Michael, Bernie, and Barry

We lost two rock stars in June. They were stellar forces who had dominated their spheres of influence for decades, two beloved men whose names would brighten a room even if the stars themselves were parsecs away. I’m talking, of course, about Michael Jackson and Bernie Madoff. Both had sparks of genius; both were brought down by the people closest to them. Michael apparently died at the hands of his physician; Bernie was turned in by his sons.

People will howl at this comparison but it stands. Both men dominated their industries; both committed unspeakable acts against the innocent. Both fooled massive numbers of people and both committed crimes that were enabled by guardians – parents and financial advisers who refused to use common sense. Their crimes were obvious but their admirers were blinded by starshine. In Michaels’s case, many still are.

How can this be? Why is Jackson still admired while Madoff is viewed with universal contempt? The answer is clear: people believe what they want to believe.

Bernie’s fans were seduced by his reliable returns on investments. When it was shown that his numbers had to be false, that he was obviously a scam artist, investors and government officials all looked away. Michael’s admirers were also seduced - by his brilliant performances. His music gave them pleasure, pleasure is good, so he had to be good. When stories surfaced about his attraction to young boys, when $20 million payoffs became common knowledge, when he was investigated by public officials and private detectives and reporters from across the world and not one was able to defend him, fans ignored the obvious and embraced transparent cover stories put out by flacks. Bernie and Michael lived in a world full of adoring fans who refused to accept the truth.

The parallels ended when the truth came out. Jackson denied the obvious and that was good enough. When he went on TV and vigorously defended his right to sleep in a bed with other people’s children, his admirers applauded him. Or they didn’t care, as long as he kept entertaining them. By contrast, Madoff never had a chance. When the charges against him became public, people believed them immediately. With no proof. Everyone in the country instantly hated him including the 99% of the population that had never heard of him. Why the difference?

Because in our society, a child’s loss of innocence ranks below an adult’s loss of money.

The contrast between the two men is startling: Madoff’s guilt was never questioned but the myth of Jackson’s innocence will last longer than Bernie’s jail sentence. And these True Believers are not alone.

Remember the Elvis sightings? The stores claiming that the Moon Landings were faked? The conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 - that the CIA was behind it, or the Mossad, or that The Evil George W. Bush could have stopped it but didn’t for his own nefarious purposes? Remember TWA flight 800 that exploded over Long Island Sound, and the conspiracy theorists who believed a Navy surface-to-air missile had shot it down? And don’t forget my favorite: the email that claimed Bill Gates would pay you $243 for every person to whom you forwarded the email.

Every single one of these stories is absurd, yet each has a band of devoted followers. Why? Because misinformed, alienated people gain comfort if they can join A VERY SPECIAL GROUP THAT KNOWS THE TRUTH about some popular subject, preferably a subject that has fooled the masses. Their myths are the very essence of self-delusion.

And the essence of self-delusion leads us to the Birthers. Like Jackson Supporters and Moon Landing Deniers, the Birthers are a misinformed, alienated group who believe They Know The Truth About A Subject That Has Fooled The Masses.

If you haven’t heard of them, Birthers believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is not legally the President of the United States. I am not making this up. They believe that Obama’s claim to have been born in Hawaii is a lie; that no one has seen his Hawaiian birth certificate because he doesn’t have one, and that he was born in Kenya. They also claim that his mother was underage when he was born and that therefore Title 8 Section 1401 of the Constitution does not apply to his birth. Obama is not a US citizen, and so not legally the President of the United States.

After floundering unnoticed for months, they recently put forward a document showing that he was born in Kenya. Not surprisingly, they didn’t work hard to check it. First, it claims to have been issued in Kenya, but Kenya was founded in 1963, two years after Obama was born. Second, the Kenyan “birth certificate” was forged by cutting and pasting false information onto an old Australian birth document. (Click here to see an interview with the poor Aussie whose real birth certificate was used. And third… Oh, why bother?

The Birthers refuse to look further for truth than Fox News. If they did, they would see that the genuine Obama birth certificate, issued in Hawaii, is all over the Internet (click here and here. The Governor of Hawaii (a Republican) says he has seen the original document proving that Obama was born in Hawaii. There is no evidence that Obama’s mother was in Kenya when he was born. The Constitution does apply to her (click here) Finally, to make the entire conspiracy theory just plain funny, Birthers are now busy trying to explain why Mr. and Mrs. Obama put a birth announcement in a local Hawaiian newspaper in August, 1961, soon after the birth. That couple really knew how to plan a conspiracy! Forty years in advance, just in case!

Refuting the Birther claims is easy. The above links above took me about three minutes to find, and I found them while watching a rerun of the World Series of Poker. I’m not kidding. The problem is that the Birthers refuse to look past Fox and the unintentionally hilarious Right Wing web sites full of misinformation and disinformation. If the truth doesn’t interest you, you won’t know it when you see it.

There is no reason to defend Obama from the extreme Right Wing; this is as futile as trying to defend Bush from the extreme Left Wing. Consider this: Obama has been in office for six months and the country is clearly doing better than it was seven months ago. And yet according to the current Right-Wing myths, he is a Secret Muslim, Radical Black Christian, Terrorist Sympathizing, White-Hating, Illegal Alien Nazi-Sympathizing Socialist Who Wants to Raise Our Taxes. Rod Serling could not have made this up.

And this is the Twilight Zone slander that drives a small, angry portion of the Right: the black bastard wants to take our money! In their eyes, Obama is the Black Bernie Madoff. He is a con artist who wants to raise their taxes – to steal from the rich and give to his friends. His friends on welfare. They look at our brilliant young president and see a slick Chicago pimp who has fooled a lot of Liberals. How else could he have ever become president? And did I mention that he is black?

Usually I write light-hearted, personal stories designed to make my friends laugh. But not today. Today I am embarrassed for my country. The Birthers are the same hooligans who have taken to disrupting democratically organized town hall meetings between Congressional representatives and their constituents. Screaming slogans such as “I want my country back!” they shout down the speakers, they shout down fellow citizens who disagree with them, and they physically threaten elected officials who dare to hold liberal positions. They are American Brownshirts, egged on by sociopathic rabblerousers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They hate Obama because he has upset the natural order of things: he is a black man in the White House running more than the kitchen. When they scream that they want their country back, they are asking for a return to a White Christian America.

The American Brownshirts believe they hate Obama because he is a Secret Muslim, Radical Black Whatever. The truth is deeper. They hate him because like Michael Jackson he has stolen their childhood innocence. Worse, they fear that, like Bernie Madoff, he will steal their money. They lived lives protected by the belief that the United States would always be run by White Christians, and then Obama shattered their future with his Black father and his Black wife and his Black friends and his non-Christian name.

And this is why they like to call him by the Anglo-Saxon diminutive “Barry”, the name his white mother and white grandmother used. They want him to be less frightening. It doesn’t work: Barry is their nightmare lurking in a dark Harlem alley.

Are you offended? Watch the footage on the nightly news. Almost every Brownshirt is an angry white person past forty. They look at the new Washington, DC and see Michelle Obama and Eric Holder and Sonya Sotomayor and Steven Chu and Valerie Jarrett and Eric Shinseki and they are frightened to their core. And then they see Hilary Clinton, a woman they have hated since Rush Limbaugh told them to hate her in 1992, and they see nightmares in dark places. Dark Harlem places.

Obama was a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. If he was a white man, the Far Right would grudgingly accept him. They would find things to complain about but they would admit that after eight years of an administration notable only for incompetence and failure, any new president deserved a chance. But not Obama. He fails the skin test. And so they are frightened and angry, and they form bullying mobs that threaten anyone who disagrees with them. Like the admirers of Michael Jackson and Bernie Madoff, the American Brownshirts are enabled by guardians – Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, etc. – who refuse to use common sense.

Should we be frightened by any of this? Not yet. The Birther controversy is winding down; mainstream Republican politicians have begun to distance themselves from this nonsense. (They know they won't get re-elected if they lose 99% of mainstream voters with IQs over 90.) However, be wary. The Birthers/Brownshirters are out there. They are easily manipulated by the Limbaugh crowd, they have a history of angrily acting out their fantasies, and they live next door. Next door to you.

Firing my doctor

Yesterday I fired my doctor. It felt great.

Last July we joined Kaiser. We had heard endless horror stories about Kaiser but ultimately it came down to money. Blue Shield was costing us about $35,000 per year and Kaiser was going to cost $15,000. Maximum. We figured we could always go elsewhere if we had a problem but that will never happen: Kaiser is giving us excellent care. Astonishing care. Coordinated healthcare that is fifty years ahead of the haphazard treatment we received while managing everything ourselves. You know all the magazine articles about the need for computerized medical records? Kaiser has it, and it works.

But this isn’t the story. I asked my primary to refer me to a cardiologist; Sharon and I met with him for about 20 minutes; I told him his advice was bullshit, and then I fired him.

The cardiologist was a Jewish guy, about fifty, who looked like Paul Giamatti except not as pretty. He walked in to the examination room, introduced himself to us, glanced at my file, and said, “What are you doing about your weight?”

Did I mention that Dr. Pretty was fatter than Paul Giamatti? I should have. But anyway, he said, “What are you doing about your weight?” and I immediately took the opportunity to brag. “I’m really happy with my weight. I was very obese for most of my life and passed 300 several times, but about ten years ago I learned how to get my life under control. I lose about 6 or 8 pounds a year, I exercise regularly, I’ve put on a huge amount of muscle, and relative to my age I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.” I thought it was a great story but the Doctor wasn’t impressed.

“Half a pound a month? Do you want to reach your goal weight when you are eighty? What are you going to do about your weight?”

(Me, weakly) “I’m really happy about my weight. I stopped yo-yoing up and down; I’m wearing the same size pants that I wore when I got married...”

Dr. Pretty wasn’t interested in my recent success. “Are you kidding? You are at severe risk of a heart attack and it might kill you. You need to lose it now, in the next few months. And why aren’t you taking aspirin?”

“I took aspirin for about two years after my heart attack but it gave me ulcers. I figured it was a bad trade-off. And if I lose weight too fast I’ll just gain it back.”

“You had a heart attack?” Somehow the Great Cardiologist had missed that detail when he glanced at my file. He looked again. “And it says here that you aren’t taking Plavix either?” What are you going to do to prevent your platelets from clumping together and killing you?”

Sharon drove me to the hospital twice while I was having heart attacks. She saw me code out once and had to watch through a window as they shocked me back to life with a defibrillator. Now, I looked at her and thought she was the one who would need the paddles. She was turning white.

I decided to stay calm – and purposely sound a little academic. “Forgive me, doctor, but I thought that Plavix and aspirin were contraindicated in patients with a history of gastritis.” He dismissed this argument (and me) with a disgusted wave of his hand.

“Why aren’t you taking any blood pressure medicine?”

“Because I don’t need it. My blood pressure is low - my systolic is rarely above 115 and my diastolic is never above 70.”

“Of course you need it!!! You had a heart attack!!” Actually, I’ve had two and both were documented in my file, but apparently he wasn’t a good reader. And trying to sound academic wasn’t working. “And your numbers weren’t that good. The nurse just read 129 over 79.”

Now, I’m not a cardiologist but those are pretty good numbers. A lot of men would sell their left testicle (or maybe their left ventricle) for those numbers. “I parked about a mile from your office and then pushed my wife’s wheelchair from the car to your office. Two minutes later your nurse took my blood pressure. I think those numbers are pretty good…”

“You had a heart attack! You are at severe risk of another and you need to be on a beta blocker and an ace inhibitor!!!!”

“I don’t know if you read my file (the insult drifted over his head) but I’ve had bad results with blood pressure meds. They make my blood pressure drop too low. I’ve seen it drop to 90/50. My pulse goes into the thirties.”

“Are you using the crappy meters they sell at the drugstore? They aren’t accurate. Throw it away.” I wasn’t winning.

“Actually, I’ve tested myself with two meters and three heart rate monitors. They all agree.”

“Then you did it wrong. And why are you taking Zocor? Why aren’t you taking Vitorin or Lipitor?”

And then I understood. He wasn’t an angry bully; he was an angry robot. He gave everyone the same advice, regardless of the patient’s medical history, lifestyle, or needs. He only knew one way to practice cardiology: throw every medicine available at every patient. Lucky for me he had never read Catch-22 or he would tell me to paint my toes with Gentian Violet.

“I don’t take Vitorin and Lipitor because they have side effects. I maintain a healthy diet so I don’t worry about dietary cholesterol.”

“You should. And do you take fish oil?”

“No, fish is one of my largest sources of protein.”

“I want you to go to Costco and pick up a bottle of fish oil supplements. Take two with each meal.” Apparently Dr. Pretty’s limited reading ability was matched by limited listening skills. “And I want you to purchase red yeast rice supplements and take them daily.”

“What?”

“Get it at a health food store. And you need to take an aspirin a day in addition to the Plavix.”

“I’ll bleed so much I’ll become anemic.”

“Get over it. No one has all those side effects. You need these meds or you will be at severe risk of another heart attack.”

Let’s summarize: The gastritis was in my head and he wanted me to take seven new medicines: Plavix, aspirin, fish oil, a superstatin, red rice yeast, a beta blocker, and an ace inhibitor. Seven drugs, including two that are totally unregulated. Apparently he thought he was treating Amy Winehouse. (If he ever did, he would probably tell her to lose weight.)

Dr. Pretty typed my prescriptions as he talked. “You have to lose weight immediately. What are you going to do about it?” He wanted me to go on a crash diet despite the fact that every crash dieter has failed since Adam and Eve threw away their apple and started Atkins. For some dumb reason I stayed with the calm academic voice.

“Every study I’ve ever read indicates that the only way for obese patients to maintain a weight loss is by losing weight very slowly.”

“Your BMI is 39! 39!!! You are morbidly obese!!!”

And now I must digress.

No one knows how much they should weigh. Everyone guesses. And most people want to weigh what they did when they graduated high school. Good luck.

There is only one popular formula to determine how much a person should weigh: the Body Mass Index. The BMI. It was invented in 1850 by a Belgian mathematician named Lambert Adolphe Quetelet, and it should have stayed in the 19th century along with bloodletting and the Theory of the Four Humours. Insurance companies love the BMI because it says that almost everyone is overweight, so most people get rated and pay higher premiums. Everyone else hates it. The BMI is accurate for just one group of patients: short, slightly built, sedentary women over sixty (I’m serious!) For tall, broad, muscular men who perform a lot of cardio exercise, the BMI is ludicrous. I’m 5’9”, I perform a lot of cardio exercise, and like my ancestors I’m built to pull a plow through frozen Russian tundra. Regardless, according to the BMI I should lose 91 pounds. Seriously. I hate the BMI.

Kaiser relies on the BMI heavily even though most docs know it is nonsense. Ask them, and they all say, “It’s the best we’ve got.”

It’s the best we’ve got???? Didn’t doctors once say that about Gentian Violet?

I founded a software house a couple of years ago. We pecialize in wellness. Custom wellness through software. When planning the Company’s product line I decided we should replace the BMI with a modern algorithm, one that accurately predicts a healthy weight for people based on all the pertinent information we could use. The BMI formula considers height and weight only. Our algorithm considers height, weight, frame, age, sex, activity at work, cardio exercise, strength training exercise - 26 variables in all - then predicts a healthy weight zone for a person. Don't weigh more than this much; don't weigh less than that much.

All this sounds like a medical claim but it is not; our disclaimer says it is for entertainment value only. We don’t need the FDA coming after us. But I do think the algorithm is pretty good. It tells me that losing 32 pounds will make me healthier, but losing more will help nothing but my self-image. Somehow, 32 pounds feels right to me. But I digress. Again.

The purpose of the original digression (in addition to copious horn-tooting) was to make a point: I am a bit of an expert on the Body Mass Index. If someone wants to base a medical decision on my BMI, he had better have some backup. Dr. Pretty had none.

“Your BMI is 39! 39!!! You are morbidly obese!!!”

“Doctor, the BMI says I should lose 91 pounds. That’s bullshit.”

And then he shrugged and said what I was waiting to hear: “The BMI is the best we’ve got.”

And I looked at Sharon, and she shook her head, and I fired him. Maybe Amy Winehouse is looking for a new doc.