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21 february 2003

hey, there's a new review!

today's entry will offend you. it offends me.

This has been an interesting news week. At worst, it's been trivial. At best, it's been a diversion from President Wild George Hickock and his Knuckle-Dragging Minions of Wrath. Giddyap!

A bachelorette and her new jo have, albeit briefly, upstaged "real" news headlines. So did Cro Magnonnaire, and the girl he lied to but who loves him anyway. Michael Jackson has made the true documentary of his original documentary that is going to change our minds(?!?) What's the plan, Mikey? Did you overdub yourself like in the old Godzilla movies? When you're actually saying, "Sharing the bed with a bunch of kiddies is a beee-yootiful thing," you've got a dub saying, "I am an animatronic exhibit from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. You know I'm waaax, I'm waaax, I'm really really wax! HEEEEE-hee!"

Oh, yes. It's a good week to be an American.

Here's a headline that you may have missed amid our celebration of the vapid and the lusty: "Teen Near Death After Transplant Error". " Later, we saw this, "Botched Transplant Victim Gets New Chance".

Right here in North Carolina. Duke University Medical Center, to be exact. They gave A organs to an O girl. Nearly killed her. Can't figure out yet how it happened. They are, however, doing everything in their power to save her.

Oh, yeah, and she's Mexican.

Everyone was fine until that last part. You'd think her mama had gone out and ripped someone's heart and lungs out on the sidewalk, for all the fuss that's been raised. America's panties are in a collective wad.

When I'm in a hurry to get my news, I'll surf over to Yahoo News for a quick scan of what's going on in the world. I'd been following this story with sadness, and then amazement, that there is now a chance for Jesica Santillan. It's 50-50. If she does pull it out, we don't know her long-term prospects. Without the operation, she was given 6 months.

Yahoo has message boards accompanying all of their news stories. Message boards...whoo-boy, those things are the bane of the Internet, aren't they? Every huff-and-puff-blow-your-house-down nitwit who can type is on these things. Sentient people rarely have the time or the inclination to post. They have better ways to spend their time than by joining yet another flame war.

Nonetheless, I was intrigued as to what people might be saying about this. I was interested, because I also skimmed a few of those boards related to the Chicago Nightclub stampede story earlier this week. You don't have to look hard to find posts like this:

• "This is not CHARITY, this is STUPIDITY!"
• "Build an electric fence"
• "GIVE THE HEART TO AMERICAN"
• "What a WASTE of GOOD ORGANS!"

Yeah, so call me a liberal pinko commie sympathizer. If stuff like this doesn't make you sick to your stomach...well, it does mine. So be it.

Here's what America's finest had to say about those kids who were killed in the Chicago nightclub stampede:

• "N*****s are animals"
• "THANK GOD NO WHITE FOLKS WERE HURT!"
• "TOO BAD THEY WEREN'T ALL KILLED"
• "who cares, they were black, no loss"

Are you proud yet? Of course, there are decent people on the boards. They just aren't as overwhelming as the...I don't even know what to call them. Who knew that one-celled organisms could type so prolifically?

If it makes anyone feel better, Jesica and her family have been here quite legally for three years now. Her arrival and care has been orchestrated by a nonprofit American group called Jesica's Hope Chest. So don't get all excited that Jesica's dippin' into your pocket. She's covered, dig?

I'm a realist. I don't walk around all pie in the sky waving peace signs and preaching unconditional love for all. I will not, however, sit idly by while a mass of citizens condemns a young girl and her mother for doing everything they can to help her live. If I were the sick kid, and I needed a transplant that I could only get in the farthest reaches of the Yukon--trust me when I say that my Mom would dig a tunnel all the way up there to get me some lungs.

Twenty-one African American kids die in a nightclub, it's headline news for about three days, and somehow people can forget, even think maybe they had it coming to them. It always happens this way, and you can't tell me it doesn't. Tell me the last time that a Caucasian girl went missing or was found dead, and spent less than a month in the headlines. Right. You can't. Chandra Levy. Polly Klass. Jennifer Short. You know these names, and so do I. Why don't we know the names of those kids who just wanted to dance for the evening? Nicole Patterson, Nicole Rainey, Michael Wilson...the list goes on. Learn a name.

Americans can be so greedy. We're so darn entitled. We don't want anyone that we don't like to have what we need. Prisoners, AIDS patients, the indigent, and a few illegal aliens get organ transplants, stem cell treatments, and bone marrow transplants every year. So do rich white guys who run their employees' retirement into the ground and build do-it-yourself "tax shelters". So do women who beat their kids. So do fat guys who probably won't take care of that heart, either. So did Larry Hagman, the formerly alcoholic actor. So do Republicans. So do Democrats. So do lesbians. So do cross-dressers.

I guess my point is this: I'd rather see Jesica live here than die here. I don't get to make that decision, though.

And neither do you.