This past week has been heavy on cancer news. It has been like the long sequence of Presidential candidacy announcements, but is sadly not. Cancer is not something you elect to get.
First there was the Couric spasm insinuating some dark political motive for John Edwards staying in the race when Elizabeth just got diagnosed with a reoccurrence of cancer. Then BAM, Tony Snow announces the return of his cancer just a short time later. Then yesterday, this diary titled, I Don’t Care About Tony Snow appeared on the big orange machine known as Daily Kos and along with over 1500 comments yelling about it.
Folks, here in America, we have politicized damn near everything under the sun. Stem cells, equal rights, hell, food is now a partisan issue! Does cancer have to be one also?
Is it so bad for all of us to recognize cancer as being horrible and we should fight so no one ever has it? Even those who disagree with us politically?
As global warming is really a moral issue, cancer is a health issue and it effects us all equally.
Well, if you smoke, you are less equal than others.
But that is a partisan issue.
Cancer is an equal opportunity destroyer.
No one has dibs on it and no one wants it.
Reunite what has been divided amongst you.
Unite against oppression, disease, tyranny.
Let freedom ring.
I am still trying to figure out the hows and whys stuff like this becomes a Partisan issue.
I don’t get it, and I most likely never will.
[...] I wish both Mrs. Edwards and Sen. Thompson well (as well as Tony Snow, White House press secretary and former pundit). But I also wish this blatant hypocritical BS would just whither up and turn to dust already. “Town Called Dobson” has a great cartoon illustrating the point. Cancer ain’t politics … and we as a people shouldn’t let it become a partisan football. [...]