The Subtle Racism of the Left.
by Robert Jay March
Yesterday, a MarchReport.com reader from Lyndhurst, New Jersey sent me a copy of a letter from an Emergency Room Doctor that someone had found on the internet and passed along to him. I thought it was well worth reading, and wrote back, asking for the original source of the letter, so that MarchReport.com could link to it. As it turns out, he did not know the source, and, my curiosity piqued, that sent me on a Google-quest to find it. The original posting is six months old, and MarchReport.com being a current news site, I normally would not have linked to it now; however, Google being Google, the search returned 20,300 results [with the usual Google-caveat on the last page (p. 76): "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 757 already displayed."]
As I began to read through the resulting links, it became apparent that this could be used as an object lesson for those who have been on the receiving-end of abuse from those who think that anyone to the right of Chairman Mao or Ernesto "Che" Guevara must be a racist, must live in fear of "the other," and must be re-educated, ideally with a blunt instrument.
The article was posted on Snopes, a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center, the very bastion of re-education and guardian of the public's zeitgeist.
The post was entitled "Why Pay for the Care of the Careless?" and consisted of a Letter to the Editor of the Gannett-owned Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger, written by Starner Jones, M.D., and published in the August 23, 2009 issue. It reads as follows:
"Dear Sirs:
"During my last night's shift in the E.R., I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
"And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture -- a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me." Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
"Don't you agree?"
The good doctor's simple statement of his philosophy, published in a small paper with a daily circulation of only 70,000 (MarchReport.com's Daily Alert Newsletter has a circulation of nearly quadruple that) despite having won a Pulitzer in 1983, would have been forgotten in a day or two and had the ignominious fate of most such Letters to the Editor dropped on them (the bird-cage prize) were it not for the ever-vigilant eyes of Those Who Must Be Obeyed: The Looney Left (apologies to John Mortimer, QC and his creation, Horace Rumpole).
In the September 6, 2009 issue of the Clarion Ledger, one Jennifer Sigrest of the aptly-named Clinton, Mississippi wrote a response to Dr. Jones' letter, wherein she said, "This kind of personal attack is nothing new with the hateful rhetoric of late. But it's a real slippery slope when one questions whether another human merits support for health care because of appearances and choices. There are a lot of folks in this state who make less-than-perfect choices about finances and health. We are the poorest, fattest state, after all." (Read her entire letter at Snopes, and you'll understand why I feel Clinton is aptly-named.)
O.K., fine: she disagrees with Dr. Jones' simple philosophy, and felt strongly enough to write a rebuttal. MarchReport.com agrees with the good doctor and disagrees with her, but freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is an absolute guarantee: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It is that very guarantee that, apparently, sent the left lunging for their Absolut.
Vitals.com is a web-site that posts reviews of Doctors. They describe themselves as "Your source for comprehensive medical information on 720,000 doctors nationwide." Have a look at their review page of Dr. Jones. The reviews of him as a Doctor are very positive. A week ago, a "critique" was posted about him (not about his skills as a physician; it's about his Letter to the Editor) by a "reviewer" who signed himself as William Utter. We reproduce it here, misspellings, bad grammar, and all: "YOUR WRONG. It's ppl like you are the reasion we don't have health for everyone in this country. If ppl like you would stop having babies this country would be better off!"
Another "reviewer" who signed his post with the non-de-plume "health care for all" and entitled his post "Sad Selfish Bigot" said this: "All this doctor can see is the color of his patient and the amount of reimbursement he is going to receive. Would he be as troubled by the gold tooth and tattoo if they were on an 80 year old white patient? I think not."
These, on a site for medical reviews: it is not a place for political discussions -- for any "reasion."
Wading more deeply into my Google-results, I found this on, of all places, a Real Estate Blog called ActiveRain: it's a post entitled "Dr. Starner Jones, MD -- Racist of the Week." The author of the post starts by saying, "Now some of you will immediately see that this guy has a real hatred for black people and get angry. Others -- and I can almost predict who the "others" will be -- will think this doctor really has it going on. A real genius."
Say what? Exactly where in Dr. Jones letter is it stated, or even implied, that the patient was Black? NO WHERE! I remember a book store cashier who fit the description of Dr. Jones' patient to a "Tee," and he was White. When I lived in New York City, prior to my disability, I saw people that fit this description on the subway every day -- of all races.
Lefty (who signed her post "The Arizona Home Loan Lady," but that's a bit of a mouthful) continued: "He makes it very clear that he is talking about a black person in the first paragraph. And just to make sure we get the point, he even throws in "R&B" music, just to hammer it home. He could have left out the gold tooth thing. But he paints us a real nice picture, doesn't he? I'm sure all of his black patients are like this. Every single one of them has gold teeth and an R&B ringtone...I'm sure." She goes on to say, "And he is sarcastic about doing his job for a black person, when he writes "I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a gold tooth ..."
My father had two gold teeth, and he was a mix of Polish, Ukranian, and Mongolian -- and had curly blond hair to boot. "R&B music"? One of my favorite tunes is "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
BACK ISSUE: This is the March Report issue for Monday, April 5, 2010. To access today's issue, click HERE
Stories in Today's Issue
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CELEBRITY PAGES
, enlightens James Michael Tyler about the Emerald Isle's pubs and churches, U2's Bono, and the magic of Irish song.
, that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq badly damaged the Bush administration's credibility and led to dwindling public support for the war.
, wherein Singleton claims that "White teachers, and minority teachers who have been 'co-opted into the white power structure' are racist by virtue of not understanding the 'special ways that blacks and Hispanics communicate.'" 
