DH

Only it’s not Kurtz. This is a fairly organized smear, some time in the making. Yes, Kurtz is vapid. But he’s also happy to propagate a smear, even one as absurd as this one.

There resides in our family almost a clone of your story/ies. What struck me about Howie’s perspective was (and I apologize up front for the sick logic) how it reminded me of the Coulter premise that the 9/11 widows should step back and let the pundits argue the issues of their husbands’ deaths rather than take up the discourse themselves because their personal experience makes their participation irrefutable … because I guess their participation is just too personal and therefore cannot reside in any debate. I don’t get it. You, Murray and the 9/11 widows bring a seriousness to these discussions that distanced voices can never capture.

Just read Murray’s piece, would have missed it without your link, thank you. Howie needs to leave the room quietly as Murray has, as usual, stopped the world on its axis for one precious humane moment.

Is the courtier media out of its mind? Kos was a kid in El Salvador; Waas had cancer? This supposedly brings their journalism into question? But having a wife who is a Republican Pary operative doesn’t? This is idiocy.

kurtz’s â€charges†against murray waas are so stupid it is hard to explain why he would bother to make them.

i say this from this standpoint,

was there ever a human who did not change their thinking, develop an altered perspective on life, due to a major life experiences?

was there ever a soldier who was not changed by war?

was there ever a smoker neighbor limited by emphysema or a relative dying of cigarette-induced cancer whose experiences did not alter their views on their life and on the society that gifted them with cigarettes?

what could conceivably be wrong about altering your thinking (and writing, too, if you are as a reporter) based profound life experiences? to do so is as natural as breathing for humans.

has howard kurtz not been altered by being a teevee AND newspaper personality (â€reporter†simply cannot be used to describe kurtz’s type of career-loving media opportunist).

should a reporter actually avoid thinking or writing about matters related to a life-changing experience?

of course not. it is just these experiences that make for insightful, cant-free reporting.

i’ll probably be laughed out of the weblog world as a conspiracy nut for seeing the malign hand of karl rove in this,

but i am confident rove and his rnc allies are behind these attacks on waas and kos.

i am surprised â€next hurrah†and e’wheel have not also been attacked.

the strategy behind all such attacks, whether on reporters or politicians, is simply to create a record of doubt. it does not matter if the â€charge†is false, or irrelevant, or downright stupid.

just create â€the stain†in print. get the rumor started. then you can build on it later.

this is the absolute hallmark of rove’s propaganda.

it is the same technique used in negative political ads. just create a bad impression of someone in your ad. the ignorant viewer won’t know, or try to find out, the truth but will remember the negative comment about … waas, gore, zuniga, joe wilson, john kerry, et al.

the current attack on gore and his global warming movie is out of the same cloth. create doubt among the ignorant (and conviction among the right-wing faithful).

the comforting truth about an attack such as this is that

if journalists carrying water for rove and company attack murtha, markos zuniga, murray waas, al gore, sen. reid, et al,

that can only mean that these people are being effective critics.

waas certainly has been effective in detailing fitzgerald’s keelhauling of rove for going after valerie plame and joe wilson.

markos’ site is not one i enjoy very much; it just too big to be fun. but the daily kos has made an enormous impact on the media.

and the daily kos’s success has directly encouraged weblogs like next hurrah, talking points memo, the carpetbagger report, talk left, firedoglake, the left coaster, and dozens of others whose political and social reporting is so far above that of wapoop and the nyt(wit)times that those two print media â€leaders†have virtually lost (pun is serendipitous)this reader and thousands of others entirely when it comes to political reporting.

weblogs reporting on economic policy and corporate shenanigans will, i hope, be next to receive the same highly competent and caring analysis that political reporting is now receiving from weblogs.

kurtz’s charge is pointless, inane, and mean-spirited, but from the wapoop’s standpoint it is useful because it may ignite a controversy, similar to that when a sports columnists calls a coach or player â€saviorâ€, â€incompetentâ€, to dumb to chew tobacco ans spit, etc.

controversy hauls in readers.

kurtz’s charge against waas is too stupid to merit retaliation. but if retaliation were called for, then the influence of kurtz’s own major life experiences, specifically moving into teevee, on his reporting should be called into question.

Orion

Not sure if Rove is behind it, but as I suggested, there were others out there preparing to push this story using the same ridiculous reasoning.

Can we all join your chorus, ew: â€Howie, fuck offâ€? Or better yet, from now on, let’s just call him Fuck-off-Howie.

As I always told my journalism students when we discussed â€objectivity,†every journalist – being human – is affected by how s/he was raised, by poverty or wealth, by culture, by education, by whether there was one parent or two or none at home, by skin color, by traumatic experiences, by how s/he has interacted with other people, by religion or lack of it, by being in combat or prison, by how many weddings, births and funerals s/he has been part of, by travel, by every big and lots of little events that s/he has witnessed or participated in.

So, Fuck-off-Howie, your column is one of two things, an attempt to denigrate somebody’s reporting based on his bout with a deadly disease, or a statement of the utterly obvious. In either case, a waste of space and pixels, in one case, malicious, in the other, moronic.

emptywheel, thank you for this eloquent post.

kurtz’s take on compromised journalism is like cheney’s on accurate quail-shooting.

this smells like rover.

emptywheel said: It has made me treat life–my own and that of others–with much more humility and awe. Yes, my fight with cancer has made me much more skeptical of war. But that comes from an awareness of my own mortality.â€

Exactly. I’ve seen this in my own experiences, and even more so in my work with HIV/AIDS patients. I will never view life through the same lens again. Naturally, a reporter may not be able to work at times due to illness, but I have no doubt that your and Murray’s experiences made you better at what you do and better people.

Kurtz’s jibes were pathetic, he’s becoming the Bob Bennet of journalistic ethics. No wonder the DC media has come to resemble cows and sheep, little courage left in that crowd.

Sorry to learn of the personal stuff EW.

Kurtz doesn’t even make sense there, but the article is disgusting nonetheless.
By the way, of course you are right to be skeptical of claims that malpractice is ruining medicine. The sum of ALL malpractice awards, including settlements, is a fraction of 1% of all medical costs.

First, the malpractice thing: a plastic surgeon friend of mine once told me that malpractice was the reason American medicine was some of the best in the world. Doctors were held accountable in ways they aren’t in other countries. So, malpractice is a good thing for everyone.

Second, The Waas piece at HuffPo was very touching, and a beautiful piece of writing because it had all of what you have described as essential, I think, to good writing or good reporting, a depth of humanity and a history of personal suffering on a heroic scale. Fighting for one’s life, medically, or in war, or in the everyday world where values become so diluted and the discourse is so shallow, is heroic, and worthy of respect.

The attempts to discredit Waas and Greenwald, in another instance, are part of a scheme to undermine the solid voices of our political society. The smear is always around for people low enough to use it for their purposes. But, integrity has its own power. Its voice rings clear with authenticity.

Since it would appear we are now under full attack by the Rove machine and singled out one by one, let me save old Kurtz the trouble: I have Lupus. More specifically, I have MCTD and like cancer patients, I have had to withstand massive chemo to get my flares under control. What is clear is that the Rove strategy this election cycle is to attack the alternative media and bloggers from the left. It is clear he is not going after the Dems, he does not need to. What he needs is to control the message, which has spun terribly out of alignment. So Rove has sent out his pay-per-ethic proxies and Bush rangers to do some ugly work. Grrr, I am so angry that someone’s cancer should be the topic of a column. Kurtz is pathetic!

EW — I too am a long term survivor, in fact a very long term survivor. In January, 1970 I had surgery and came to understand I had Malignant Melanoma — third stage verging on stage four. Several years earlier I had the primary leasion removed, and it was misdiagnosed. I did sue, and took it to the State Supreme Court, and the upshot of my case is that we really don’t have a â€right†to diagnosis. But anyhow, when I was between 3rd and 4th stage in 1970 I was offered experimental chemotherapy, and after much this and that waying, I did the course (which took two years but was not all that horrible) and I guess it worked, because then I was 31 and now I am almost 68. I’ve had no reoccurance, but I can assure you that I stay totally out of the sun. Yep, I smoke, I drink, and I eat all the fancy foods that appeal to me, but I consider the sun my total enemy, and summertimes I even arrange to sleep during the day so as to not be tempted. I look at advertisments for vacations on sunny beaches and a cruise to the sun in winter as visitations from the devil. (I would love to go on a â€The Nation†Cruise — but could they arrange it for the Norwegian Fjords in January?â€) Even going to Pakistan and India in 1984-85 was difficult — yea sunblock, but absolutely everything I wanted to see was in full sun. Ten minutes of sun and I feel the impact.

But the Cancer totally changed my life, simply because I had to spend a few years just doing the chemo and being dependent on the U of Minnesota Hospitals and all — and then coming to understand that because I was understood as â€expensive†in terms of health care, I was both uninsurable and unemployable if employment involved insurance. Actually I haven’t cost anyone anything for the last 27 years.

But I have had some fun. My Chemotherapist had I think 11 children He was a Hitler Youth out of Northern Germany who came to do the US in the 40’s. went to Creighton, His Dad had something to do with Strategic Air Command — but he did grad school at the U of MN and stayed doing research and teaching. It turned out one of his daughters wanted to sue the Minneapolis Schools under title 9 for failure to provide equal sports support and facilities, and I got her a lawyer, and a batch of internes who would help research a successful case. My Chemotherapist and I have had very interesting conversations over the years. My Former Nazi Chemotherapist, to say the least, was not exactly accustomed to Feminist Daughters who were assisted by his patients.

Making matters more interesting, my Surgeon was about eight years old when Jews were required to clean cobblestones in Vienna with toothbrushes. And yea, of course he got out. Columbia Medical School, and then the Air Force, then Mayo and finally he met up with me in the student health service at the U. He was both research and staff. Invented the pump for diabetics. Not really an expert on Melanoma — but in the 70’s most of what they saw in Minnesota were farmers who spent too much time on tractors without shade. But I had then and now have never driven a tractor.

Surfers — No I have never surfed except in the latter day sense of the net. I don’t do that in the sun.

No — there are just some of us who need to know that our genetics are such we should never go in the sun. Make for us the shaded beaches, The golf courses where we can pitch our balls into the shade as we progress toward a shaded hole. (My operation actually re-arranged many of the muscles in my left shoulder and Golf was how I actually re-arranged them and came to terms with them.)

But coming awake on the operating table seven hours after you were knocked out, (that’s what big clocks are for,) and seeing a consulation going on about what could be done with you right off your left toe, Look there is no way anyone can comprehend this unless they have gone through it. Look, I got Chemotherapy approved for research that never got approved for general release. In otherwords it was mostly a failure, but I was 31 then and am nearly 68 now, and have no relapse. I am not conspiracy minded, I just think maybe staistics are a little screwy. (I smoke Virginia Slims Light, or Ultra Light)

Sara

Thanks for sharing that. I knew you were a survivor. But it’s a great story.

One more point about our right to diagnosis. I was fairly stoic about discovering I had not right to diagnosis. But what pissed me off was that my medical team couldn’t talk about it. I had found the lump 5 years before diagnosis. They were unwilling to admit that (it was as if a ghost passed through the room every time I brought it up), because it would imply I should have been diagnosed and their colleague was negligent. But that meant that wasn’t something they considered in my treatment. It was kind of creepy, and really undermined my trust in my doctors, who otherwise I trusted a great deal. (Well, I trusted the women doctors.)

John, I disagree on naming names. What people need to know when they face medical decisions is less name, and more about how to ask questions about the right criteria. In my case the wrong diagnosis was made in a hospital lab on a lesion biopsy during a time when the regular and certified Pathologist was on vacation, and the substitute was not properly certified — and the clinic and the surgeon did not know about the inadequate substitution. I actually suspect that surgeon would have been supportive had he been backed up by a proper lab — but he had no control over that function at all. (and in the world of managed care, most don’t.) In my case it was a system running the back room on the cheap that failed — not the medical professional I dealt with personally.

By the way — my lawsuit which I did not win, did produce results — they closed the inadequate lab and bought lab services from a superior source within a few months of my filing. Eventually the hospital departed the scene, being taken over by a much larger and thus much more able to afford a strong lab system. Little hospitals don’t generate enough volume to support proper labs — but nice big ones like a huge teaching hospital have most of the bells and whistles, plus certified and experienced staff. Moreover, remember my experience is early 1970’s, and since then many changes have taken place — good and bad. But the key is for the consumer to know criteria, know how to ask good questions, and make the system dance the polka.

EW’s experience is interesting because her first â€diagnosis†(mis) was dependent on judgement — a doctor feels a lump and based on past experience, makes a judgment. That’s actually too much dependence on art as opposed to science. A Biopsy is not all that expensive, and it certainly is not major surgery, and more and more various tests that are even less invasive are available that should be cheap, automated and commonplace. I also suspect (though I understand the dangers here) that genetic testing should eventually be able to tell us precisely what we are prone to — and what thusly should concern us. In the 1970’s for instance, they knew that Melanoma very rarely occurred among Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples — but it was much more common among White Russians, Scandinavians, Scots, Brits and Irish. That was very crude genetics, but at the time they were just beginning to build statistical indexes. Since then, they have become more sophisticated, and the public needs to demand that the NIH funded research on things like this be turned into just much better diagnostics, and that the means to deliver them be cheap and widely available.

Since 1970 when I first became aware of Melanoma (sadly), it has become a much more widespread problem — something I lay off on the notion that a Beach Holiday is â€healthy†and that if you can’t afford that in mid winter, you can, of course, use a tanning bed. Sunburns and deep tans are cumulative, The little kid who gets burned during a Beach trip does damage that does not go away when the blisters heal over. In my case, social life during my High School summers very much involved sitting around at one of several swimming pools, trying to â€tan†with a mixture of Iodine and Johnson’s Baby Oil. Frankly, I would have much rather have been at the library, but my mother insisted on my being social. I still love swimming, but only after 6PM, and not on a reflective beach. (one attraction of Minnesota is lots of beaches with no sand, and where the pine woods come right up to the water. You can actually have a nice swim in good water without leaving the shade.)

There are so many lessons we have not talked about yet that are involved here. One I found of interest was a sense of time. Not being able for a number of years to actually expect a long life I found the conversion to short span thinking of great interest. It took me a long long time to accept the rational of buying IRA’s every year — for What???? — Old Age??? What old age???? Sadly, I have arrived.

In the early 1980’s one of the members of my PHD Committee — a Gay Anthropologist — introduced me to AIDS at the time it was called GRID, and together we founded an AIDS service organization. At the time — about 1983, I was the only person he knew who had essentially made the Academic Medical system work for me, and had been reasonably successful, and he wanted to do more than just teach anthropology. And what interested me in him was that he had done his field work in India, and I was bound and determined to spend a long season there, having then studied it for 30 years. We founded a home delivered meals program that used church related volunteers. What that meant was not only did home bound AIDS Patients get fed really good food every day — but they also got a human visit. (You have to imagine me and my Committee Member out in my back yard clipping Grape Leaves off the wild vines, and then par-boiling them, and stuffing them, and then having them delivered to home bound persons with AIDS. I should add that I used political connections to get access to the DNR’s Deer Kill, and got the butchers at a Catholic Hospital to turn Deer into Venison Roasts.) — no Hot Dish or sausage and Mac in our program. Almost all my work was before the drug cocktails came available, and thus some folk actually survived — but everything I knew about Cancer went into the model we created. We have to make politics of what we know by whatever means. And we can’t do that unless we talk about all the lessons learned. It looks to me like the blogosphere is filled with cancer survivors, and we ought to â€use the power.â€

EW, Thanks for your insights. Howie K must live a small, mean, and timid life. You evidently live a much larger one.

I live in a region of the US where there have been quite a few Ukranian emigrants, some from the area affected by Chernobyl. I’m told this group of immigrants is placing heavy demands on local health care agencies, due to their high cancer rates. Personally, I think the MSM view of Reagan having ’defeated’ the Soviet Union is myopic and flawed. With more time and perspective, I have a strong hunch that the disintigration of the Soviet Empire will be much better understood to result from corruption, crap science, and poor engineering. All 3 combined in Chernobyl, and we’ve all seen the results. I can say plenty of rotten things about the Soviets, but primary among my reasons for viewing them darkly is that they have no tradition of environmental protections.

I know downwinders in two states: Utah, and Washington. If you ever have the courage, read â€Refuge,†by Terry Tempest Williams (a Mormon who writes about being among the Clan of One Breasted Women — mostly Mormons, who lived and worked downwind of nuclear testing in Nevada/Utah in the 1950s and 1960s).

There are powerful voices emerging — not only on blogs, but in a wide range of publications — writing about the nexus between environmental degradation and cancers. If Tempest Williams can write with compassion and outrage about cancers affecting devout, law-abiding Mormon’s in her part of the US, it’s symptomatic that these are no longer ’lefty’ topics.

I rather suspect that Sen. Harry Reid is well aware of these dynamics, as many Mormon women have developed breast cancers that have become extremely aggressive in their childbearing years, when the body’s metabolism jolts during pregnancy. Whether many other political leaders grasp the nexus between the environment and increasing cancer rates is unclear.

You’ve put your experience to good use. And given the times in which we live, you have plenty more work ahead of you.

My friends father died of Asbestos related illness and cancer. I inspired me to delve into the available research and information on how these terrible events might be avoided or life extended.

From what i have read of the published medical data and research, particularly that conducted in China and Japan there is a great deal of evidence to support complimentary immune therapy, especially with infections and cancer. I’ve been following with some interest the development of a complimentary cancer treatment that has been designed in liason with the University of Newcastle (Australia) and although a somewhat different approach to the above outlined treatment the concept and the deliberate and effective use of natural elements in the product are similar. If you have an interest in this field or perhaps just want to keep abreast of a new treatment you may find http://www.mc-s.com.au fairly worthwhile reviewing.