
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 2, 2010 / 16 Adar 5770
Voyeurism Dressed As a Public Service
By
Mona Charen
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's none of my business what Barack Obama's LDL cholesterol level is. And I don't have to know that he is using nicotine therapy to attempt to kick his smoking habit. But all of this and more is dutifully passed along after the president's annual physical. Want to know his resting heart rate? It's available. And we're told that President Obama has been instructed by his physicians to "eat healthier" and "moderate his alcohol intake."
What to make of this annual invasion of privacy? We've been privy to similar details about other presidents sometimes to an excruciating degree (President Carter revealed his troubles with hemorrhoids). In part, this may be a response to President Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack. Treatment was less sophisticated then, and the president spent seven weeks in the hospital. That was discomfiting enough, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and the "football," anxiety about a possibly debilitated president led to passage of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which provided for the smooth transition of power in the event the sitting president should die or become incapacitated.
But a Cold War sensitivity to the president's health is not the whole explanation for our current fetish for private health information. After all, Bill Clinton's refusal to release his medical records didn't undermine confidence in his ability to fulfill his term. So something else is going on.
Surely, it's one part voyeurism. They dress it up as a public service but it's gossip all the same. Whenever a public figure undergoes a medical test or surgery, we get minute-by-minute updates on his condition and full-color graphics of the affected part of the poor sop's body. When former president Clinton checked into an N.Y. hospital to have a stent placed in one of his arteries, CNN and the other cable channels were ready with easels and experts to walk us through it as if each of us were a family member. It was the same when Dick Cheney suffered a recent heart attack.
Concern for even the smallest details of a person's health is the proper realm of family and close friends, don't you think? To broadcast your stent operation or upper GI series or whatever on MSNBC is undignified or what the 18th century would probably have called too "familiar."

Besides, there lurks beneath all of this professed concern another sentiment less noble. In the case of Cheney, several news types expressed the "hope" that the former vice president was sticking to his diet and exercise regimen. When Clinton became ill, the AP reminded us of his eating habits: "Clinton's legend as a voracious and unhealthy eater was sealed in 1992, when the newly minted presidential candidate took reporters on jogs to McDonald's. He liked hamburgers, steaks, French fries lots of them and was a sloppy eater who could gobble an apple (core and all) in two bites and ask for more." It surfaces again and again a bossy smugness about other people's health.
We have arrived at a cultural moment when no one would dream of waxing judgmental about your sexual life or your manners, but we feel free to place you in metaphorical stocks for offenses against health. To prove yourself, show us your HDL-to-LDL ratio!
The busybodies who ask about the health habits of prominent people must imagine that they are performing a public service of some sort. Don't we hear incessantly about the crisis of obesity and sedentary habits? But while it makes sense to encourage the society as a whole to curb its outsize appetite for red meat, fried potatoes, and sugary sodas, it's hardly fair to single out individuals for scolding. In the first place, it's none of our business. And secondly, it's completely unfair. Nature is unpredictable. Some who exercise and eat a low-fat diet nevertheless have high cholesterol levels. And the reverse is often true as well.
But finally, it comes down to this: We are mortal. We sicken and die. This is a problem that not even Barack Obama claimed to be able to solve. Ailing people need sympathy and support. But Americans have veered awfully close to treating illness as a character flaw.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Mona Charen's column by clicking here.
Mona Charen Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|