It was well over 50 years ago that my old Irish neighbor Annie Kinney said, “The whole world is going crazy.” As I recall, Annie Kinney’s brother was shot by Black and Tan thugs while plowing his field during some period of unrest in Ireland shortly after the First World War. The thugs also shot his horse. The English government offered to pay for the loss of the horse. You are familiar with Chuck Shepard’s News of The Weird which is a collection of --- well, the weirdest news of the week. But now it is just as difficult to determine the weirdest news of the week as it would be to determine which pieces should be on the list of the 40 worst songs of 2014. You probably heard what happened when --- was it Pat Robertson --- said that instead of blowing a country apart, getting everyone in the world to hate us and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to get rid of some world leader we didn’t like, it would be more prudent to slip someone a few bucks to sneak in there and assassinate him. We could pay for the operation by making a funny movie about it. Wow. You heard the cries of righteous indignation. That is not the way we do things. That is not the American way. If our friends who own the companies that make military hardware can’t make a few hundred billion, we’re not interested in the project. Then, before you even had a chance to stop laughing --- before you could even recover, the very next news item was about a New Hampshire doctor who was reported to the Attorney General because he told a woman she needed to lose weight. And the very next day you read on the front page of your newspaper that Maine has more overeating-under exercising big fat people than any other state in the union. (Call them obese if you will, but if I were to gain 30 pounds you would be more than welcome to slap me on the shoulder and say, “Hi there, fatty”). So, what good is a doctor if he is only allowed to tell you the things you want to hear? I know of a woman who went to her doctor, gasping for breath, who cried and got very angry and upset when the doctor suggested that she quit smoking. Her husband who is a very able and intelligent man, except when it comes to matters concerning nicotine addiction, also got very mad at the doctor for making his wife cry. It was the doctor’s fault. Is it true that there is a doctor in Maine who won’t even accept patients who smoke? But, anyway, that New Hampshire doctor was quickly put in his place. The great high hooters told him, “You should not be inflammatory or degrading to anyone. The Attorney Generals Office tried to get him to settle the matter by agreeing to attend a medical education course. One can only imagine that in that course doctors are encouraged to employ circumlocutions that cannot in any way be construed as demeaning. Instead of suggesting that grossly obese patients lose weight, the doctor might learn to say, “Uh, yeah, four cheeseburgers --- well, ok, but do you think you might --- uh --- cut back on the extra fries?” ---- Argh. It was over 50 years ago that my old Irish neighbor Annie Kinney said, “The whole world is going crazy.” What would she say now?
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 14:59:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015