This doesn’t really feel like a G.D. so I’m putting it here.
I’m watching CNN, as I do compulsively, and they run a teaser for " Taming The Beast: War on Cancer".
This is what we do. We anthropomorphize as best as we possibly can because we cannot handle the concept of losing one’s life to microscopic problems. Well, I mean, we CAN handle it and do, and millions have learned to fight it and lose, or win. Similarly with HIV/AIDS, and so on.
I know, it’s the timing… Peter Jennings and others dying of lung cancer and the consciousness is raised up a few ratchets on the 'ole Attent-O-Meter. As much as I love organized media, I am faintly horrified that there’s this need to put an image with something that has no image. The Beast is distortion and alteration at the DNA/Cellular level. That’s what cancer is, but that doesn’t make anyone feel very good. To say we are all in this together fighting The Beast that is Cancer somehow makes it more tangible.
I wonder what they will make The Beast look like. Will there be kids’ games that let them fight The Beast for points that are then used to ameliorate Uncle Zsigfried’s colon cancer?
It’s just interesting to see the process so clearly unfold. Almost as though it’s a coping mechanism applied to the group dynamic of mass media.
Cartooniverse
… and why did I throw God in there? Because a beast is an animal but The Beast is Evil. Satan. Death.
CNN made a very specific choice in titling when they worded this special just the way they did. They’re playing to hysteria…which is sad, cause I love CNN.
Um. Huh.
That seems to me like an awful lot to deduce from one throwaway headline, but hey. I’ve never been one to stand in the way of a good ol’ fashioned rant. Go for it.
In which God created. I blame him.
Anthropomorphizing cancer and declaring war on it is moronic. HOWEVER:
We’ve already got a War on Drugs, a War on Terror, I think there’s a War on Obesity, and in the past I thought I heard there was a War on Poverty. The press didn’t come up with this, and although it’s sad that they may now be initiating this kind of stupidity without government prompting, it’s not as bad as the fact that somebody came up with this “War On” idea in the first place.
Agreed. It’s the “Beast” thing that kind of caught me by surprise. Yes, there is always a War on something… but the wording took it to a level of (prim)evil that kind of surprised even a media-hardened soul like me.
In other news, Wikipedia has just declared a War on Dope, demanding that we disable the SDMB and retire Unca Cecil so that they can once and for all arise as the new source of irrefutable facts.
