Scary as the right-wing propaganda masters can be, periodically they remind us that they're trapped inside their own delusional echo chamber

It would appear that the last thing the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation should have been doing was encouraging public scrutiny.

by Ken

The Right-Wing Noise Machine has shown itself so effective at hoodwinking and hornswoggling large swaths of a gullible American populace that I have considerable respect for the shrewdness of its well-funded chief manipulators. Even so, every now and then we get striking reminders of the extent to which these people are trapped inside their own echo chamber, deluding themselves into thinking that the crackpot ravings they foment actually represent the "thinking" of anyone outside their sphere of influence.

Obviously I'm thinking partly of the debacle of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure's announced defunding of Planned Parenthood. (And yes, I'm imagining that a debacle is how it's by now seen by even the doughtiest ultra-right-wing culture warriors. But I'm also thinking of the delusional crusade launched by a figmentary offshoot of the hate-mongering American Family Association. Here's the start of Reuters' report yesterday, "JC Penney stands by Ellen DeGeneres as spokeswoman":

LOS ANGELES -- J.C. Penney Co Inc said on Friday it fully backs its partnership with chat show host Ellen DeGeneres after a conservative group urged the retailer to reconsider hiring DeGeneres as a spokeswoman because she is a lesbian.

A spokeswoman for the retailer declined further comment on the issue but did say in an e-mail to Reuters, "jcpenney stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres" and added that its announcement of the agreement last week sums up the company's view of the popular TV personality.

In that statement on January 25, company president Michael Francis called DeGeneres "one of the most fun and vibrant people in entertainment today, with great warmth and a down-to-earth attitude."

Penney's decision to hire DeGeneres spurred conservative group One Million Moms, a division of the American Family Association, to slam the company for not being "neutral in the culture war."

In all likelihood, of course the "million" moms are probably more like five women, who are probably making money off the deal, and of whom maybe two or three are actually moms, of children either already in therapy or in desperate need thereof. What intrigues me, though, is that these people are so imprisoned inside their own delusionality that they think they can mobilize public outrage over Penney's consorting with that filthy degenerate lesbo Ellen.

Ellen???


Do they truly not understand that people -- and I don't mean pointy-headed liberal elites, but plain ordinary non-insane Americans -- love Ellen, and they just don't care about her sexual preference? She's, you know, Ellen. There are still many ways in which an indifferent American public can be enlisted in support of maintaining employment, housing, and other sorts of discrimination against LGBT Americans, but I don't think there's anyplace except inside the loony right-wing echo chamber where people can be whipped into a frenzy over that dangerous radical Ellen.

SIMILARLY, THE LOONS THOUGHT AMERICANS WOULD SIT
BY AS RACE TO THE CURE MUGGED PLANNED PARENTHOOD

It was kind of amusing that the early accounts of the furor pointedly attributed to "bloggers" and presumably ideologically far-left radicals. In reality, while the online response was swift, that's because online is where you get the first response. All indications are that the broad expanse of Americans are pretty horrified. Which brings me to my point.

Evidently the right-wing cabal of advisers who steered Race for the Cure founder Nancy Brinker (who named the foundation for her late sister, a breast-cancer victim) thought Planned Parenthood was a sitting duck. And perhaps not without some reason. After all, the House crusade against Planned Parenthood spearheaded by Florida crackpot Rep. Cliff Stearns hasn't been laughed off of Capitol Hill, as it should have been. But then, the crackpot-Republican-controlled House has in fact become part of the echo chamber. The apparent rule is that no GOP member may utter a single word that wouldn't qualify him/her for immediate indictment or institutionalization in a minimally sane world.

You truly had to wonder how seriously out of touch with reality when Brinker responded to the early pushback by claiming that the response her foundation was receiving to its Planned Parenthood hit were overwhelmingly positive. I don't see that this can possibly be anything but a figment of her imagination, no doubt prompted by the cosmically monstrous ultra-right-wing sociopath she anointed as Komen's demented-right-wing policy czar, Karen Handel. As Howie pointed out in a post yesterday, this outburst of right-wing hatchetry from Race to the Cure is less an aberration than an established pattern.

It's perhaps just another symptom of being trapped in their own echo chamber, taking counsel from vermin like former G. W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer -- thanks to our friend Bil for calling attention to the ThinkProgress report "Ari Fleischer Secretly Involved In Komen Strategy On Planned Parenthood" in his chockful-of-information comment on my Wednesday post, "For people who like to pretend they're "pro-life," it's amazing how much death they manage to spread."

I was especially grateful to Bil for bringing up an incredibly important point that I regretted choosing not to get into: the fact that the Komen foundation spends 17 percent of its haul on its stated charitable mission -- an appalling figure, and one that every potential donor to Race for the Cure needs to be aware of. Bil (who notes that he has two breast-cancer survivors in his family) also called attention, in an e-mail, to the Komen foundation's also-announced cutoff of funding for stem-cell research: "I actually find the quiet dump of over $12 mil in stem cel research THIS YEAR to first rate research hospitals MUCH more offensive as regards finding a cure for breast cancer, their sworn mission to a dead sister."

Again, the delusionality of Nancy Brinker and the echo-chamber dwellers she listens to is evidenced by the huge outpouring of hostile attention unleashed in the wake of its bombshell -- much of it based on Race to the Cure's past performance, not this particular stroke of stupidity. I noted Marcy Wheeler's terrific post, which included this:

[A] a breast cancer survivor, I learned to hate the pink ribbons purportedly serving my interests.

It may have been when Eureka developed an ad campaign around the pink ribbon. I was less than thrilled that Eureka tried to use my cancer as a reason to sell women more vacuum cleaners along with their stale gender stereotypes.

But I think the moment when I most realized that the cancer industry was about turning breast cancer patients into profit centers came when I went to a Komen-funded Young Survival Coalition conference. The organization itself–focused on breast cancer resources for those diagnosed under the age of 40–was a godsend. But the conference insisted on calling us patients and survivors “customers.”

Customers, I thought (as I got the swag bag full of drug marketing gimmicks). I’m a customer because I have cancer?

Though we conference attendees had our revenge at the session sponsored by Genentech, the maker of the anti-nausea drug Kytril. As the speaker thanked “Genentech, maker of Kytril,” someone yelled out “it doesn’t work.” And another. Then me. And another. And another. It took getting a bunch of us in a room together to compare notes and learn that a bunch of us found the $50/pill medicine to be less effective than older drugs.

You have to be a shrewd customer to survive cancer without getting fleeced.

From everything we're learning about the workings of Race for the Cure, the last thing those people should have been encouraging is public scrutiny. But this is a danger you face when you find yourself listening to nothing but the wildly overamplified voices of people as crazed as you are.

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