Am I to understand that Bill and Emma Keller decided to pick on a woman who has cancer just because she uses Twitter to talk about having cancer?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Yes, apparently in the Keller circle, there is a defined amount of time which is socially appropriate for one to spend talking about,and seeking support among your fellow humans, during ones battles with a life threating sickness.
And if one goes beyond that, well, you are simply a self aggrandizing, narcissistic attention seeker.
What kind of an absolute asshole does one have to be to put that kind of shit into words?
Among other things you have to have a talent for projection, since “self aggrandizing, narcissistic attention seekers” fits the Kellers themselves (along with their fellow Village would-be gatekeepers of public discourse) to a T.
Who doesn’t love that irony??
So the GOP Congressional caucus are not the only sick fucks today.
From a literary perspective, they prefer folks that choose to do somethings wild, crazy, dangerous, etc. to give themselves something to write about and with luck it turns into book-like, prose-selfie product that becomes a best-seller and is turned into a boring movie with many old and once good actors.
Kinda, sorta.
The Kellers used the blogger’s work–and recent change of condition–as a hook for thumbsucking pieces about extraordinary measures to forestall terminal illness. In the process, they both managed errors of fact and violations of simple human kindness.
some kind of feelings about father’s death are also a factor Keller mentions. I’ll leave it to the wingnut drs. in the Senate to analyze, however
OT, but Go Wendy Go!!!
Ya know, when I read something or watch a movie or show I don’t like, I STOP WATCHING or READING IT. I don’t feel compelled to place judgment on the person who is creating his or her own self-expression for personal reasons.
Jeezus, just don’t look at it any more, you asshats!
I sure feel compelled to form an opinion but I don’t feel compelled to write my opinion in international publications about it.
Yep, that’s pretty much it.
What’s weird is that while whining about the ethics of tweeting “dying out loud,” Emma Keller put together a timeline of Lisa Adam’s cancer tweets, thus ensuring that even more people will read them.
Emma’s complete lack of self-examination, not to mention empathy, is free for all to see via her [deleted] article’s closing remarks:
Too ethically retarded and/or cowardly to address these issues directly, she posits them as ethical questions to her audience…after thinly-disguised attempts to trivialize the subject.
On reflection, perhaps the Kellers’ difficulty with displaying empathy is because Lisa Adams is dying not just from cancer, but breast cancer. An interesting, if old Daily Caller article on the subject:
The article’s main beef is that women are more
bitchyvocal about breast cancer and thus receive more funding for breast cancer research than are men, who are comparatively silent on the subject of prostate cancer. OK, we can attribute that to manly social embarrassment; that’s a shame.Using the numbers cited by Daily Caller, breast cancer implies mortality rate of 19.24% while prostate cancer 14.72%. Both suck.
But then again, the womenfolk alone are susceptible to cervical cancer & uterine cancer, both of which suck but weren’t mentioned by the Daily Caller.
http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/cervical-cancer/statistics
http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/uterine-cancer/statistics
The whole “women get more money for prostate cancer” thing is especially ironic because prostate cancer has such a high rate of over treatment, resulting in hundreds of thousands of men unnecessarily undergoing risky procedures that can leave them incontinent.
We may need more money for research for prostate cancer, but creating more awareness of it might actually be the wrong thing to do.
There needs to be a special place in hell for these kind of people. Lisa’s blog postings are inspirational and beautiful. Nobody has the right to criticize how a person deals with a terminal disease and the Kellers should be especially shamed for publishing their contempt in nationally read publications.
This sort of thing makes my blood boil.
I have a terminal illness. I was first supposed to die about 1993 or so, and have been putting it off ever since, through an experimental double organ transplant, a stroke, three cancers, and no immune system for 20 years, among other things. And I’ve written publicly about it.
When I do – usually as a springboard to discussion of one or another aspect of our health care system, it’s primarily to illustrate my personal experience with that issue, but it also has the welcome effect of giving inspiration to other people who are either experiencing serious illness themselves or in a loved one. Those are some of the most rewarding feedbacks I’ve ever gotten as a published writer.
There’s one local prominent journalist who has attacked me in a very similar fashion, particularly when Washington State’s “Death With Dignity” (ie assisted suicide for the terminally ill) initiative, which I strongly supported, was on the ballot. There were any number of local commentators who opposed it, but the journalist in question – who’s well known locally as a narcissistic asshole himself – was the only one crude and unethical enough to come after me for writing about my own experiences, and he did so in exactly these terms.
I really don’t give a fuck what “side” of any particular debate, end-of-life care or otherwise, the Kellers advocate. This sort of behavior tells me that neither of them really deserve the gift of life, let alone good health, let alone wealth and celebrity, that they’ve been given. At minimum, somebody should take their media platforms away.
Being members in good standing of The Village, of course, that won’t happen; nothing could make it happen.
Speaking of which, Richard Cohen and/or David Brooks rush to the Kellers’ defense in 5, 4, 3…
I read the columns and I don’t get where the outrage is coming from. Both Kellers are pretty clear that they aren’t denigrating Ms. Adams’ choices. They are questioning whether there are OTHER choices to be made. I think Bill Keller’s piece – while I have my problems with it – is basically about whether we should GLORIFY extensive efforts to stay alive, especially if that somehow condemns those who choose a different exit.
Neither Keller says anything but “These are her choices, and they work for her.”
But we are all supposed to hate Bill Keller.
I defer to Mr. Tbogg for the rest:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/13/wild-in-the-tweets/
I think you’ve missed the point of the criticism.
Stay alive? With stage 4 cancer?? It seems fairly obvious both Kellers are denigrating Ms Adams’ choice to go verbal about dying. Perhaps you believe Ms Adams should opt for suicide? Or silence?? Just to spare everyone and yourself…
ORLY? TBogg, despite his obvious gift for satire (and elevating the run-on sentence to nearly epic proportions via his patented oh-look-I-am-being-clever-plus-ironic-squared schtick) isn’t the most insightful person on the planet. He’s practically a one man meme generator.
ROFL: The TBogg swan song.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my reaction was to Ms. Keller’s original column – and to a lesser extent, her husband’s, which defended her without addressing the crux of the issue. Ms. Keller cites (with thinly disguised horror) Adams having tweeted 165,000 times – why, up to 200 times a day! Yet, anyone who’s vaguely aware of social media knows people who do this – whose Twitter feeds are a firehose. A lot of them fill their tweets with observations far more mundane than those of Adams. (“Just had a BLT! God I love bacon!”)
It’s fairly obvious to me – and maybe this gets back to my experience as a survivor of chronic illness, because I’ve seen my illness have the same effect on people in real life, people who don’t want to hear about it because it makes them uncomfortable or they can’t deal with it – that Adams isn’t just being singled out for being prolific, because she’s hardly alone in that. Perhaps the Kellers aren’t aware of what the Twitterverse is actually like and that lots of people Tweet incessantly – in which case, neither of them has any business being high-profile media pundits in 2014. The only other possible explanation, which is rather more likely, is that Adam’s prolificness bothers them specifically because her experience makes them uncomfortable – makes them feel like “voyeurs,” in Ms. Keller’s words – or perhaps they’re just uncomfortable with illness and prospective death. A lot of people are.
So unfollow her! Duh. That’s what I do people whose feeds I don’t like or can’t keep up with. The last thing Adams needs, as she deals with the agonizing pain she so publicly details, is to have to respond to a media shitstorm of the Kellers’ making, just so the Kellers can engage in some high-profile chin-stroking and/or Ms. Keller can expurgate her own vague guilt in at least as public a venue as Adams has shared her disease process.
Adams has a lot of followers, including, by her own account, a lot of fellow disease sufferers that are helped by the community she has helped create.
I can think of no even remotely similar benefit, ever, to the Kellers’ public careers.
sort of agree – but I think it’s about the fact that his father recently died of cancer and “heroic measures” was not the approach. we don’t learn any more details, but imo that’s the issue.
these are some rotten mofos
Jesus H Krist or a bull shit propelled pogo stick!!
Taking them at literal value one wonders how hard is the concept of “If you don’t like this unfortunate woman’s Tweet fest, Don’t friggin well read it.” . Presumably these two myopic, a self interested, bull shit ( right wing)journalists? involved in a multi layered quasi intellectual self justification/story, otherwise known as a neurotic hobby horse in a stormy tea cup.
To make their myopic stance they selectively (ab)use legal and logical extremes by assuming/asserting non existent absolutes (aka extremes) only when it suits their needs and decrying them when they don’t.
As was previously mentioned it is a tactic of denial and control of agendas. The key question is denial of what? Answer any thing that isn’t a right wing agenda .
I say “right wing” because to be the whole philosophy is based on first person pronoun obsession (superiority)i.e. what I think, want, believe comes first in the hierarchy of judgement.
Concepts like ‘live and let live ‘, equality of right to existence and equity in life quality, tolerance for others for others is an anathema.
These two are clearly bothered by conversations of death by cancer and would prefer that victims passively accept their fate and go away and die without forcing them personally to be disquieted. The rationale here is that if they are disquieted by that which may not be an aberration then perhaps their world, isn’t perfect, predictable, well ordered well needs…change to? Something that they don’t sanction (superiority?) and this is threatening.
Anyone ever met a journalist who didn’t think they were more important a better judge of what is news or in the interests of the public? Personally while I’ve know/met several I never have.
Ask your self what is the basis for their inflated sense of worth? Greater intellect skills etc…. objectively that depends on who you are comparing them too. They have access to more information but is it better?
Information on it’s own is worthless…. it’s knowing how to evaluate it and how and when to (or not too) apply it that forms wisdom/worth.
People like the author sare using an absolutist stance to demand the right to attack this woman’s reality publicly. Their rationale is that what is made public is fair game and it’s not illegal.
To that I’d answer just because it’s not illegal doesn’t mean that it’s right or appropriate.( see wisdom, empathy and the greater good).
On the other side may are reacting with emotional indignation saying that such articles are inappropriate and offensive.
In the final analysis I’d ask which is more beneficial to the public the attempt to draw attention to breast cancer and raising research money or Denial of the reality that the only way to move human evolution is to accommodate if not agree with the VARIATION that makes up human society i.e. there is NO absolute right or wrong or majorities except in abstract generalizations.
With respect, I’ve spent a number of years as a journalist, and I’ve known a number of other journalists who don’t match your description. It’s never wise to paint with too broad a brush.
However, it is likely that very few such journalists ever got to work for Bill Keller at the New York Times.
Thanks for the response.
Fair Point…..sorry.
By definition there has to be some even a lot i.e. there are no absolutes which in logic means there journalists must in a continuum. My apologies.
Everything is relative.
If I’m disappointed or annoyed by these articles it is because of the subtexts and the motivation of their editors. Clearly their( editors) judgement was IMHO lacking. As a ex marketing exec I understand that controversy and conflict sells (good for circulation) but were these articles news worthy or of sufficient importance that warranted publishing in either paper? And were either in the public interest(good)? the answer to both would have been a clear no. All things being equal given the cornucopia of other more deserving topics (see my criteria) I as an editor would have told both to “go back and write something meaningful something that adds to the debate not just starts an argument. ”
Of course an editor should have pulled the plug on these. Except that as I understand it Ms. Keller’s original item was posted in a Guardian blog, which may or may not have an editorial process (or if so the person doing it may be juggling it with six other jobs). And even setting aside the editorial page “standards” that allow the spewings of people like Brooks, Dowd, and The Mustache of the Universe free rein, who at the NYT is ever going to tell Bill Keller, former executive editor, to put a sock in it?
As a comic book hero once said, with great power comes great responsibility. The small clique atop our national media aristocracy is only vaguely aware of the notion of responsibility (which it defines quite narrowly); is infatuate with their great power; and does not care what the impact of that power actually is for the billions of people who live outside their comfortable bubble.
Hence, media figures who can openly cheer for the slaughter of thousands, or millions, of brown-skinned innocents, but get really squeamish about an honest depiction of the end stages of one person’s terminal disease.
I don’t blame Bill Keller.
After all, he couldn’t come up with an original take on why the MOTU are so wrongly maligned so instead he came up (along with the wife’s help) with an original idea to question how a terminally ill person deals with their experience.
Can’t the terminally ill die quietly out of site? Please. Just like homeless people should not make Mr. Keller uncomfortable as he walks from his limo at the curb to the office.
Real hardship of declining penthouse values so often covered by the NY Times vs the unseemly spectacle of a person using a keyboard and Twitter before dying.
It’s one of the truly profound ethical questions of the New Gilded Age
The Keller articles didn’t seem so bad. There is so much weirdness that goes online these days… are we not allowed to comment on it at all?