Pointing Fingers

Staph and Queers and Sensationalism, Oh My

It’s difficult to express the ire I felt encountering the San Francisco Chronicle’s headline and accompanying article on Tuesday morning written by Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer, about a supposedly new staph infection epidemic at which San Francisco’s gay community is at the epicenter.

Along with the sensational headline, S.F. gay community an epicenter for new strain of virulent staph, a graphic, looking conveniently like a quarantine blueprint, colored San Francisco’s Castro district red.

Russell had taken a study released by UCSF in Annals of Internal Medicine, concisely titled Emergence of Multidrug-Resistant, Community-Associated, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clone USA300 in Men Who Have Sex with Men.

Failing to heed, perhaps the most important sentence in the Editor’s notes, appropriately under the heading “Cautions” which read: “The data were passively reported or retrospectively collected and are therefore subject to bias,” the Chronicle seemed to ignore the key word in editor’s “implications” as well. “Multidrug-resistant USA300 MRSA infection is especially common among men who have sex with men. It might be sexually transmitted in this population.” Might being the operative word.

That didn’t stop an idiot from Reuters named Amanda Beck from opening an article with: “A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.” Note how the might changed to is.

Did San Francisco Chronicle’s Sabin Russell actually read the study, or did he just rely on a horribly misinformed and inflammatory press release issued by the UCSF press office? Among the gems in this press release:

"But because the bacteria can be spread by more casual contact, we are also very concerned about a potential spread of this strain into the general population."

"The potential widespread dissemination of multi-resistant form of USA300 into the general population is alarming.”

The last time I checked, gay men were already part of the general population. And the first thing that crossed my mind as I read the article was the coverage I had already seen relating to drug-resistant staph infections, particularly in sports. Although once limited to hospitals or other healthcare facilities, MRSA infections are very common among healthy children and adults in many settings, from the high school locker room to the local gym to any potentially contaminated surface.

Last October, a county in southern Virginia closed its 21 schools to clean them to prevent the spread of a dangerous bacterial infection after a 17-year-old high school student died from a staph infection.

In August 2, 2004, the University of Michigan issued a balanced, hysteria-free press release related to the emergence of drug-resistant staph infections.

“Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of these types of bacteria which is now found among athletes, military recruits and others in the general population,” it stated.

While they also used the term “general population,” the segment of the population they were referring to as excluded from that population, were people in healthcare settings, where staph infections have been more common, regardless of gender, religion, race or sexual orientation.

Quoting Suzanne Bradley, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan press release cautioned as follows:

“…hospitals have been dealing with MRSA at least since the 1980s, but it wasn't until the mid-1990s that doctors began diagnosing serious MRSA infections in people that never had any contact with a health care system, including healthy children, athletes and military recruits.

“We've seen outbreaks in athletes, collegiate athletes and professional football players. Since staph is acquired primarily by direct human contact, anyone with a break in their skin who has a lot of contact with others is potentially at risk.”

So what’s the beef, you might wonder? First, the findings of this new study are anything but new. That they chose to explore staph infections in gay men could only result in a finding related to gay men. Would the results have been any different had they chosen to examine the medical records of female athletes?

The biggest problem I have with the UCSF press release, parroted and sensationalized by the Chronicle, is the language. Were the Editors at the Chronicle too focused on meeting with Obama or the breathless Tatiana tiger coverage? How could the San Francisco Chronicle, the same publication that boasted And the Band Played On’s Randy Shilts as a journalist, publish such a shoddy, ill-researched, scare-mongering piece of unadulterated garbage without considering the implications of the community it serves, gay or straight?

While it was instantly predictable that activists like Michael Petrelis would be justifiably outraged, similar responses in the blogosphere were as swift and as damning. And while the Chronicle wasn’t the only publication to pump out the sensationalist tripe extrapolated from UCSF’s press release, it should be ashamed of its inability to consider the implications of its irresponsibility.

For anyone who thinks the response to this is an overreaction, or questions the usefulness of Michael Petrelis' advocacy, I just learned of a written apology issued to Petrelis by the author of the UCSF press release, Wallace Ravven, in which he agrees to a public apology in a more satisfying context to be issued soon.

It was just as instantly predicable that the rabid homophobia of organizations like Concerned Women for America (who once labeled me a pornographer in a press release) would latch on to this coverage and use it as a pretext to instill fear, hate and division among their already confused constituents. As illustrated by their statements in a panic-inducing press release, rationally tilted “Epidemic Feared - 'Gays' May Spread Deadly Staph Infection to General Population:

The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease. In recent years we have seen a profound resurgence in cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea and many other STDs among those who call themselves 'gay.'

"The human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.

"In recent years our culture has adopted a laissez faire attitude toward sexual deviancy. Television shows like Will and Grace glorify the homosexual lifestyle while our children are taught in schools that homosexuality is a perfectly healthy, alternative sexual 'orientation.' 'Stay out of our bedrooms!' we're often commanded by militant 'gay' activists.

"Well, now the dangerous and possibly deadly consequence of what occurs in those bedrooms is spilling over into the general population. It's not only frightening, it's infuriating.”

Actually, what are frightening and infuriating are UCSF’s press release, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s related coverage. And how much people like Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America (I know, the irony!), despise their own children enough to misinform them and lead them to believe they’re in more danger of being infected by coming into contact with a gay person than they are sharing a towel in the locker room at the Christian gym.

"These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activities. Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," vomited Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention."

Oh really? And if indeed the concern is for the gay men studied, how much more evidence do you need, without a fat grant, to realize that gay men will tune out to anti-sex, anti-gay messages that demonize them and try instill unwarranted fear into them? Unless of course Binh Diep was spreading the “prevention” message to the “general population” in which case his remarks would still have the complete opposite effect. So we should heed his advice, and go forth safe in the knowledge that body sites where skin-to-skin contact occurs between heterosexuals are not vulnerable to staph infections? Spread the word.

If there was one thing to be gained from this useless study, or one iota of intelligent prevention advice that could have been imparted by the coverage, it’s that people living with HIV or AIDS or compromised immune systems ought to be cautioned against the risk of being infected by the “general population.” Regardless of whether they’re straight or gay.

The current Presidential primaries have been remarkably free, so far, of the usual gay hating rhetoric that has permeated them in election seasons past. (Mike Huckabee being the looney-bin exception, and, honestly, who takes that idiot seriously anyway?)

Thanks to The San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters and other media organizations that were seduced by UCSF’s sensational press release, a fresh injection of hate, confusion and fear-mongering took care of ensuring that homophobia remains front and center in 2008.

Apologies, at this point, while might be appreciated by the likely victims of this disgrace, are probably too little too late. While simple acts of basic hygiene and washing one’s hands with soap and water might help prevent staph infections, it will take a lot more to prevent whatever disease permeates American newsrooms.

Sometimes Change Isn't Good Enough

In a column They Didn’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, Sunday, January 6, 2007, New York Times columnist, Frank Rich wrote that the Iowa caucuses served as a lesson that change -- not experience -- is what voters value most in this Presidential primary:

But if Clinton operatives know how to go negative, they don’t have the positive balance of a 21st-century message. Iowa confirmed that the message the campaign has used to date — experience — is D.O.A. in post-Bush America. It was fascinating to watch that realization sink in on Thursday night. In her concession speech, Mrs. Clinton had her husband, the most tangible totem of her experience, standing right beside her, yet she didn’t mention him or so much as acknowledge him.

Although I don't have a dog in the Democratic presidential race, I'm not so sure I would conclude that "experience" is DOA. All Hillary would need to do (as opposed to torturing her campaign message to conform to a "change" paradigm) is run an ad showing Katrina victims in the Superdome and on their roofs, cut to Brownie being congratulated for doing a "heckava job," and end with the tag line "Sometimes Change Isn't Good Enough. Experience Counts."

The Second Coming, A Second Time

I’m not one who is apt to repeat myself, but on the first day of 2008, the year America will finally elect a new president and – despite the lack of ideal choices – one that may just show a little more respect for not only the Constitution he or she is worn to uphold, but for American citizens, aliens (fabulous term, no?) both legal and illegal, and to global citizens who have a right to live each day without fear of being bombed, shot or tortured by the United States.

I wrote originally wrote The Second Coming: The Age of Bin Laden on September 15, 2001, four days after September 11th. The World Trade Center was still in flames, and America had yet to start a war against Afghanistan, let alone Iraq. Every awful prediction I made came to pass, far worse in some cases, than I had imagined. Foolishly optimistic, in 2004, I thought America would get rid of George W. Bush come election time. I was horribly mistaken. Perhaps reiterating these words from September 2001 in the forums available to me through San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate, as well as Annoy.com, Pointing Fingers and Daily Kos might wake some people up this election. Somehow I'm less optimistic this time round. To paraphrase, correctively, the misphrasing of our current President: "fool me once, shame on you..."

The morning of Tuesday September 11, 2001, began typically enough. Yawningly irreverent New York radio host Don Imus, (whose show is simulcast on MSNBC), was angrily denouncing MSNBC for allowing nauseatingly saccharine hosts Chris Jansing and Gregg Jarrett to knock him off the air anytime there was breaking news, rather than let him break it. Seemingly unaware of the high premium MSNBC places on youth. Clearly oblivious to the fact that a vast majority of Americans don't want some bitter, wrinkled, dried-up, ex-cokehead, surrounded by spineless yes men, wheezing breaking news between hits on his oxygen mask.

And then terror struck. Big time. In the worst terrorist attack in history, suicidal fanatics attacked the United States by smashing hijacked commercial planes into the World Trade Center towers, Pentagon (and potentially other targets, were they not foiled by passengers). America and indeed most of the world were numbed to the core by the horror and magnitude of such destruction.

Throughout the day -- and ever since -- repeated images of the horror looped and looped on every TV channel in every language interspersed with hundreds of heartstring tugging stories that reduce the most hardened of men to tears.

As the dust settles, literally and figuratively, we may well emerge from this a changed nation. Although not with the overnight hyperbole reflected by trite headlines stating as much before we had even had a chance to absorb what we were hit with.

Some things remain horribly the same.

While most American's were reeling, stunned into a shocked and disbelieving silence, the impenetrable roaches of humanity's refuse at its worst and ugliest came crawling out fast and furious, vomiting their hate and their anger like festering pus on gaping wounds.

Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson shattered their own decaying credibility by fanatically blaming the attack on abortionists, liberals, online pornographers and civil liberties groups, declaring that Americans got what they deserved. This, of course, while their fellow Americans - and a host of other nationalities -- lay dead, suffering and smoldering under heaps of shattered concrete and melting mangled metal.

Intellectually barren columnist, Ann Coulter, in a tribute to talk show partisan Barbara Olson that was about as sensitively timed and welcome as an untreated yeast infection on Prom night, suggested that America bomb the fuck out of whatever country was responsible. Children and innocent civilians be damned! And convert them all to Christianity. No doubt her perverted brand of Christianity that deems bombing babies nobler than oral sex.

'War is Stupid and People are Stupid,' Boy George once sang frivolously.

The governments waging them may be damn stupid too, but they are not that stupid, and not as stupid as we are, it seems. War allows governments to get away with things that are not possible in peacetime, where cooler heads and reason prevail. Using the word 'war' to describe something that is not a war, diminishes the notion of what a real war is and trivializes and mocks genuine patriotism. It threatens the very tenets of freedom. It allows for States of Emergency with unparalleled government powers from eavesdropping, surveillance and ex-parte motions to detention without trial.

'This is War!" screamed the headlines, TV networks and cable channels, and while we -- vulnerable in our pain, grief, fear and shattered sense of security -- wept over round-the-clock heart-wrenching vignettes of the fallen and their families played to the tune of the national anthem everywhere we turned.

While we mourned and watched and read and listened and cried, an anti-terrorism bill was drafted that rivals South Africa's most draconian at the height of Apartheid. Within just one week of the attacks. Not to mention an almost unanimous vote by both chambers of Congress (save one brave voice of Congresswoman Barbara Lee) to give Bush full authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against terrorists linked to the attacks and against those that sponsor them as well as a unanimous $40 billion anti-terrorism package.

America's worst enemies -- hypocrisy and its unrelenting media machinery that cripples our intelligence and goads us into thinking and acting like dazed sheep before a slaughter -- has done and will continue to do more harm to this country than Osama bin Laden or any other terrorists anywhere could ever wish to.

We cannot, as a response, simply bomb other countries with vengeance or blame people with different beliefs or ideologies. Nor should we grit out teeth through our tears and sense of helplessness and resolutely commit to revenge. A dogged pursuit for vengeance, whether framed as self-defense by ancient Defense Secretaries or resulting from a deep-rooted, visceral and all too understandable desire to punish by continuing along the very same path is explosively dangerous. All we can hope to achieve with such an approach is to add new recruits to the cause of terrorism and alienate public opinion domestically and especially internationally.

Before we embark on a war of retribution, like a frantic chicken with its head cut off running around in search of a definable enemy, we need to reflect. Big time.

What message we are sending when we impose sanctions on a country for nuclear testing one day, and then lift them so that the same country can help us attack or bomb an enemy we once befriended, trained and created ourselves the next? And to what extent might this just engender a distrust and hatred of America?

Some, more detached, have pointed out; the targets were symbols of American military might and economic prowess. The Pentagon and World Trade Center respectively represent the very essence of capitalism. Borrowing an American justification for the bombing of innocent civilians, and just as callously, some have referred to the victims as simply collateral damage. Indeed a shockingly insensitive euphemism. Why we should ask ourselves, was it so easy for us to stomach it in Baghdad or in Yugoslavia? Why then not in Oklahoma? Why not in New York?

We must question whether strategic national interests -- that have us bombing other humans to deflect scrutiny and accountability at home -- are either strategic or in our interests.

We must ask ourselves whether the multinational corporatization of culture that makes for stronger First World economies is worth the sweat and blood of children in sweatshops in the Third World.

We must reexamine the appropriateness of remaining silent while females are butchered at birth in China as Rupert Murdoch, Steve Case and their merry band of savages lay down the satellites and pipes for broadband to poison new minds with freshly sanitized, brain-anesthetizing content, and sell the population-controlled, surviving males new laptops.

We need to stop for a second before bedtime channel surfing between NASCAR and Howard Stern while dripping genetically engineered McDonalds burger grease onto our GAP sweaters, only to wake up just early enough and strive just hard enough to earn just enough to replace it with one from Banana Republic instead.

We need to pause before we tap our Budweisers in tune to a lecherous Bob Dole sitting in a darkened room transparently pawning Viagra in Pepsi commercials while watching Britney Spears flaunt her underage crotch in his face. And then mindlessly tune in to a two-hour JonBenet Ramesy special and wonder who killed her. And why.

We need to find balance, where criticism of Rudy Giuliani for his horrific record on arts funding is not ignored or suddenly no longer relevant because of the incredible sense of comfort and security he has been able to inspire in the wake of the attack on New York.

We need to still be able to vigorously condemn the horrific ordeals faced by the likes of Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo at the hands of corrupt New York policemen without negating or trivializing the admirable and incredible heroism displayed by brave men and women from the same Department that continues to give credence to the phrase New York's Finest in the wake of the attack on New York.

We need to parse information being fed to us by an amateur, stammering Press Secretary Ari Fleisher, (who remember, was fainting in anxiety and threatening the media during the tense furor surrounding Jenna Bush's underage drinking escapades), with the appropriate grains of salt and respect for freedom of information.

We need to learn to not confuse extremist conduct with necessary and strong criticism of policy or appreciation of an alternative ideology. Nor refrain from critical self-analysis. We must stop oversimplifying wide ranging complexities by lumping everything into an Us v.Them paradigm that leaves too many people cornered, scapegoated or unfairly branded.

We need to realize that the declarations of war, the political rhetoric on all sides and the sweeping tide of emotion and patriotism right now are potentially the most dangerous and damaging to our civil liberties if left unchecked and unbalanced. And the threat posed by our willingness to blindly trade our freedom for a heightened perception of security cannot be underestimated.

We need to question with apprehension Attorney General John Ashcroft s draconian requests for unprecedented law enforcement powers for investigating 'suspected terrorists' (however vaguely defined) that are being fast tracked through Congress without nearly appropriate enough consideration. And how the curtailment of civil liberties during wartime translates into Rumsfeld's ominous characterization of the 'war' that reads more like his biography. "It is a much more subtle, nuanced, difficult, shadowy set of problems." With neither a beginning nor end.

Now, more than ever, we need to tune in to people around us and tune out the sappy, obsequious corporate-controlled media instilling over-produced, high-tech fear into us by simply regurgitating the government's outdated war strategies as advocated by dying blowhards who peaked in the exact same posts in President Ford's cabinet four administrations ago.

Let's smell the Starbucks and realize that the stock prices of companies like Viacom, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, Disney, Vivendi, Alcoa and Halliburton are really the only thing anyone from the White House to the Treasury to the media touting this war cares about, not humanitarian values or the value of the information or programming that is designed to keep us ignorant and petrified while we cling to our flags in tears.

Such a violent and horrific attack not only showcases our vulnerability militarily, economically, politically and ideologically, but also robs of us of our families, friends and loved ones and very joy of living.

In spite of blunderbuss rhetoric and toxic media fallout, this tragedy has resulted in people coming together and reaching out to one another in ways no one ever could have imagined. A new, more informed dialogue has begun.

The greatest honor we can bestow on the people who died so tragically on September 11, 2001, is to simply wake up and pay attention.