After her attempted hatchet job on Elizabeth and John Edwards the other day (which I didn't see -- I undertsand they came across as dignified and intelligent, while she came across as bitch on steroids), I noticed that Digby has a comment remembering her similar treatment of Michael J. Fox.
Maybe she just has a woody for sick people and no standards or ethics. Obviously not someone whose broadcasts I'm going to watch.
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Now that Tony Snow's cancer has returned, and is reported to have spread to his liver, can we look forward to the same sort of hatchet job interview with him? "I think people facing life-threatening illness should quit their day jobs and spend impoverished time with their families"? Somehow, I doubt it.
Remember, the kicker on this is that Couric's husband was diagnosed with candern in the late 90s, and she kept on as a news anchor.
I think Digby's probably right in that she's just going after a story, but in this case I think she's trying to generate one where none exists. It's not as though the media are blameless about the mess this country's in right now.
The Edwards story was also the subject of quite a heated (and ongoing) debate over at EA Forums, a lot fo which has revolved just around this question -- sort of "do as I say. . . ."
I haven't read other blogs about this, but it seems to me that whether or not to continue the campaign is a decision better left to the couple themselves and that outsiders should just butt out.
One of my bosses, in fact, just died of metastatic breast cancer after three and a half years of increasingly difficult and painful treatment. She told me one day while we were working-by-phone that if she didn't have her job and the intellectual involvement it required to look forward to, every day, she would just have to give up and die because it was the best distraction she knew of.
I don't know that that would be my own decision, because I don't have metastatic breast cancer; but I do know that I would never presume to dictate to someone else how to handle terminal illness, much less attempt to color my own opinion in moral terms. If indeed Couric is just trying to generate a story, I think that's morally even less defensible.
Jonathan Alter at Newsweek does a good job of putting down the critics: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17821116/site/newsweek/
My wife was diagnosed with BC last May; she's still in treatment. Quitting is NOT an option; she's living with a purpose now. As Alter says, if you haven't walked a mile in my shoes....
The consensus among those who seem to know something about the issue is just that -- don't stop living until there's no other choice.
Which seems reasonable to me. After all, no one's getting out of this alive.
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