Apparently remote diagnosis isn’t simply the domain of GOP Senators:
Although I would never make a medical diagnosis without examining a patient, I feel confident in my observation that George W. Bush is a new kind of bi-polar: the poles being indifference and destructive violence. His indifference to families who lost their sons and daughters in Iraq is now writ large – thanks to Cindy Sheehan and an ever-increasing group of parents who demand that Bush explain the “noble cause” for which their sons and daughters continue to be maimed and killed in Iraq. As Sheehan told the press on August 12, Bush has more time for Republican donors than for talking with bereaved families camped outside his Crawford fortress.
Via Ezra Klein, who also notes Arianna slapping around Wonkette.
Brad R.
On the other hand, Justin Frank is just a crank psychiatrist, while Bill Frist is the Senate majority leader.
neil
So “The Left’s Bill Frist” is some guy with a blog, and “The Right’s Bill Frist” is the Senate Majority Leader. “The Left’s Bill Frist” wrote a blog post, and “The Right’s Bill Frist” wrote an unconstitutional law and appeared on Justice Sunday.
What it that Jim Henley was saying a little bit ago…
neil
Although that said, there have been a lot of cranks printing public diagnoses of George W. Bush over the last 5 years, and I don’t meant to excuse them, or those on the left who point to these articles as if they mean anything. I suppose the same was probably done to Clinton, and Dr. Krauthammer offered his professional opinion of the psychiatric maladies of most of the Democratic field last year, but still.
For what it’s worth, Mr. Frank seemed to make it pretty clear that he was speaking in a meaningless psychiatric metaphor, compared to some of the aforementioned examples I have seen. But it was still a stupid and inappropriate metaphor.
Blue Neponset
They would both have their medical licenses suspended if it were up to me, but I don’t think it is accurate for you to equate what a Lefty Blogger does on a Lefty Blog to what the Senate Majority Leader does on the Senate floor.
Horshu
Is this even a medical diagnosis? Frist explicitly said that based on his viewing of a video he believes an existing medical diagnosis of a very real and very serious condition to be incorrect. And he used his credentials as a surgeon to support that.
This guy seems to merely be using “bi-polar” as a play on words to mean “insensitive asshole”. The guy is a doctor, but he is not structuring his submission as a true medical diagnosis in the manner as Frist. Hardly sounds like equivalency between the two approaches.
Blue Neponset
Horshu,
I think any doctor should refrain from using a hypothetical diagnosis as a writing technique. Especially when that Doctor is speaking about a specific person.
Also, bi-polar disorder is a real and painful thing. IMO, a mental health professional should not make light of mental illness to score political points, ever.
Another Jeff
I went to the Huffington Post the first couple days after it started, but haven’t really been back. Most of the people there, left and right, are nuts (and i say that in the figurative, non-medical sense).
Jim Lampley ruined it for me. I just watched the Hopkins/Taylor fight for the fourth time on HBO on Demand (and every time I watch, it becomes more obvious The Executioner was robbed) and I can’t believe a guy that can call a fight as brilliantly as he can could be so batshit crazy away from the ring.
As far as the remote diagnosis thing goes, I think a comparison between Krauthammer and Frank is a better comparison than Frist and Frank, since Frist was so far out of line it’s beyond compreshension (as much as it pains me to agree with the lefties above).
And yes, i do realize that you weren’t equating the two by simply saying it’s not just the domain of GOP Senators.
Yet another Jeff
My opinion of Ezra just went up a few notches. Especially with the point about how the Newsweek article previously mentioned totally refutes that claim. Exra is an honestly intellectual liberal
Confederate Yankee
A pop diagnosis is unethical, according to the American Psychiatric Association Code of Ethics.
I think Frank should lose his license for this false diagnosis, as he should fo rhis book about Bush, but I doubt that the APA is ethical enough to go after him for it.
Jim Caputo
You know, anyone, and I mean ANYONE can have a blog. Even I could start one tomorrow if I so wished. And I’d be free to say anything I’d want on my blog, on MY blog, get it…MY BLOG. And my opinion would be representative of how many people? One. Me. Because it’s MY BLOG. So if I say something stupid, not well thought out, or even treasonous, it wouldn’t be reflective of anyone who’s a member of the same political party as I; it would only be representative of me. Because it’s MY BLOG.
When Bill Frist stands on the floor of the United States Senate chamber of makes a diagnosis, he’s not just representing himself. Frist is representing the entire state of Tennessee. The ENTIRE STATE OF TENNESSEE…get it?
See the difference? Someone says something stupid on a blog it’s representative of the person writing it, someone says something stupid on the Senate floor, they’re representing much much more.
John, how did that simple point escape you?
Shygetz
Medical diagnosis? You’ve got to be kidding me! That was clearly a poor attempt at wit, not a psychiatric diagnosis. You must really be grasping for straws to trot this crap out.
yet another jeff
The Newsweek article refuted what, Bush’s indifference? And did you just start using that name?
Comments are confusing…are people actually believing that this bipolar thing is a diagnosis?
Horshu
Blue Neponset: So on that same notion, do you think it is inappropriate to take the very serious illness of cancer, and say that someone or something is a “cancer upon society”? How about saying that someone has a pimple that “looks like a tumor”, taking it to more of a level of hyperbolic humor? Where does one draw the line?
aaron
Bi-polar??? Does that mean he’ll stand by while both poles melt due to greenhouse gases? ok…dumb joke…..I admit it.
jg
No he didn’t. He was trying to score political points and found a disgusting way to do it. No way any REAL doctor would make a diagnosis watching home videos of a patient. A heart doctor certainly shouldn’t override the opinions of doctors who specialize in her condition, after watching a video tape.
Caroline
It’s the fundamentalism=everything is equivalent. A Senator making a diagnonsis from a video tape is somehow the same as someone making a diagnosis on a blog.
Pathetic.
docG
John Cole – I diagnose you as tired. My prescription – no more blogging until you get at least 8 consecutive hours of sleep.
Helpfully,
Breeze
So then, was there a post back in the spring about “the right’s Bill Frist” and his little bout of “remote diagnosis”?
Horshu
jg: Yes he did. And he is a REAL doctor, as he has a medical degree and is licensed to practice medicine. AND he was also doing it to score political points, as you say. I personally think the AMA should have some discussions with him regarding his license, as what he did was wrong, but what he did was broadcast all over the news and is publically viewable.
And regarding making fun of bi-polar disorders, I personally know multiple people who have poked fun at their own condition as well as laughed WITH those who did the same in the spirit of light-heartedness. Some may think this issue or that can’t be made light of, but others do not. A lot depends on the context and the spirit, but there is no absolute authority on what is and is not allowable as a target of humor and/or derision. Reference: “The Aristocrats”
rudgrl
have we collectively lost our sense of humor? If you read the entire article it is obviously a parody of Frist’s soapbox stand. Sadly it was neither well done or particularly humurous. If you want real funny, did anyone catch Bush 43 last night?
“I applaud the heroic efforts of Iraqi negotiators and appreciate their work to resolve remaining issues through continued negotiation and dialogue. Their efforts are a tribute to democracy and an example that difficult problems can be solved peacefully through debate, negotiation, and compromise.”
“…difficult problems can be solved peacefully…” He, he, he, stop it George I’m dying over here.
Zifnab
Man. It’s just like the Left to throw shit back in your face after you’ve already pooped it out. “Cattering to Cindy Sheehan isn’t as media whorable as Terri Shavio.” “Dick Durban’s nazi remarks aren’t nearly as bad as Dobeson’s or Santorum’s.” Bitch bitch. Moan moan. When will the Left just admit that Republican’s are rubber and Democrats are glue. Everything you say bounces off of them and sticks to you. Period. No crossouts. No takebacks.
Yet another Jeff
Sorry, didn’t realize the name was already taken. I’ll change it to something else
And yes it refuted Bush’s indifference
Blue Neponset
If Dr. Frank wants to write a column about how much of an a-hole he things Dubya is I say more power to him. He just shouldn’t pretend he is speaking as a doctor when he does it.
Steve
I’m not sure if everyone realizes that Justin Frank has written an entire book purporting to psychoanalyze the President.
yet another jeff
heh…well…after jeff, and “another jeff” is seemed like the natural progression for a name. How about “another jeff after yet another jeff”? Too long?
Seemed more like a fawning than a refuting, but there’s quite a bit of beholder-eye interpretation there.
mac Buckets
Didn’t the liberals just tell us YESTERDAY on this site that Democratic Senators and the Party Chair’s over-the-top rhetoric was OK, because Bill O’Reilly called Democrats “traitors?” So obviously, you guys shouldn’t have a problem equating Frist with a lefty blogger! It’s all the same, right?
Pick a whine and go with it, guys.
Steve
Please identify which actual speaker you have in mind when you lump us all together as “the liberals.” Only Ward Churchill has the right to speak for the entire Left.
mac Buckets
LOL. You’re right — I should be more specific.
Here’s that discussion from Sunday where Darrell brings up Al Gore calling conservatives Nazi “Brownshirts,” and some other over-the-top rhetoric by elected Democrats (“chickenhawk,” “liar,” “Bush knew about 9/11”), and Otto Man and others excuse it with an “O’Reilly and Coulter called us traitors!” Nash then pulls a quote from some nobody writing for NJgop.com that kinda says Democrats are like past traitors. Many of the leftwing regulars joined in on the bash-Darrell chorus.
So Sunday, the lefties were saying that rightwing writers were legit counterparts of elected Democrat lawmakers and a former VP. Now today, it’s the exact opposite. Oh, but it’s different, because now they are defending leftwing writers. I see…
Could we just keep the blatant hypocrisy to a minimum?
neil
Thank you, Steve, I was actually referring to that book in my post but couldn’t remember what it was called or who had written it. Too bad it’s the same guy. I take back what I said about metaphors.
BinkyBoy
wow, Buckets is on an interesting roll.
Is there a web page that you use to produce random word output with no discernable goal?
Parody, get it? It was a P-A-R-O-D-Y.
Anyone familiar with bi-polar wouldn’t make it between indifferent and destructive. Its pretty obvious it was meant as humor. Something you seem to be severely lacking.
jg
Never said he wasn’t a doctor. I said he wasn’t being a doctor when he ‘diagnosed’ Schiavo. He was being a political hack.
Otto Man
Um, no.
Nash made a comment about right-wing people calling those on the left traitors. Darrell then burst in claiming that no Republicans had ever called the left traitors. I then said, well, Nash claimed “right-wing” people had used the term and, in case you doubt that, here are some examples. (My post at 3:44pm.)
I never once in that thread excused the use of terms like “brownshirt” or “Nazi” or anything like that. And to suggest otherwise is an outright lie.
If you’d like to “keep the blatant hypocrisy to a minimum,” mac, you might start by presenting our arguments honestly.
KC
I saw something on capitol hill blue about the President losing his temper, going off the handle, etc. For some reason I can’t get to the site right now, but a link to the story is here. Maybe there’s a lot of this stuff going around right now or something.
mac Buckets
You aren’t real keen at getting points, Binky. It has nothing to do with whether it was parody or not. My post was a response to the first two posters (and a few others here) that have made the point that Justin Frank is just a writer while Frist is a Senator, so how can John equate the two?
Like this:
So I pointed out that a couple days ago, the leftwingers here were doing the same as John — responding to outrageous comments made by elected Democrats with those of rightwing writers, and equating the effect of the two.
BinkyBoy
Were the right wing writers attempting to parody an outragious example or were they just being their a-hole selves? I guess I missed out on that discussion, though.
jg
I hope to God that isn’t true. A lot of this seems like hopeful lefty shit, ‘the presidents gone mad!!!!’, but I can’t help remembering all I’ve read about sons of prominent leaders turning out to be a bit insane. Something about getting what you want all your life leading to s superiority complex or something. As an example Uday and Qusay Hussein, or Kim Il Jong. Obviously I’m not making a direct comparison between Bush and the insanity triplets just pointing out a concern.
I may have worded it wrong so to clarify I’m concerned with the health of the president, in this post. Not trying to bash him.
mac Buckets
I see. As long as we are agreed that there aren’t any Republican Congresspeople who speak as slanderously as the Democrat Congresspeople. Sorry if I mischaracterized.
Darrell should’ve reminded you guys of the difference between a Professional Blowhard saying something outrageous and an Elected Politician saying something outrageous, though.
Otto Man: “But to pretend that the right is a collection of angels beset by these mean spirited liberals who will make Bill o’Reilly cry and Sean Hannity clutch his hanky to his chest, well, that’s just pathetic.”
“They’re no angels, either” is the oldest excuse for acting badly towards someone, even if you didn’t intend it that way. It’s not exactly a denunciation of Gore’s Nazi brownshirt slander, is it?
Otto Man
Jesus Christ, Mac.
Now that I’ve clearly stated that — and I hope it’s specific enough for your liking, with just the right grammar and inflection — could you do me a favor and stop trying to read my mind? Because you’re just as good at reading my mind as Michelle Malkin is at reading Casey Sheehan’s.
I’m sorry if I didn’t originally bend our conversation to what you wanted to talk about a week later. My bad.
mac Buckets
Try harder next time. Thanks in advance.
Otto Man
Man, I remember when it was the left that was full of the touchy-feely crowd and the right was full of Real Men who didn’t care about feelings or emotion. When exactly did the right turn into the Crusade Against Mean Names?
And, Mac, I’m still waiting for your condemnation of Dick Cheney’s “Fuck You” to Pat Leahy and George Bush’s “Asshole” comment to Adam Clymer. How dare you not denounce these evil words from the leaders of your party?
Boy, this is fun. And much easier than thinking.
DougJ
I STILL don’t see what the big problem with Frist’s diagnosis of Terri Schiavo was. Frist was an eminent surgeon — he had probably diagnosed literally hundreds of similar cases before. And why is his diagnosis ridiculed while the diagnoses of the other doctors in this case are not? Is it just because he is a senator? Is it just because so many medically ignorant librul commentators didn’t like his diagnosis (because it undermined their case for state-sponsored murder)?
jg
Its because he diagnosed her from looking at home videos the Schindlers made. That makes you a political hack.
If he had gone to florida, examined her personally, read her charts, and had he actually been a brain damage specialist there wouldn’t be a problem. He’s not he’s a former heart surgeon who’s setting up a run for president by aligning himself with the conservative base.
You seem pretty quick to ferret out a political ploy when the left does it.
Otto Man
Because Frist diagnosed her from a short videotape provided by her parents, while the other doctors actually examined her in person. Because Frist had a short bit of video to peruse, and the other doctors spent longer periods with her. Because Frist is a cardiologist, and the other doctors were neurosurgeons with a speciality in Schiavo’s circumstances. And because the autopsy proved that Frist was wrong, and the other doctors were right.
Or it could just be the bias of those crazy libruls.
DougJ
At least Frist was looking at video from when she WAS STILL ALIVE. The doctors who concluded that she was brain dead didn’t even look at her until after she died. Of course, a dead person is going to seem brain dead. That’s a tautology.
Defense Guy
DougJ
I would bet we were on the same side of the Schiavo issue, but a diagnosis based on a video tape is just bad medicine. Just isn’t any way around it.
Otto Man
I’m sorry, but do you really think that Bill Frist was the first doctor to examine Terri Schiavo in the fifteen years between her accident and her death?
The “other doctors” we’re talking about here are the many ones who treated her long before this became a political circus, the many ones who based their diagnoses on their professional opinion and not their presidential ambition.
docG
I used to think you were well meaning, but somewhat uninformed. Now I think you are just stupid. From a book called a dictionary:
au·top·sy n. pl. au·top·sies
Examination of a cadaver to determine or confirm the cause of death. Also called necropsy, postmortem, postmortem examination.
ppGaz
From the material available here, I would say that Frank is a bullshit artist. I am more than a little familiar with the care and feeding of bipolar disorder thanks to a family situation which shall remain undescribed further, but I assure you, Frank’s use of the phrase “new kind of bipolar” is complete and utter bullshit. Bipolar disorder is a profound and life threatening illness. George Bush is just an asshole. Asshole is not a DSM-IV recognized disorder, to my knowledge.
jg
Maybe Bush isn’t just an asshole. This Frank guy may be partisan but he also could be on to something. Maybe there is a little mental illness there.
I’d hate to dismiss this guy just because he leans left.
ppGaz
You know, this may be true, I don’t know. I have lived with an abusive alky in the house, and it’s not easy for me to be objective about that.
However the suggestion is not new, I saw it years ago. And I don’t know of any new evidence to support it.
I have as little regard for Bush as anyone, I reckon, but I am not persuaded by, or interested in, dimestore psychoanalysis. I say, judge his actions, on their merits. Period.
mac Buckets
Is this what you really think this discussion is about? Bad language? Unbelievable. But I’ll play along for one point.
Do you really want to compare the Manly Factor of Cheney’s face-to-face “Go f*uck yourself” right in the object’s grill with Fat Albert Gore’s speech to a bunch of Fellow Travelers calling conservatives Nazi “brownshirts,” when there wasn’t a conservative in the whole building? Yeah, what a man. There’s no way he would’ve said anything straight to a conservative’s (Cheney’s, for instance) face or he’d have been on his lard ass, and you and every other wannabe-man know it full well.
The larger point is that your comparison could not be less apt. You want to compare a private, off-the-record “Go f*uck yourself” and a private, off-the-record “asshole” to a speech publicly calling conservatives Nazis or Wacko McKinney saying on the floor of the House that Bush knew about 9/11?
Are you sure you want to go on record as saying you don’t see a difference?
DougJ
Man, you’re right. That rocked when Big Time told Pat Leahy to “Go f*ck yourself”. And it was pretty cool when Bush called Clymer an a**hole too. In that case, truthfully, I’m sure Clymer was flattered since reporters like to be thought of as tough.
I don’t know why it is, but somehow it seems tough and manly when conservatives drop f-bombs yet it seems crude and tacky when libruls do it. I think it must be that they do so in different contexts.
DougJ
On the other hand, it is pretty hard to imagine that if Al Gore told Dick Cheney to eff off that Cheney would actually deck him. It’s not the WWF. I can’t remember the last time a politician decked another politician. And I’m not sure it would really send our children the right message.
Nonetheless, I’m with you that Cheney’s f-bomb was more manly than anything Al Gore has ever done.
mac Buckets
Well, duh. You did see my name attached to the post, right? (backslash:cocky)
Liberals are, by and large, against being tough and manly. If Dean or Gore would privately talk crazy in a Conservative’s mug, rather than to their panting bootlicks, I’d have a bit of respect for them. Of course, they’d never do it.
mac Buckets
It should be like in Japan. Free-for-alls on a monthly basis! I’d even watch C-Span!
Gore did gain 60 lbs. and grow a Grizzly Adams beard after he lost in 2000. That was as manly as he gets, but manly in an insane, Unabomber way.
DougJ
Well, it’s pretty easy for me to imagine Chuck Schumer telling a Republican to screw off. And I hate Chuck Schumer. I’m not sure we want to be party of telling people to eff off.
jg
LOL
No they’re not. People are people, don’t try to act like one political idealogy is tougher than the other.
As Harry Allen, the media assassin once said, ‘don’t believe the hype’.
jg
I’m pretty sure it was right before the first Civil War.
Barbar
Sorry if I’m walking in an inside joke, but DougJ is a parody poster, and everyone knows that, right? Right?
DougJ
I’m not a parody poster, but I was joking a little there about the whole swearing and fighting thing mac was bringing up. I think mac was probably joking too there (right?).
ppGaz
“Your president is not a crook.” — R. Nixon
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
— W. Clinton
“I’m not a parody poster.” — DougJ
Darrell
ppgaz shoots… he scores!!