Brian Williams: The WORST Kind of Liar

If as the old adage goes, "the worst kind of liar is the one who thinks he's telling the truth," then Brian Williams is the worst kind of liar. We little people rarely get to peak behind the facade of what the late, great Joe Bageant called: The American Hologram, so we usually don't have any idea just how much the blow dried airheads who get the paid big money to go on teevee and spout the empire's propaganda are actually in on the joke. The funniest aspect of the current predicament of suspended NBC anchorman Brian Williams is that his likely downfall will come as the result of telling lies--and that the lies that have put him in such deep shit are of such little consequence compared to the ones that tumbled out of his mouth every fucking night he stepped into the NBC "news" studio.

Williams's public persona was always as one of the least objectionable members of the propaganda ministry in that he seemed just as at home trading good natured barbs with Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien as he did reading bullshit from a teleprompter. But the real Brian Williams was exactly the kind of asshole who, despite becoming massively wealthy while holding down one of the most coveted positions in all media, just HAD to make himself out as some sort of Rambo action figure. Not content to just sit on the sidelines lines cheering on "the troops," he decided he had to BE one of them, or at least to make people believe he is his generation's Ernie Pyle--dodging bullets and artillery fire right there with the grunts on the front line.

All that was bad enough, but yesterday Vanity Fair posted a story in which Williams is finally revealed to be the worst kind of liar--a man so soulless and devoid of personal awareness that he fervently believed that not only was he not a liar, but that he is in fact INCAPABLE of lying:

Within NBC, Burrough writes, Williams floated an even more absurd and cowardly explanation (bolding ours) for his prevarications:

“[Williams] couldn't say the words ‘I lied,’” recalls one NBC insider. “We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied.’ He couldn’t explain what had happened. [He said,] ‘Did something happen to [my] head? Maybe I had a brain tumor, or something in my head?’ He just didn’t know. We just didn’t know. We had no clear sense what had happened. We got the best [apology] we could get.”

As my readers well know, I've spent the last two years battling and then recuperating from pancreatic cancer. During the seemingly endless hours I spent attached to a IV line pumping those horrid chemotherapy chemicals into my body, I once had the very upsetting experience of watching a young man of about twenty being brought into the clinic in a wheelchair, then picked up by an orderly and placed in a nearby chair. He was completely bald, and had lost most of his motor skills--including the ability to speak intelligibly--thanks to a massive tumor that was slowly eating away at his brain. Relatedly, a good friend of my wife just recently lost her husband (and father of their 10-year-old son) after a five year battle with brain cancer that at the end left him bedridden, helpless and in constant excruciating agony.

THAT is the kind of thing that usually happens to a person who has a brain tumor, Brian Williams, you disgusting egomaniacal piece of shit. For 11 excruciating years you were paid countless millions of dollars by America's oligarchical elite to spew whatever lies they wanted you tell to keep the dimwits who foolishly believe that any kind of truth will be broadcast on a network formerly owned by a giant defense war contractor; paid for by advertisements on behalf the country's biggest corporations docile. For you to compare yourself to people who are suffering and dying one the most miserable forms of death there is to be had in this world to me makes you a far bigger scumbag than comparing yourself to soldiers from a mercenary army fighting a one-sided war.

Take your fucking money and crawl back into whatever hole it was you climbed out of, and may we all be spared from ever again having to abuse our eyeballs with your hideous visage.


Bonus: Dedicated to Brian Williams--just another "fevered ego" that is tainting our collective unconscious

A Choice I Hope I Never Have to Make

By now I'm sure most if not all of you have heard the amazing story of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer who chose to end her own life while she still could rather than wait around for the disease to consumer her in its ugly, painful fashion. Maynard's situation really hit home to me because not so long ago I thought I might find myself in the same exact position, and I still might should my cancer return at some point. The dismal reality is that despite the "every day alive is a good day," happy talk, there comes a point where life really is no longer worth living. As someone who has suffered an intense amount of pain and discomfort the past two years, I'm not yet sure I know exactly where the threshold lies, but I think I have some idea. And for anyone who has not had the experience of being in excruciating pain and having been told by your doctors that you are expected to live for only X number more months who thinks what Maynard did was morally wrong, let me be the first to tell to please go fuck yourself with a very big stick.

Before I got sick, I knew two other people with terminal cancer who chose to to end their lives early. One was in her early 60s and was suffering the horrendous agony of having the disease slowly eat away at her spine. The other was a just-turned-40 young woman who initially appeared to have defeated breast cancer only to have the damnable disease return and metastasize. She made the courageous decision to stop receiving chemotherapy because she was told there was little chance it would be able to save her a second time and because the first go-around had made her life nearly unbearable.

During my own treatments I also saw people on the other side of the fence, those who continued to struggle despite there being little or no hope. While undergoing chemotherapy I made friends with Tom, a 59-year-old guy who had stage 4 esophageal cancer. Over the months I had chemo with him his condition continued to worsen. Tom was a big baseball fan, and my wife and I decided to use some connections we had to arrange for him and his wife to go with us to see what turned out to be his very last big league game, with the bonus that we were allowed to go onto the field during batting practice and meet some of the players. Several even signed a ball for Tom.

By the time of that game, however, Tom was already confined to a wheelchair, could not hold his head up without a neck brace, could barely speak above a whisper and was permanently attached to a colostomy bag. He ended up passing on about three months later, and the effusive thanks he and his wife expressed to us for arranging that special moment near the end of his life are something I will always remember. Nevertheless, as I observed him that night my thought was that it was great that he was having fun but I doubted I'd be able to stand to let my own condition deteriorate as far as his already had. Thankfully, to date it never has.

Allowing people to end their lives with dignity is a touchy subject in this country. On the cold, analytical end of the spectrum there's the figure that gets thrown about that says in America two-thirds of the average person's total medical expenses are incurred in the last year of life, which would seem to indicate a way that skyrocketing health care costs could be brought down but for the chilling thought of exactly who gets to make such decisions. On the other end are the fundamentalist religious freaks and right to life lunatics who if they could would force every patient to draw every agonizing breath for however long it takes until they mercifully expire. Because these fucking assholes shout the loudest, they make it nearly impossible to have a reasonable discussion about the right to die and the real necessity for legalized physician-assisted suicide.

Then along comes Brittany Maynard, bless her, a pretty young white woman with incredible courage who, dignity despite the media circus that surrounded her, was able to bring national attention to the issue in such a way that was basically impervious to all but the most unhinged criticism. Yes, it's a shame that the media won't pay attention to many social issues UNLESS a pretty young white woman is involved as the victim, but in this case we'll have to take what we can get. And what we got was an incredibly selfless act from a someone who allowed a huge intrusion into her private life at the worst possible time so that others in the future might be able to end their own lives with dignity and while experiencing as little physical pain as possible. I don't often cite heroes on this blog--mostly because I don't think there are a whole lot of genuine heroes left in this shitty world--but Brittany Maynard was a hero. May she rest in peace.


Bonus: No--suicide is NOT "the coward's way out"

A Half Million Dollars Could Save Your Life

There's a really dumb old adage that goes something like, "a liberal is really just a conservative who's never been mugged." I'm going to flip that little bit of "logic" on it's head by saying, "a conservative is really just a liberal who has never faced a life-threatening accident or illness sans good health insurance."

One thing I've been quite thankful for during my battle with cancer is that I at least have good health insurance and didn't face the additional awful stress of worrying about being financially ruined by the disease. In fact, given how close run this thing was (and still is, frankly) that would likely have been the literal death of me. Though I've lost track of the precise amount, to date the total cost of my care the past two years has easily topped $500,000. One shot alone that accompanied each of my twelve chemotherapy treatments and is designed to help regenerate white blood cells cost $10,000 apiece (yeah, HOL-LEE SHIT is exactly what I thought, too). How many people do you know that have that kind of cash sitting around in their rainy day fund? Yeah, I don't know many either.

It happens so often these days that you hear of someone who has cancer for whom their friends and family have put together a big charity drive that we don't even think anymore about how stressful it must be for the patient. One of the best gags on the otherwise darkly brilliant teevee show, Breaking Bad, even has Walt laundering his drug money through a charitable website set up by his son.

Since I do have good health insurance, I make a point whenever I am discussing my disease with someone of mentioning this cost and how lucky I've been not to have been bankrupted by my ailment. It's my little way of trying to raise awareness of our totally broken health care system without being overbearing about it or starting an argument (though I do notice that as a cancer patient I get far more deference when raising controversial topics than I used to get before I got sick). Sadly, it seems to go way over most people's heads, though I did get one conservative coworker of mine to admit that MAYBE everyone ought to at least be entitled to catastrophic coverage (though who would determine exactly what constitutes a "catastrophic" condition he didn't say).

Had I not had the insurance, I would have faced two stark choices when I was diagnosed: pay up or die. And considering how unlikely my survival was at the start (pancreatic cancer has a five-year survival rate of less than 10%), I might well have chosen the latter to spare my wife from losing the entire nest egg we have built up over the last 20 years. Had we had children, the choices would have been even bleaker--them losing their father versus the loss of any chance that their parents could have helped provide for their future. Strictly on an actuarial basis, treating my cancer made no sense whatsoever.

So why is it exactly that real national health care was a non-starter from the get-go, and how exactly did we end up with an Obamacare abomination that has done little to alleviate the problem? Because, quite simply, there is virtually no empathy left in American politics these days. The vast majority of the people who vote in this country have divided themselves up into two tribes: one who couldn't give a shit about the less fortunate, and one who turns a total blind eye to any injustice just so long as it is being perpetrated by politicians who have a little "D" after their names when they appear on teevee.

But there is one little way that I take solace in all of this. Up until two years ago, I used to joke that being in such good health my whole adult life meant that my health insurance carrier was making out like a bandit on me. As it turned out, however, the joke was on them.


Bonus: "Every life comes with a death sentence"

"Glad it Isn't Me," and Other Evil Thoughts About Cancer

About ten years ago, I had a professional colleague who went in for routine surgery only to find out she had about a fist-sized tumor lodged firmly in her stomach. Four months later she was dead at the ripe young age of 53. To make matters even shittier, she was less than two years away from retirement when she died and she and her husband were already in the process of building their dream beach house. The last time I saw her was when she came in for the office Christmas party about a month after she was diagnosed. There was all kinds of happy talk about how she was going to beat the cancer, but as she went to hug me goodbye that afternoon I could see the stark fear in her eyes. Of course, I told her I would see her when she was well again and all that happy nonsense. But what I really remember was thinking, "glad it isn't me."

For a long time I felt bad about that. Or when a few other people I knew got the disease in recent years--or when another colleague's father contracted ALS (a worse disease than cancer since it doesn't even give you the courtesy of a fighting chance) and that same damn thought popped uninvited into my head.

"Glad it isn't me."

Flash forward to exactly 19 months ago, and all of the sudden it WAS me. There I was, sitting in an examination room at a very prestigious cancer specializing hospital, being told I had a massive tumor on the head of my pancreas--Stage 3, inoperable. Oh, and my life expectancy at that moment was approximately 11 months.

When my diagnosis became generally known among those who know me in meat space, the reaction was overwhelmingly supportive. Even a number of people I considered to be just casual acquaintances were effusive in their expressions of sympathy, and I was damned appreciative of every last such utterance I received. It went a long way towards helping me through the bad times--six months of chemo, six weeks of radiation treatments and a surgical procedure (those first two might have really sucked but they shrank the tumor just enough that it just barely became operable), that until just recently itself had a 15% mortality rate. But I know many of them had to be thinking that same horrible thought that never gets expressed when discussing potentially fatal illnesses.

"Glad it isn't me."

During this awful time, I've come to know and become friends with numerous other cancer patients and "survivors," some of whom have unfortunately already lost their battle and are, as the trite expression goes, no longer with us. One guy who is still alive and kicking is the husband of a friend of my wife who contracted Stage 4 lung cancer four years ago even though he never smoked a day in his life (hello, Walter White!). I first met him a few days after my diagnosis, and one of the very first things he said to me was "Welcome to the club!" At first I was taken aback by how rude that sounded, but I quickly learned to appreciate the true fighting spirit that lay behind it. He was originally given just six months to live, and you've got to be one tough motherfucker to put off death for years on end like he has knowing that shit will kill you eventually anyway.

Ever since then I've done my best to emulate his example, which means occasionally allowing yourself to get pissed off about your situation even though that might make others uncomfortable. Once when I was on chemo I felt strong enough to go out running. I won't say I made great time, but I lasted a full 30 minutes on what was a gorgeous late spring afternoon. As I slowed to a walk, I looked down at my abdomen and blurted out, "fuck you!" at the tumor as if it was a living, breathing opponent and not just a lump of senseless but deadly flesh. Hey, get busy living or get busy dying. I think I heard that said in a movie once.

Anyway, not long ago another friend of my wife who is a cancer survivor was talking with her about a mutual friend of theirs who had "overcome" the same form of the disease only to get that bad CT scan result that every one of us in the club dreads--the bastard is back. My wife's friend confessed to her that, given the overall percentage chance that she will one day find herself in the same position, whenever she hears of some other "survivor" experiencing recurrence she just can't avoid thinking, no matter how terrible it sounds, that if nothing else it increases her own chances of survival ever so slightly.

"Glad it isn't me."

My surgery, which I am still in the process of recovering from, involved a lengthy hospital stay during which my wife and I got to know some other patients who had the same procedure around the same time I did. There was one guy in particular--a few years older than me--who coincidentally is a friend of one of my in-laws. We chatted a number of times in those early days, comparing notes on how shitty we felt and whatnot. As it turned out the two of us were the only ones of six pancreatic cancer patients on our floor whose surgery was a complete "success," meaning that afterwards lab tests determined that there was no cancer detected either in the margins around our tumors or in our lymph nodes.

Two had their tumors removed but got bad test results, meaning they had more chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments to look forward to. The other two were even more unlucky in that their tumors could not be removed, though they still faced the same horrible recovery we did. One of those two was even told that the surgery revealed that his tumor had metastasized (insidiously, the doctors can't actually see everything going on inside you through a CT scan), and sadly he passed away a mere two months later. My wife attended his funeral. I wanted to accompany her, but that turned out to be one of the bad days.

So you can imagine how lucky I felt even as my body weight plummeted 40 pounds in the aftermath, and the pain and discomfort reached levels I hadn't yet experienced in over a year's worth of truly wretched treatments. Certainly, I expected that my fellow "survivor" would feel the same way. Surprisingly, he didn't.

Though he lives in another part of the country, I was able to keep in touch through a journal he keeps on one of those websites for people with serious illnesses. In the months that followed the surgery, I noted in his posts an unexpected negativity that seemed to go beyond being down about how terrible the recovery process was. In one of his posts, he described how after being diagnosed he had shut down his business and wasn't sure if he'd have the strength to start it up again. I'm not sure if others who read his journal could sense it by reading between the lines, but it seemed to me that he had mentally prepared himself to die. Perhaps he'd been subconsciously glad to be leaving the rat race that is modern life in America, I really don't know, but apparently being given a new lease on life wasn't really a blessing for him.

Flash forward to a month ago. As it so happened my friend in misery and I had our first post operative CT scans just a few days apart. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sweating it out, but for me it came up clean--meaning as far as the doctors can tell I'm currently cancer free (which is only good news for a few months until the next scan). Unfortunately, he was not so lucky. Not only had his cancer returned, but it had actually metastasized. He was pretty frank when he posted the news, even saying how unlikely it is that he will be alive at this time next year.

Incredible as it may seem, however, his postings since then have taken on a more positive tone--or at least one far less rooted in misery. It's almost as if he is now welcoming the outcome he had expected all along. Could it just be that he can't bear the thought of forever living with a loaded gun pointed at his head never knowing when it will go off? I really don't know, and as an outside observer and only a casual acquaintance at that I wouldn't begin to presume to know what is really going on in his mind. But as a fellow traveller on this dark, dark road of ours I can understand why maybe he would actually welcome the worst, just as I can empathize with Robin Williams and understand why, facing Parkinson's at age 63, he did what he did.

So I guess it then begs the question, am I glad it was him and not me? As I sit here typing, anonymously pouring out thoughts I could never say aloud to my friends and family, still in constant pain from chemo-induced peripheral nerve damage, popping more pills each day than I used to average in a year just to keep things tolerable, I can't honestly say for sure. Check back with me in about five years--which is how long it usually takes until the doctors will declare you "cancer free" (and even that is no guarantee). Maybe then I'll have an answer to an unspoken and guilt-ridden question that used to be a no-brainer.


Bonus: No, Walt, CANCER is The Danger

Cancer Fucking Sucks

You know, life is funny sometimes--yeah, funny the same way a two by four upside the head is funny. I'm sure the real Bill Hicks would have found plenty of gallows humor upon learning that nearly two decades after his death a blogger who chose to adopt his identity online managed to contract pancreatic cancer, which is the same goddam fucking awful ailment that so unkindly robbed the world of his very much needed presence at the tender young age of 32. In retrospect, I should have chosen George Burns as my avatar--that way I could have smoked cigars and fucked young starlets until I was 100 years old (though it was too bad for George that he kicked off long before Viagra was developed).

Yep--the universe has a real sense of humor sending that particular malady to plague the life of a guy in his 40s who (unlike the real Bill) never smoked, exercised a lot and drank only in moderation. Oh, and did I mention that there's virtually no history of cancer in my family? Yeah, there's that, too.

But I'm not bitter.

No really, I'm not. The fact is, despite being told 19 months ago that my life expectancy was less than one year, not only am I still here but I am one of the VERY lucky few who has managed to "beat" pancreatic cancer. I place "beat" in quotations because despite all the happy cancer ad horseshit you hear from various cancer charities, no one ever REALLY beats cancer. For while it is true that the longer you go after being successfully treated for the disease the better your long term chances of survival, the fact is that you are always living under that Sword of Damocles--one bad CT Scan away from being right back in that horrible chemotherapy chair knowing that your chances the SECOND go-around are that much worse than the first.

So that's what's been going on in my life during my long absence from blogging. I have a lot more thoughts about cancer, the medical establishment and all the BS cancer patients have to put up with even if they are fortunate enough as I was to have good health insurance--but that will be for later. Tomorrow, I plan to come back here with an honest to your favorite deity old fashioned TDS post. I've heard whispers that a whole lot of bad shit has gone down in the world since the last time I rhetorically kicked that pathetic windbag in the White House right in the teeth and I have a few things I'd like to get off my chest.

In the meantime, please enjoy this HIGHLY inappropriate-under-the-circumstances ditty from Joe Jackson. "There's no cure, there's no answer" indeed.