When the chips are down, you can always count on a Bush to . . . well, act like a Bush

"First lady Laura Bush had a skin cancer tumor removed from her right shin in early November but decided it was a private matter and did not reveal it publicly.

"The White House acknowledged the procedure Monday night after Mrs. Bush was noticed with a bandage below her right knee. . . .

"Explaining why the procedure was not disclosed until now, [the First Lady's press secretary Susan] Whitson said, 'This medical procedure was a private matter for Mrs. Bush, but when asked by the media today, we answered the question.'"

--from Terence Hunt's AP report


The first thing to say about Laura Bush's judgment is that . . . well, look what she married.

The second thing to say is that she certainly has a right to privacy in private matters, which certainly include medical ones. (Out of respect for her privacy, in fact, we're not going to pass on the dopey photo of the Band-Aid on Mrs. Bush's shin. Or maybe we just have a little self-respect.)

The third thing to say is that, hey, she didn't lie. She could have said she fell off her mountain bike, or a pretzel went down the wrong way, or something.

But the really important thing to say is that, while it may be only by marriage, our Laura sure is a Bush. (Except for the not-lying part, admittedly. A real Bush would have had no compunction about lying.) When a Bush approaches a decision, the first thing he or she needs to know is:

* What is the absolute most selfish choice I can make?

The second thing he or she needs to know is:

* What choice could I make that would cause the absolute maximum benefit to "my people" (family, friends, cronies, investors), while extracting the maximum price from everybody else--all those other people I don't give a flying fig about?


I apologize for trotting out yet again the classic examples, but what are you going to do as long as the lessons are out there, and apparently still unlearned?


FIRST LADY BETTY FORD--

faced the same "privacy" decision with regard to both her cancer and her substance-abuse problem. Maybe she only went public because she knew people would find out anyway; maybe she understood how much good she could do by offering herself as an example of someone seeking help.

Either way, it's impossible to even guess how many lives were improved or saved by her going on the record, and thereby injecting into the popular consciousness the ideas that both of these (very different) afflictions are:

* things that can be thought about (for people in denial who don't believe they can even do that),

* are things that can be talked about (it still astonishes me that even cancer is something that many people feel ashamed about, but this is clearly the case),

* and above all are things that happen to many people, including famous ones, and are things for which it is possible to seek help.


PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN--

apparently because of the same vanity that (admittedly less damagingly) caused him to lie repeatedly about not coloring his hair--refused to wear a hearing aid, no matter how advanced his hearing difficulties became. Of course to him it may not have been much more than a minor inconvenience, since after all he mostly didn't give a damn what anyone except his Nancy said, and in any case he had plenty of people to make sure he found out about anything he actually needed to know.

However, in the process, he did everything in his power to doom the large number of people with treatable or assistable hearing problems to permanent, and almost always progressive, impairment. Mr. Macho sent the message that--

• hearing loss is something to be ashamed of,

• and only pussies do anything about it--you sure wouldn't catch a real man wearing a hearing aid.


We all get to make a certain number of actual choices in life. One of these people became, by chance or choice, a genuine hero. The other was just plain worthless pondscum, through and through.

The AP report on Mrs. Bush's skin cancer notes:

More than 1 million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancers are diagnosed annually, according to the American Cancer Society, which says that most but not all of these forms of skin cancer are highly curable.

As I understand it, early detection is especially important in treating skin cancers, meaning that there is an extreme urgency to patients' seeking help. In addition, the figure of 1 million cases "diagnosed" leaves open the number of cases that aren't diagnosed--for example, among people who think it's such a "private matter" that they don't even reach out for help. (That's one problem Bushes don't have. They expect help always to be offered, but if and when it isn't, they have no problem demanding it.)

Because the First Lady was "outed" as a skin-cancer victim, she actually gets a chance to do some small good in this life, no thanks to her own judgment. It's fascinating to me how, given the choice, Bushes always seem to pull the lever in the "pondscum" column.