Two Republican candidates have cancer. The spouse of one Democratic candidate has cancer. Which has gotten the most pundit and press attention?
Elizabeth Edwards's recurrence of cancer was conventionally supposed to spell the end of her husband's candidacy, but the Edwardses decided to live the rest of her life to the fullest and hopefully for years, rather than settling down to wait for her to die.
Fred Thompson has non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but the press has basically said ho-hum. I happened to channel-surf past "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" last night, and the contrast between his appearance there - playing himself only with better lines - and his skeletal appearance now was a hell of a lot more than better make-up.
Rudy spent the night in the hospital with those ubiquitous "flu-like symptoms". His spokeswoman said afterward (my emphasis):
After precautionary tests the doctors found nothing of concern at this time...Will the press herd question this? My bet: nope.
Update: I had forgotten (blame the media for not reminding me incessantly) that John McCain had enough skin cancer on the left side of his face that Joan Rivers would have been jealous of the opportunity to pull the jowls back in.
1 comment:
Good eye, LL.
Beyond "the all the news that fits (our preconceptions) we print" problems of the political press, there is the added problem that those reporters have no sense of how to handle a story with any scientific or technical content. Put the two together, and what do you get...not much good.
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