Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I have mixed feelings about this advertising/awareness campaign. Having gone through those “why is my child getting sick so often” years myself, there is certainly a need for more thinking out of the box. And I did have the distinct impression we were treating just the symptoms of something without getting to the underlying cause. Thank goodness it didn’t turn out to be what’s described here.
Nevertheless, I have to ask the following about this advertising campaign. Is this really appropriate? Or beneficial to anybody? I mean, check out those radio spots, especially #4, at the very end. The borderline-frantic mother can tell something is wrong, she can feel it in her bones. But she’s surrounded by the voices of all these clueless dolts, mostly the blissfully ignorant paleochauvinist male sawbones.
As a macho male dad guy, raised somewhat comically in an unnecessarily nineteenth-century environment, and in adulthood growing more and more concerned about this world into which I emerged probably 150 years too late, which in turn even now is becoming more and more pasteurized and sanitized and feminized…I must say I see a connection. It’s become unthinkable to allow kids to do things that kids my age did all the time — the wandering through the neighborhood in bare feet unsupervised, riding bicycles without helmets, and yes, eating dirt. Now, things are clean. Things are micro-clean.
And our kids have allergies and disorders like never before.
Almost as if they were designed to be confronted by little everyday beasties that they no longer have to face down, so that their little bodies aren’t allowed to grow the robustness that used to be commonplace.
Why, the peanut allergy thing seems to substantiate these concerns pretty solidly, all by itself. If you’re my age, 41, how many kids did you know in the third grade who had an allergy to peanuts? In all of K through 12 — how many times did you see that? Or even hear of it? And now…everyone knows someone who knows someone. Anything made with peanut products…anything made with machines that have come into contact with peanut stuff…has to be clearly called-out.
So our kids have all these weaknesses they did not have before. After we have made everything ultra ultra ultra extra safe, nonthreatening, soft, cuddly and — most of all — clean. Oh, so clean.
Hmmmmmm……naw, let’s just ignore that some more.
But getting back to the Jeffrey Modell Foundation. I think what they’re talking about is probably legitimate and there’s probably a genuine need to raise awareness about it. And I don’t doubt for a minute there are some doltish docs neglecting to run tests that they probably ought to think about running.
But these radio spots — especially toward the end of #4. Have any of the people making these spots, ever been parents? No — check that — have they ever been fathers? Fathers raising young children in the presence of borderline-hysterical moms, whose solution to every single malady that comes down the line is to go to the doctor and get a prescription for an antibiotic? Have they ever been in that position where you have to ask yourself “waitaminnit…I can’t remember ever having been put on an antibiotic once…and my kid’s been on six of them in the last two years, and I suspect the last two times were because the Mom messed up the dosage.”
At that point, it becomes a public health issue. Missing dosages of an antibiotic is not a trivial matter. That’s one of the reasons you have to go to a doctor to get put on one in the first place.
This is not a “battle of the sexes” thing. Moms have a lot to worry about. It’s to be expected that they mess up doses of things now and then. That is really the point I am making here — mothers are fallible. Nobody really has a serious thought to the contrary. That’s why these hysterical moms in the radio spots are being shushed up by the blissfully ignorant pleasant condescending male docs. There is logic in this.
And it is somewhat unhelpful when the motherly instinct is presented as a holy yardstick, trumping some universality of realizations dealing with reason, logic and fact. That is not what the motherly instinct is.
But you wouldn’t know it from listening to these. The smooth-talking, time-warped good-ol-boy doc breezily dismisses her concerns, and the mom’s voice fairly warbles “I don’t know — something’s WRONG!!” Chauvinist grandpa doc croaks out, “take it eeeeeaaasssy!” And the much wiser, stern, strong, self-assertive female narrator comes on and intones “DON’T take it easy!”
Sure, I agree in some isolated cases there might be a situation where that is a helpful message to have. But this isn’t really all about a message, it’s about an attitude. And I can promise you, that’s not a helpful attitude. When you’re in that chapter of life, the mom has about a hundred concerns every damn day, and she’s already not inclined to “take it easy” on any one of them. We dads do not need some mass-produced radio spot instructing the mom to get MORE hyped-out about these everyday things, steamrolling over anybody and everybody who might have justifiable reasons for urging calm. It’s just not needed.
And for the reasons stated above — it’s not so extravagant to suppose this kind of attitude might be the cause of these problems in the first place.
One other thing occurs to me. I have to ask, what kind of medical system do we have going on here when the best way to raise awareness about some previously-unrealized malady, is through the moms? I don’t pretend to know all about how that works. Maybe this really is the right approach. But think about the awful ramifications of that for a minute…why can’t this medical information be disseminated through the doctors, the way we expect it to be? If that’s ineffective, why do we even have doctors in the first place?
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