” had to be actual facts and not opinions.  In those days, editors were more conscientious and if they had any doubts about the veracity of my source’s quote, I had to justify it or it was cut. Or, if I expressed an opinion or a personal political position it was automatically deleted. In those days there was some integrity in journalism. 

My discussion on the deplorable state of journalism could go on to include the damaging effects of the blogosphere, social networking, cell phones, cable television and all the current usual subjects. Trashing the government for anything and everything now seems to be the fashionable thing for both the liberal and conservative press.  It gets “eyeballs” as they like to say.

Delving into the past I could also acknowledge that journalists did not always hit above the belt citing H. L. Menken, Lincoln Steffens, Muckrakers, Yellow Journalism, tabloids, etc.  But we live in 2014 and I suppose in these times where conflict, hatred, fear, vicious partisanship, terrorism, and mass shootings grab all the headlines, it means the more confrontational, sensational and opinionated the news the more the public likes it whether it’s the truth or not.  Newspapers, like the Times, are desperately trying to reinvent themselves in order to survive.  Broadcast news is graded on ratings not content. That means they must whip up public emotions, and, to do that, fiction has proved to be much more effective than truth.   Ultimately, considering the mentality of the public today, we are getting the journalism we deserve.