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Pig flu! Panic!

The news­pa­per melt­down has moved beyond tragedy and well into farce. Michael Miner at the Chicago Reader reports on a jour­nal­ism awards ban­quet in that great city. One of the win­ners, Melissa Isaac­son, had been laid off two days pre­vi­ous. She heard her name called, went up to col­lect her plaque, and found…

…(By) the time she made her way up front to accept her plaque it had dis­ap­peared. That’s because (still-employed Tri­bune man­ag­ing edi­tor Jane) Hirt had hopped up from the Tri­bune table next to the dais to claim it for the Tri­bune. “My friends asked me later if I got to bask in any of the applause,” says Isaac­son, “but there was no bask­ing. I had to go find my award.”

I think Isaac­son got the best part of this deal. She lost a plaque, but gained a much bet­ter story she can tell for the rest of her life. The plaques I gath­ered in my cursed career are all in a box in the base­ment some­where, and the most good any of them did me was when we used one of Alan’s AP awards to prop open a win­dow with bro­ken sash cords. It was a lit­tle bust of Mark Twain, and was just the right height to do the job. (This was in our home office, and I found inspi­ra­tion in his lit­tle golden face, hold­ing up my win­dow on warm days. Twain would have appre­ci­ated it, too.)

And I remem­ber when the debate over jour­nal­ism awards was about Gan­nett, famed at one time for buy­ing great papers, turn­ing them into pale imi­ta­tions of their for­mer selves, and then buy­ing ads that claimed all its papers’ Pul­tiz­ers for itself, even those won before under pre­vi­ous own­er­ship. (Gan­nett is now famed for sur­viv­ing into the cur­rent era.) Times have changed.

The under­state­ment of the year, that.

So how is your week going? I’ve been track­ing swine flu. This is part of my night-shift job, edit­ing health-care news. It leaves me both opti­mistic and, well, not. The opti­mism comes when I reflect on what a mar­vel our public-health sys­tem is when it works well, and so far, I think it’s work­ing well. You’re already hear­ing the usual naysay­ers, point­ing out that tens of thou­sands die from the flu in a nor­mal year, that most peo­ple are recov­er­ing from this par­tic­u­lar vari­ety just fine, that once again, the gov­ern­ment is spread­ing panic, etc.

I would advise these folks to read past the sec­ond para­graph. The public-health emer­gency declared over the week­end, as was pointed out in nearly every story, was mostly a for­mal­ity. The com­par­i­son was to declar­ing a trop­i­cal storm a hur­ri­cane; it frees up money and staff to work on it, and is not even close to a cry to run for the hills. A global pan­demic, even of a viral ill­ness most will sail through with lit­tle more than lost time from work, is noth­ing to sneeze at. (Sorry.)

The dis­cour­age­ment comes from the real­iza­tion that despite all these pro­fes­sion­als and this mod­ern information-dissemination sys­tem, we really remain incred­i­bly igno­rant of some pretty sim­ple things about our health. You know how many sto­ries have moved assur­ing peo­ple that they can­not get swine flu from eat­ing pork? I’ll tell you: Scores. The con­fu­sion comes from some­thing Alan used to harp about all the time when he was a health reporter: We don’t really know what flu is. It’s a res­pi­ra­tory ill­ness. It affects the lungs. You get it when peo­ple cough their germs in the air nearby, and they fly over to you and make them­selves at home. But because we’ve chris­tened every case of stom­ach upset “stom­ach flu,” it’s prob­a­bly nat­ural that some will fig­ure it comes from some­thing you ate.

Any­way, it’s prob­a­bly a good time to short your pork futures.

In health jour­nal­ism, as in all things, there’s a huge gap between the best and the rest. The best are incred­i­ble; my shift cov­ers pub­li­ca­tion of the Wall Street Jour­nal, New York Times and USA Today, and all three have ace health reporters who not only know their beats, but can explain them capa­bly to the aver­age reader. And then there’s the rest:

“It’s a fine line between edu­cat­ing peo­ple and fright­en­ing them,” said Dr. Mar­vin J. Tenen­baum, the direc­tor of med­i­cine at St. Fran­cis Hos­pi­tal on Long Island. He has been mak­ing the rounds of patients and respond­ing to their con­cerns about the out­break, con­cerns that he said had been ampli­fied by patients’ watch­ing cable news in their hos­pi­tal beds.

Even as news anchors preach cau­tion and pledge that they do not want to cause undue anx­i­ety, the sheer demands of the 24-hour news cycle of cable news and the Inter­net have ampli­fied the story. Typ­i­fy­ing the some­times over­heated cov­er­age, a Fox News Chan­nel com­mer­cial on Wednes­day exclaimed that “swine flu plagues the nation” and urged view­ers to tune into prime-time cov­er­age.

And you know what? The report­ing was prob­a­bly OK. But when you try to boil a story down to a phrase in the promo depart­ment, you come up with “plagues the nation,” and the good work goes down the drain.

All I have to add is: Wash hands fre­quently. Avoid Mex­ico for now. And read the good news­pa­pers.

I’m late today, so just brief blog­gage:

It’s true that edi­to­r­ial car­toons in news­pa­pers are true relics of a time gone by. In an era when any­one can be a Pho­to­shop car­toon­ist, when Get Your War On shows the hid­den humor in MS Word clip art, there’s some­thing just sooo 19th cen­tury about the sketch at the top of the ed page. On the other hand, there are still a few truly gifted prac­ti­tion­ers still at it. The times that edi­to­r­ial car­toons have made me laugh, chances are the artist was Mike Peters.

Happy hump day, all.

Posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 10:53 am in Media. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


68 responses to
“Pig flu! Panic!”

  1. moe99 said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    We talked at wor­ship com­mit­tee last night, how a pan­demic would affect church. No more pass­ing of the peace. And com­mu­nion could be affected to. At the worst, we could be asked by the health author­i­ties to hold off on church ser­vices entirely.

    Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing look at track­ing dis­eases:

    http://​bio​sur​veil​lance​.type​pad​.com/​b​i​o​s​u​r​v​e​i​l​l​a​n​c​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​s​w​i​n​e​-​f​l​u​-​i​n​-​m​e​x​i​c​o​-​t​i​m​e​l​i​n​e​-​o​f​-​e​v​e​n​t​s.html

  2. Connie said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    I told my office mates not to worry, I had my swine flu shot. Now mind you, Ger­ald Ford was pres­i­dent at the time. I lined up on cam­pus with hun­dreds of stu­dents get­ting their free shot. And now I read it may still be work­ing! Great piece on All Things Con­sid­ered yes­ter­day about the non-pandemic swine flu of 1976.

  3. alex said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am

    I had my swine flu shot in fall 1975 when I was away at board­ing school. I became extremely ill that same evening and spent a week in the cam­pus infir­mary. I’ve never tried influenza vac­cine since.

  4. nancy said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Hav­ing been handed the per­fect straight line by Alex, she replies: “If only you took that les­son away from your first hang­over.” Rimshot, please!

  5. Catherine said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    My niece is a pedi­atric res­i­dent at County-USC here in LA, where she has pretty much seen it all. She is very con­cerned about the poten­tial for pan­demic.

    Maybe my earth­quake kit will finally get a work­out.

  6. Jason T. said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    Nance:

    Rip Rense wrote a great news­pa­per novel a few years ago about a fail­ing daily (based on the L.A. Herald-Examiner) in which he describes almost the same thing hap­pen­ing — a reporter who’s about to be fired wins a jour­nal­ism award and isn’t allowed to col­lect it.

    (The novel is called The Last Byline. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll rec­og­nize every char­ac­ter.)

    News­pa­pers don’t have the cor­ner on cruel and thought­less man­age­ment, but they did ele­vate it to an art form.

    Rense, sadly, nails the dys­func­tion inside the typ­i­cal news­room … as Isaacson’s story unfor­tu­nately demon­strates.

  7. Julie Robinson said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am

    At the gro­cery store this morn­ing the san­i­tiz­ing wipes by the carts were very pop­u­lar. It feels like all we can do. But I’m thrilled to know that shot I got back in ’76 may still have some effec­tive­ness. All I had at the time was a sore arm.

  8. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Ah, the won­der­ful­ness that is the Chicago Tri­bune. It’s a laugh­able look­ing news­pa­per these days, like a 70-year-old dowa­ger try­ing to be cool by dress­ing like a high school sopho­more. And it sure did work well. The paper’s cir­cu­la­tion fell 7% since the ghastly redesign debuted, prob­a­bly because any­one look­ing for a seri­ous daily news­pa­per dropped it like a bad habit. The great minds brought in by Sam Zell –includ­ing two of the largest vil­lains in the destruc­tion of com­mer­cial radio, Randy Michaels and Lee Abrams, now work­ing their sick reverse magic on news­pa­pers– have suc­ceeded only in mak­ing the New York Times indis­pens­able in Chicago.

  9. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    I see that all of the jack booted thugs at FauxNews are con­tent to shovel out the hate­s­peak regard­ing the swine flu. They know its cause! It’s the ille­gal aliens! FauxNews informs us that there would be no swine flu if we had the cajones to close the bor­der to all those Mex­i­cans! Isn’t won­der­ful how they all march in lock­step for­ma­tion? It’s just too damn bad that those Amer­i­can Catholic school kids had to mess up the Faux Facts. Damn you real­ity!

    Beck, how­ever, has his own fever­ish take on the swine flu. He thinks that it was all a ploy to get Sebe­lius con­firmed as sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices more quickly! Who knew that the Mex­i­cans were so keen on Sebe­lius that 160 (and count­ing) were will­ing to com­mit sui­cide just to speed her con­fir­ma­tion! It worked! Sebe­lius made it! Some­one should really tell the Mex­i­cans that they can stop now. Ded­i­ca­tion is a won­der­ful thing, but they are really tak­ing this thing too far.

  10. LA Mary said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Some­thing to help you for­get the pig flu:

    http://​www​.the​life​files​.com/​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​w​e​-​d​o​n​t​-​w​a​n​t​-​t​o-try/

  11. Sue said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    “Ded­i­ca­tion is a won­der­ful thing, but they are really tak­ing this thing too far.” Gas­man, if this thing gets worse, what you saw on Fox will look like polite dis­course. The ugli­ness will ratchet up in direct rela­tion to the Amer­i­can death toll.
    Do any of you remem­ber about 10 years ago a researcher (not a med­ical sci­en­tist, I think a sta­tis­ti­cian or some­thing) spec­u­lated that the 1918 flu epi­demic was so bad in part because of undi­ag­nosed tuber­cu­lo­sis? It was fairly com­mon at the time, yet deaths from TB dropped dras­ti­cally in the years fol­low­ing the pan­demic. A fac­tor that might not be con­sid­ered in the cur­rent con­cern, and one that indi­cates that if there is a pan­demic, unde­vel­oped and under­de­vel­oped coun­tries could be hit even harder.

  12. beb said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    I don’t drink much but today has been very stress­ful; I could use a drink. Why I might drink all of a half bot­tle of beer!

  13. Michael said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    How does a edi­to­r­ial car­toon­ist make fun of Jesse Jackson’s open mike com­ment threat­en­ing to emas­cu­late Barack Obama dur­ing the Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in a fam­ily news­pa­per? Here is one of my all time favorites from Mike Luck­ovich of the Atlanta Con­sti­tu­tion. http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/-/C/2/jesse-goes-nuts-lk0711ad.jpg

  14. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    Gas­man,

    Didn’t you get the word from Rep. Michelle Bach­mann (R-Lunatic)??? The swine flu only comes call­ing when (dum dum duu­u­u­u­um­mmm) a Demo­c­rat is in the White House, as she excit­edly told the Oxy­con­tin Kid yes­ter­day. Of course, a sim­ple Google search would have revealed to our favorite unmoored wingnut that the last out­break occurred dur­ing the Ger­ald Ford admin­is­tra­tion. Sheesh, how is this pathetic pseudo polit­i­cal party ever going to rise from the ashes if they can­not even use the Inter­net?

    I rather like the idea that the real path to a return to power lies in being even more con­ser­v­a­tive, so that the depar­ture of Arlen Specter must be seen as a good thing as it keeps the strain of true con­ser­vatism more pure. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

    PALIN-JINDAL 2010

  15. Sue said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Now that the Arlen Specter eupho­ria has died down (that didn’t take long), can any­one explain to me why it’s such a fab­u­lous thing? He gets up there and states that his views now align more closely with the dems. Ok, that makes sense. Then he states that he refuses to try to be elected as a Repub­li­can given the likely pri­mary voter bloc and spends some time dis­cussing what he will NOT do for the dems. And the dems turn som­er­saults and promise sup­port and money includ­ing cam­paign appear­ances by the pres­i­dent.
    I do not get it. Appar­ently at least two qual­i­fied can­di­dates are going to have to take one for the team and back off so Arlen can mosey on over. Arlen who is mak­ing it clear that he does not intend to be a team player. If the Repub­li­can pri­mary vot­ers were prob­a­bly going to choose an easily-defeated insane winger, what’s the ben­e­fit to the dems? Why not just run their own can­di­date? It’s either a smack at the Repub­li­cans or another exam­ple of a party infested with the Pelosi-Reid “rollover for the repubs” mind­set, with a twist. Either way it sure looks short-sighted and small-minded to me.
    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a prob­lem with an independent-thinking politi­cian and I dis­agree with the idea of toe­ing the line to the detri­ment of the peo­ple you are elected to rep­re­sent. But my idea of an inde­pen­dent is Russ Fein­gold, who for exam­ple stood almost alone on FISA with­out grand­stand­ing or attempt­ing to score polit­i­cal points.

  16. Bob said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    The Repub­li­cans lost Arlen Specter, who became a Demo­c­rat, but the Democ­rats lost Cyn­thia McK­in­ney, who became Repub­li­can Michelle Bach­mann.

  17. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    Right on, Bob!

    Man, if you locked McK­in­ney and Bach­mann in a room together, the earth might go off its axis. Two loonier loons have rarely roosted in Con­gress.

  18. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    I’m wait­ing for FauxNews to start blam­ing the Jews. It would seem to be the next stop on this train they’re rid­ing.

  19. Catherine said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    Sue, I agree. It’s mak­ing Specter look more like an oppor­tunist than any­thing. I’ve read that his win­ning the Dem pri­mary is not a sure thing, and that some can­di­dates won’t in fact back off. In some ways the whole sit­u­a­tion exposes the down­side of the 2-party sys­tem and party-only pri­maries. Go Greens!

  20. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Sue,

    I think the expla­na­tion is the prover­bial “bird in the hand” argu­ment. As an incum­bent, Specter will have a lot more going for him in the gen­eral elec­tion than a new­comer fac­ing off with Toomey, who will likely be able to tap a boat­load of rightwing money from his asso­ci­a­tion with the Club for Growth. I’m no fan of Specter, either, but this seems like a log­i­cal expla­na­tion. Addi­tion­ally, the Dems need his vote NOW, as they press onward with far larger agenda items such as health care reform. I share your desire for more pro­gres­sives in Con­gress, but this looks like a fairly log­i­cal play by both sides.

    By the way, from the Depart­ment of You Can’t Make This Up, it appears that Rush Lim­baugh is now fac­ing the ire of gunown­ers. Below is a small story from the Moonie Times in D.C.

    Rush Limbaugh’s new pet project — fight­ing ani­mal cru­elty for the Humane Soci­ety of the United States — is ril­ing sports­men from coast to coast, prompt­ing fears that the talk­ster typ­i­cally sup­port­ive of gun rights is aid­ing a group they say has a secret agenda to end all hunt­ing in Amer­ica.

    Twenty-eight groups rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of hunters and sports­men are demand­ing that the con­ser­v­a­tive radio com­men­ta­tor end his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the HSUS and stop “help­ing them to main­stream their image in the minds of rea­son­able peo­ple.”

    “Despite a few pro­grams designed to attract sup­port from the gen­eral pub­lic, HSUS is in fact an orga­ni­za­tion that opposes hunt­ing, fish­ing, and trap­ping,” the groups, includ­ing Ducks Unlim­ited and the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance, wrote in a let­ter last week to Mr. Lim­baugh.

    “Its lead­er­ship has a long and estab­lished his­tory of pro­mot­ing leg­is­la­tion, lit­i­ga­tion, and ref­er­enda to restrict the rights of Amer­i­can sports­men and women.”

  21. alex said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    “Its lead­er­ship has a long and estab­lished his­tory of pro­mot­ing leg­is­la­tion, lit­i­ga­tion, and ref­er­enda to restrict the rights of Amer­i­can sports­men and women.”

    So the Humane Soci­ety wants to restrict the rights of women. I guess that doesn’t come as such a shock after hear­ing they would choose El Rushbo to be their mas­cot.

  22. vince said on April 29th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Last night Brian Williams on NBC News said some­thing like ‘the gov­ern­ment has asked us to stop call­ing it the swine flu. it’s more accu­rate to call it the H1N1 flu.’ The on screen graphic said both. “Swine Flu H1N1″

    If it is more accu­rate, NBC dis­re­garded it. Through­out all its fol­low­ing sto­ries it only used one name: ‘swine flu.’

  23. JRG said on April 29th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Jeff B.’s obser­va­tion re get­ting Specter’s vote now is prob­a­bly the best rea­son for Dems to be happy about hav­ing him switch par­ties. Had he not switched, I think the most likely out­come would have been for him to lose the pri­mary and the likely win­ner, the very con­ser­v­a­tive Pat Toomey, to lose the gen­eral. In which case, as Sue says, we’d have had a new Demo­c­ra­tic sen­a­tor, likely one more likely to be a reli­ably Demo­c­ra­tic voter. And there were, at least, three fairly strong alternatives–two cur­rent mem­bers of Con­gress and one other guy.

    If the 79-year-old Specter weren’t so arro­gant, he’d retire. I thought his announce­ment was out­ra­geous in that he said he was “unwill­ing to have his 29-year Sen­ate record judged by the cur­rent Repub­li­can pri­mary elec­torate in Cal­i­for­nia.” Well! La, di, da. It wouldn’t be that hard to think up a few phrases along the lines of, “My polling shows that I have broad sup­port among the vot­ers of Penn­syl­va­nia, and I want to con­tinue to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of those cit­i­zens, as I already have. I hope that Repub­li­can vot­ers who share my view that the right course for Amer­ica lies in work­ing con­struc­tively with Democ­rats will join my cam­paign.”

  24. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    Hey, Gas­man — edg­ing towards a Godwin’s Law cita­tion.

    Sen. Magic Bul­let will com­pli­cate life for what­ever cau­cus he vis­its before head­ing out to do another press con­fer­ence. Now with the 60 votes, the Sen­ate can vote to declare water­board­ing ille­gal! I agree with JRG: this really isn’t good for Dems. Trust us Repub­li­cans, you don’t want him. Good luck in the pri­mary, Joe Ses­tak!

    Happy Hun­dred, y’all, and don’t hate me if i watch “Lie To Me” tonight. (ahhh, i’ll prob­a­bly watch the press con­fer­ence. can’t help myself, his dog is just sooo cute…)

  25. LA Mary said on April 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

    Lie to Me is okay, Jeff. Tim Roth rises above the sort of crappy writ­ing. (Brace your­self for LAMary name­drop­ping) He was the assis­tant coach of my son’s AYSO team and he’s a very nice guy. His kids are named after Hunter Thomp­son and Cor­mac McCarthy.

  26. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Hey Nancy,

    Good to see the purity of the Repub­li­can Party is being upheld by the GOP­ers in your fine state. I found this on John Cole’s site:

    “Gov. Jon Hunts­man Jr.’s appear­ance at a Michi­gan county Repub­li­can Party event was scrapped this week after the county chair­woman said that host­ing the mod­er­ate Utah gov­er­nor would mean aban­don­ing the party’s con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples.
    Kent County Repub­li­can Party Chair­woman Joanne Voorhees abruptly can­celed the party fundraiser sched­uled for Sat­ur­day.
    “The vot­ers want and expect us to stand on prin­ci­ple and return to our roots. Unfor­tu­nately, by hold­ing an event with Gov­er­nor Hunts­man, we would be doing the exact oppo­site,” Voorhees wrote in an e-mail quoted in The Grand Rapids Press.
    Voorhees did not spec­ify which issues she felt were con­trary to the party’s prin­ci­ples and did not return mes­sages left at the party head­quar­ters and on her cell phone.
    The group Cam­paign for Michi­gan Fam­i­lies praised the can­cel­la­tion, attribut­ing it to Huntsman’s sup­port of civil unions, and urged the Oak­land and Kala­ma­zoo county par­ties, where Hunts­man is also sched­uled to speak this week­end, to do the same.”

    Sheesh, Hunts­man is the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of blood red Utah, where he enjoys an 84% approval rat­ing among vot­ers. But he’s not con­ser­v­a­tive enough to pass muster up in Michi­gan.

  27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    [Bows to the west] That’s delight­ful to hear, Mary; you can’t help but won­der what kind of per­son lurks under that fas­ci­nat­ing per­sona he plays (and some creepier ones he has played to a well done turn). Jok­ing about pol­i­tics aside, the LW and i have been kind of sucked in to “Lie To Me,” and yes, (he said, won­der­ing what friend of LAMary’s he’s about to offend) it is despite the writ­ing. The sup­port­ing cast is quite good, too; when they get into a sec­ond cycle of scripts and leave behind the stan­dard six (which they’ve got to be past by now, even allow­ing for the anti-six oblig­a­tory plots), i’m hope­ful they can do some inter­est­ing things with their cen­tral con­ceit. Hav­ing just done the oblig­a­tory ex-wife plot with Jen­nifer Beals (i trust she bags your gro­ceries between roles!), it feels like the real plots may be soon to come . . . or never will, but we’ll still watch.

    They are absolutely mar­velous about the polit­i­cal bipar­ti­san­ship of the stills they use at com­mer­cial breaks as the facial twitch du jour is limned. A good show — and i sus­pect Fox may well flinch at the last minute and go with the press con­fer­ence.

  28. LA Mary said on April 29th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    I have no TV writer acquain­tances, so no wor­ries. Tim Roth seems to fre­quently play creepy peo­ple, but hon­estly, he’s sort of stur­dier and more down to earth in per­son.

  29. MitchAlbomFan said on April 29th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    Uh…

    Gas­man…?

    I know you aren’t the bright­est flame, friend, but those “Catholic Kids” are tied directly to a visit to Mex­ico.

    It’s Mex­ico. It’s Mex­ico. It’s Mex­ico.

    Did you get that? Or do I need to try again pho­net­i­cally.

    Just like the last two Sal­mo­nella out­breaks, this flu is sourced directly to Mex­ico.

    Gas­man, just because some­body wakes up in the morn­ing not believ­ing what you believe, that does not REALLY make them a racist. Sorry.

    When you call EVERYBODY who dis­agrees with you a racist, you dimin­ish the sham­ing poten­tial of the word. (**cough­Nan­cy­cough**)

    News flash, not every black per­son is per­fect. Not every aspect of black cul­ture is evo­lu­tion­ar­ily healthy to a sus­tain­able dom­i­nant cul­ture. Say­ing so is not racist. It’s truth.

    News flash, there’s still a large third-world com­po­nent of Mex­ico that has sub­stan­dard san­i­ta­tion and cul­ture of igno­rance about clean­li­ness issues. Say­ing so is not racist. It’s truth.

    News flash, there are quite a num­ber of for­eign­ers in this world who want to kill us (and by “us” I mean “you”) for a myr­iad of rea­sons, and one of the pri­mary ways they can accom­plish that goal is to send a bio­log­i­cally engi­neered dis­ease over a porous bor­der. Say­ing so is not racist. It’s truth.

    All your hate and eye rolling (**cough­Nan­cy­cough**) or love of car­toons that eschew logic for hate and eye rolling, doesn’t actu­ally bend real­ity to your world view, no mat­ter how emphatic either.

  30. Hoosier said on April 29th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    MitchAl­bom­Fan – whoa, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed today? F-news wanted to close the boarder TO Mex­i­cans. The Catholic school chil­dren just VISITED Mex­ico. What Gas­man quoted was cor­rect. So take your vit­riol and stick up your-you-know-what!
    jeff bor­den, I may have been asleep, but I’m not sure what you want Palin-Jindal to run for in 2010.

  31. Sue said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Mitch:
    Seri­ously, did you just use 22 words to say “dirty Mex­i­cans”?

  32. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    Hoosier,

    I’m the one who must be half-asleep. Of course, I mean PALIN-JINDAL 2012!!! Though, maybe we’d have even more fun with a PALIN-BACHMANN 2012 cam­paign. Good catch. I never claimed to be no copy edi­tor.

    MitchAl­bom­Fan is indeed a cranky fel­low. Per­haps he was lis­ten­ing to Michael “Sav­age” Weiner, who sug­gested to his audi­ence of poo-flingers that the swine flu could be a ter­ror­ist attack from Mex­ico. Or the lit­tle rage imp Michelle Malkin, who also is con­vinced them durty Mes­si­cans is a-pourin’ over our bor­ders with their filthy flu germs just to sicken the patri­otic teabag­gers.

    It’s sad enough to be a Mitch Albom fan. Sad­der still to be a cracker who doesn’t rec­og­nize him­self as a cracker.

  33. coozledad said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Actu­ally, the way we’ve actu­ally planned to sap the vital­ity of Amer­i­cans involves no dis­eases, pyrotech­nics or any­thing remotely expen­sive. Sheesh. We’re Mex­i­cans, after all.
    We’re slowly killing you with that polka stuff you hear at the restau­rants. It’ll take time, but we love it and it dri­ves you crazy. Win win.

    Love,
    The Pro­vi­sional Gov­ern­ment of Azt­lan

  34. James said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    So… MitchAl­bom­Fan, you under­stand that influenza is caused by viruses, and not san­i­tary con­di­tions…

    … and that part about blacks and being “evo­lu­tion­ar­ily healthy to a sus­tain­able dom­i­nant cul­ture,” uh… dude, your sheet is show­ing…

    Idiot.

  35. Sue said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Coo­zledad: I live in Wis­con­sin, as you know. The Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers 7th inning stretch con­sists of Bernie Brewer com­ing out to help every­one sing “Roll out the Bar­rel”. The town I live in has a radio sta­tion devoted to polka music (WTKM, the Polka Place). The state is only mod­er­ately crazy, and we pre­fer our salsa mild. Your insid­i­ous plot is not work­ing here because we beat you to it, so to speak.
    Per­son­ally, I would be sus­pi­cious of all those col­or­ful blan­kets the tourists are bring­ing back with them. Bio­log­i­cal war­fare, indeed.

  36. alex said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    (**coughD­wight­cough**)

    Feels good get­tin’ that loo­gie outta my craw.

  37. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    MitchAlbomFan/ a.k.a. Dwight,
    I’ll have to respond quickly before nancy spams you.

    I see that you’ve stocked your clos­ets full of straw­men and red her­rings. In your post you uphold your usu­ally rhetor­i­cal stan­dards.

    You knew damn well I wasn’t deny­ing a con­nec­tion with Mex­ico. I was mock­ing FauxNews for insin­u­at­ing that the spread of swine flu had any­thing to do with ille­gal aliens. I’d say the FauxNews cov­er­age reeks of big­otry as does your response. There are no instances of ille­gals spread­ing the recent out­break of swine flu. How about the instances of swine flu in other coun­tries like New Zealand? Did the Mex­i­cans swim across the Rio Grande and land in Auck­land?

    Your posts are utterly pre­dictable and tire­some. How­ever, if we removed your lies, big­otry, ad hominem attacks, straw­men, and red her­rings, there would be noth­ing left at all.

    Dwight, you a snivel­ing cow­ard. You have the tem­pera­ment of a tod­dler and the intel­lec­tual rigor of a mon­key fling­ing its own shit. Show a lit­tle more matu­rity and maybe we’ll let you sit at the grown-up’s table some­time.

  38. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    You dis­ap­point me. Last week you tan­gen­tially sought to excuse tor­ture and now you seem to be defend­ing the big­oted dem­a­goguery employed by FauxNews.

    Oxford’s on-line dic­tio­nary defines fas­cism as:

    extreme right-wing, author­i­tar­ian, intol­er­ant views or prac­tice.

    How is that not appro­pri­ate when con­sid­er­ing FauxNews? I should refrain from accu­rately por­tray­ing their actions?

    I would also remind you that the Sen­ate does not need to declare water­board­ing ille­gal; it already is.

  39. LA Mary said on April 29th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    That “news­flash” con­ceit impresses me every time. I know I’m in for some learnin’ when I see that.

  40. Scout said on April 29th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    MitchAl­bom­Fan inform­ing Gas­man that he’s not the bright­est flame was a truly breath­tak­ing dis­play of irony. Start­ing with the han­dle…

  41. Dexter said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    on a lighter note…that Mike Peters ‘toon linked by our host is priceless…a keeper!
    I passed it along the blo­gos­phere….

  42. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    Gas­man, not defend­ing FoxNews or FauxGnus (hee hee, i am just so cle­vah), just bust­ing your chops on going with a com­ment imply­ing “Jews” and “trains” are next. Sounds like a Godwin’s Law penum­bra to me . . .

  43. jeff borden said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:37 pm

    Peters is great, but the finest edi­to­r­ial car­toon­ist work­ing today is Mike Luck­ovich. One thing I’ll miss –and it’s about the only thing– from the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion is the bril­liant depic­tion of W. by Luck­ovich. He did a mean-assed Dick Cheney, too.

  44. moe99 said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:37 pm

    http://​www​.haaretz​.com/​h​a​s​e​n​/​s​p​a​g​e​s​/​1​0​8​1​5​1​5.html

    Can’t call it swine flu either. Not kosher.

  45. 4dbirds said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    The army required us to get flu shots every year. I missed one the year I was preg­nant with my daugh­ter and sure enough I came down with the flu that win­ter. Oh.my.gawd. I thought I was going to die. If one has to ask “Is this the flu?” you have never had the flu. I’ve never missed a flu shot since. I know the shots don’t guar­an­tee immu­nity but I take no chances.

  46. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    So, in order to avoid the invo­ca­tion of Godwin’s Law at all costs, we must refrain from ever using com­par­isons to fas­cism or the Nazis. What if a given per­son or per­sons are aping that kind of con­duct?

    I’ll go one bet­ter: FauxNews is not only fas­cist, but Orwellian as well. They spout party line lies, they hype big­otry, they actively hype and spon­sor party approved events, then they actively excise incon­ve­nient truths from their tran­scripts. Godwin’s Law or not, how is my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of FauxNews (an accu­rate and truth­ful moniker) less than fair and bal­anced? Under what pos­si­ble pre­tense can they be con­sid­ered a “news” orga­ni­za­tion or jour­nal­ists?

  47. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    Godwin’s Law sim­ply states that when Nazi com­par­isons are invoked, a com­ment thread has reached the end of its use­ful life. You argue, as have many before you, that your invo­ca­tion of blame the Jews and call up the trains is dif­fer­ent because it is valid.

    I’m just say­ing that Godwin’s Law, like Murphy’s, is not mocked. And i don’t have to defend FoxNews (which a review here and else­where will show that i don’t) to say you need a stiff drink and a major inhala­tion to put more oxy­gen into your out­ly­ing tis­sues, because you’re sound­ing hypoxic when you talk about them. As an eight track of mine once said to me, “Breath deep the gath­er­ing gloom, watch lights fade from every room.” (Or some­thing like that.)

  48. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    Where have I erred in my assess­ment of the phony “news” orga­ni­za­tion that you are not defend­ing? I hope you are not assert­ing that I am blam­ing Jews or call­ing for trains.

    Is it OK if the phonies say “Mex­i­cans” instead of Jews?

  49. LA Mary said on April 29th, 2009 at 7:58 pm

    Oh no Jeff TMMO, you had an eight track of the Moody Blues?

  50. coozledad said on April 29th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

    Mood­ies!
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​q​L​g​d​c​GEqgcw

  51. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    If we could have a brief respite from the Dwight/Jeff (tmmo) tag team drub­bing of moi, I thought the con­tigu­ous jux­ta­po­si­tion of these two headline/links on CNN​.com more than just a lit­tle ironic:

    Craigslist suspect’s fiancee: ‘I still love him’
    Hunt­ing for the secrets of a happy mar­riage

    Maybe the fiancee should read the sec­ond arti­cle. I’ll not vouch for the linked sto­ries, I just found the two head­lines some­what mutu­ally exclu­sive.

  52. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    Who’s drub­bing? (Nice attempt to tie me to Dwight, dude.)

    “Well, you can do what­ever you want to us, but I for one am not going to stand here and lis­ten to you bad­mouth the United States of Amer­ica.”

    (LAMary, admit it, you had an eight track of the Mood­ies, too, didn’t you?)

  53. basset said on April 29th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    I spent a few min­utes today unsuc­cess­fully try­ing to explain Hawk­wind to one of my younger co-workers. That’s my Sev­en­ties music ref­er­ence for the day.

  54. coozledad said on April 29th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    My favorite music his­tory is the evo­lu­tion of log­i­cal pos­i­tivist acid-heads Gong into the bar-trashing, mut­ton­chopped, Motor­head. It’s like a cau­tion­ary fable batiked onto a Moe­bius strip.

  55. Gasman said on April 29th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    Retract your claws. It was an attempt at lev­ity, noth­ing more.

  56. brian stouder said on April 29th, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    I recall that in 1977 – when my bud­dies and I started dri­ving to South Side High School, one fel­low had the coolest 8-track; when you got where you were going, you could slide it out, and put it in the trunk (of his Ford Mav­er­ick), and then it wouldn’t get stolen!

    As we rolled west­ward down Oxford Street toward good ol’ South Side, one group we always seemed to have play­ing on the remove­able 8-track was the Doo­bie Brothers….good stuff!

  57. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 29th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    (“Dude” means i don’t take it per­son­ally, so it’s all good. Thanks, though!)

    So is it eight track, or 8-track? Anal reten­tives need to know (or is it anal-retentive?).

    Oh black water, keep on rolling, Mis­sis­sippi moon won’t you keep on shin­ing on me . . . yeah, keep on shin­ing your light, gonna make every thing, gonna make every thing all right . . . and I ain’t got no wor­ries, ’cause i’m in no hurry at all . . .

  58. basset said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    Cooze, what’s the con­nec­tion there? Steve Hillage’s ver­sion of “It’s All Too Much” is still one of my favorite Bea­t­les cov­ers.

  59. Danny said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:40 pm

    That “news­flash” con­ceit impresses me every time. I know I’m in for some learnin’ when I see that.

    Mary, I’m way too busy to con­tribute these days, but that com­ment cracked me up! I’m still laugh­ing as I type this. Chat at ya later…

  60. Jack said on April 29th, 2009 at 11:49 pm

    big dis­as­ter, I think. My brother come back from Mex­cio yes­ter­day, and get the flu, I hope it is not big flu

  61. Danny said on April 30th, 2009 at 12:01 am

    I have a DVD of the Mood­ies! And sev­eral CD’s!

    Hey, Brian, the rea­son that the one group you always seemed to have play­ing on the remov­able 8-track was the Doo­bie Broth­ers was because that was the one that got STUCK in the 8-track player. Remov­ing it would have destroyed it and the player.

    Good thing you liked them. Could’ve been worse….

  62. Dexter said on April 30th, 2009 at 12:29 am

    Post 45. 6:43 PM

    I remem­ber a plague shot I got dur­ing army train­ing. I got “the plague” from it…delirious, sweat­ing, head spin­ning, sure I was dying, fever…what to do? Just toughed it out after that sleep­less night, and was never sick like that again until Decem­ber, 1999, when I had a three-week seri­ous flu that left me flat on my back for 15 days , voice­less, cough­ing, could not eat for days, lost thirty pounds…what a hard flu.

  63. Rana said on April 30th, 2009 at 2:29 am

    I don’t nor­mally get sick beyond a cold maybe once or twice a year, so when I get sick, I get sick. Last winter’s flu was a really bad one. I always get flu shots because I teach, and col­lege cam­puses, espe­cially after breaks, tend to be great incu­ba­tors of all kinds of viruses.

    Any­way, this par­tic­u­lar flu just dropped me. All I did for three days was drink soup and sleep, as I was too weak to do any­thing else. Even after I was well enough to come back to class, it was an effort just walk­ing from one end of the build­ing to the other. I remem­ber think­ing that I’d never known that the build­ings on cam­pus were that far apart!

    Most of my stu­dents were in the same boat, and we all walked very slowly for sev­eral weeks after that. I am very much hop­ing that I don’t get some­thing like that again any­time soon!

  64. Dexter said on April 30th, 2009 at 2:53 am

    http://​www​.eco​nom​icpop​ulist​.org/​f​i​l​e​s​/​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​g​e​r​m​a​n​T​w​i​n​P​e​a​k​s​R​e​d​R​o​o​m2.JPG

    This looks like the back­drop for Obama’s presser last night…

  65. coozledad said on April 30th, 2009 at 7:45 am

    bas­set: Gong and Hawk­wind shared band mem­bers and drugs for awhile. Lemmy left Hak­wind because he dis­liked acid, but was a ded­i­cated Motor­head. He wanted a band so dirty that “if they moved next door to you, your lawn would die”.
    I still find it hard to keep all the folks in the Cam­bridge music scene in their appro­pri­ate niches. Mostly because there weren’t any, but par­tially because Gong used aliases. I’m also sur­prised a lot of those folks are still breath­ing. Par­tic­u­larly Lemmy.

  66. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 30th, 2009 at 7:54 am

    Dex, don’t go in the Red Room. Seri­ously. Don’t do it.

    “Let­ters I’ve writ­ten, never mean­ing to send; beauty I’d always missed, with these eyes before — just what the truth is, I can’t say any­more.”

    The Mood­ies got the inter­net, didn’t they?

  67. basset said on April 30th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    I thought Hawk­wind fired Lemmy for get­ting caught with drugs at the Canada/US bor­der… didn’t know about the aliases, though. and it looks like var­i­ous Hawk­wind reunions and sur­vivors are still limp­ing along out there.

    mean­while… just put some rep­re­sen­ta­tive excerpts from “Space Rit­ual” on a thumb drive, we’ll see how those go over.

  68. Sue said on April 30th, 2009 at 8:27 am

    Have you guys heard the def­i­n­i­tion of baby boomer? Some­one who knows all the words to “Amer­i­can Pie” but can’t remem­ber where she left the car keys.

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