After a weekend filled with Super Bowl hoopla, snow shoveling for some, and another GOP primary contest - the Nevada caucus, which Mr. Romney won handily - America is once again returning to business this morning.
Sadly, there's still a bit of stuff to clean up from last week.
In the middle of the latest gaffe from Mitt Romney, and the preparation for the big Super Bowl game, the Susan G. Komen Foundation made a major mistake pulling funding from Planned Parenthood, which we initially focused on last week. Since our initial whack at the story, two things have changed.
The first major change was that the Komen Foundation partially stepped back from its initial strike at Planned Parenthood on Friday, after the Foundation's actions raised the hackles of millions of people. Upon further review, Komen's claim that they're returning funding to Planned Parenthood appears to be more spin than a real retraction. We're not entirely surprised their so-called advisors got them into this mess - but deciding to pull the funding isn't the main reason for our anger at Komen.
The second major change since last Wednesday was that most of our media colleagues missed the real story in the Planned Parenthood/Komen battle. They got caught up in the complicated secondary topics and didn't really address the real problem with Komen's actions - which we will.
We understand the subjects of abortion, birth control, cancer, and religion are individually complicated topics that raise the ire of many Americans - let alone when any or all of those topics cross paths.
Just on the issue of abortion, there are far more than just two sides. For example, we know of no one who is truly pro-abortion - meaning that they think Americans should have more abortions. We do know individuals who are anti-choice and anti-abortion - meaning they don't want anyone to be able to have abortions (regardless of the fact that the right to choose what to do with one's own body is settled law). We also know those who are pro-choice yet anti-abortion - meaning they'd prefer no one had an abortion, but if a women makes that choice it should be safe and rare. We even know a few people who are truly pro-life. That means they're against the death penalty, war, euthanasia, and abortion, and are heavily in favor of helping the poor get medical care, including breast cancer screenings. Then there are those who claim they're pro-life, but think war and the death penalty are a-okay. We know a few of them too.
You can see from that confusing array of accurate labels why the soundbite media had such a problem with the Planned Parenthood/Komen story.
The biggest single simple lesson most in the media missed, and that the Komen Foundation reminded us all of, is the same lesson that has been taught in American politics repeatedly: the sin isn't as much the action, as it is the coverup.
If the Komen Foundation had come out and admitted they were giving up their carefully cultivated neutral political facade - that they still wanted to to fight cancer but wanted to do it from an extremist conservative point of view - we still think many millions of people would have been disappointed in them. However, we don't think those Americans would be nearly as angry.
What the Komen Foundation did by trying to hide their true intentions under the proverbial cover of fighting cancer was to betray the trust many millions of people formerly had placed in them. Instead, they raised the hackles of millions more and temporarily made the issue of fighting cancer into a political beach ball.
Organizations that want to fight cancer from a left or right political stance may certainly do so - and we welcome their help from all sides. What organizations should NOT do is attempt to use something as important as fighting cancer as a shield for their organization's political views.
The truth is easy. Cancer is not political. It harms all who are affected by it. The goal of beating cancer is one we can all agree on.
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