I rarely write about sports, not because I have no interest but because everyone has an opinion and there is no reason to think my opinion is any better than anyone else’s. However, I would like to comment on tonight's New Orleans Saints-Atlanta Falcons game.
This is the biggest sporting event in New Orleans in years, if not ever. People outside the city have no idea the effort that was required to bring the Superdome back into condition for this game. The Superdome, long a New Orleans landmark, became a mark of shame after Katrina. Bringing it back is no less a monument to the comeback effort than repairing the Pentagon was for Washington, or rebuilding on the World Trade Center site will be for New York. It is the ultimate life-goes-on statement. And New Orleans is immensely proud to make it.
If you want to do something for New Orleans, something that will not cost a cent, watch part of the game tonight. The two Monday night NFL games ESPN has broadcast since taking up Monday Night Football have been the second and third highest rated shows in American cable TV history. (The number one show was a 1993 CNN broadcast of Al Gore and Ross Perot debating NAFTA. Remember that one? I do.)
It would be meaningful if the re-opening of the Superdome set the all-time cable record. And a shame if we placed second to Al Gore.
And enough about the contaminated spinach! We are supposed to be fighting a global war on terrorism and we are afraid of a salad.
Taking the facts in hand, which no one ever really does – in all 25 people have gotten sick from eating spinach. Two have died. In that same period of time, how many people have died of heart disease? Hint: the rate is about 13,000 per week in the U.S. according to 2003 statistics. In fact, at this rate, in the next year alone the average 10 year old child has a 50 times greater chance of dying of heart disease, a 100 times greater chance being murdered, and a 750 times greater chance of dying in an accident.
And yet the average mother, reading all this garbage in the paper, will happily pack all her kids into a car and drive down a two lane highway singing Disney tunes all the way, and then panic when she finds out one of her precious ones ate a leaf of spinach.
We have all lost our minds.
Although I do think a few people will be scared away from raw vegetables with this, my main concern is the large number of fried food addicts who use news like this as justification for their habits. I can hear them now: “You see that? You just can’t win. Eat all that nutritious food like the doctor says, and you die from e. coli. I’ll just stick with what I eat and take my chances.” Here are your chances, pal: 650,000 to 2. That is the ratio of people dying from heart disease versus death-by-spinach this past year.
I thought Anna Pou looked pretty credible in her interview on “60 Minutes” last night. In her first public statement since being accused of euthanizing 4 patients in Memorial Hospital in New Orleans, Dr. Pou did exactly what I predicted she would. She denied everything. And as I said in a previous post, since there were no eyewitnesses to the deaths, just the testimony of people who say they heard her say she was going to do it, it is unlikely Pou will be convicted from the evidence.
The Louisiana State Attorney General Charles Foti said in the piece that the two medications given together to the 4 patients – Versed and Morphine, in all likelihood – guaranteed that the patients would die.
Complete hogwash. Those two medications are given together all the time for outpatient surgical procedures. And I mean in every single hospital in the nation, every single day. If that is all he’s got, Foti should be tried for false arrest and slander.
I know there is testimony from at least 3 people that Dr. Pou said she was going to euthanize patients. There are two problems here. First, if she intended to do this, why would she go around telling people that? Dr. Pou is not stupid. You would have to be a complete idiot to walk around a hospital telling everyone you met that you are about to kill 4 of your patients. I cannot believe she did that.
Secondly, the witnesses in the affidavit also say that Pou repeatedly told them that this was not their responsibility. That seems like the luckiest thing in the world when a person who is accused of a crime just so happens to tell everyone else involved that they are guiltless as the driven snow. Are you kidding me? While she was at it, did she take responsibility for assassinating Kennedy?
The one bit of information that was new to me was that the staff at Memorial was told early in the week that they were not a high rescue priority, and then the Thursday after Katrina that help would not be coming at all. That would be a devastating blow, to be trapped in a hospital with over 100 patients, no electricity, food, or water, and then to find out that no one is coming. Ever.
That is beyond bad. That is flat-out cruel.
I will say it one more time: No one should have to go through that kind of abuse, neglect, and cruelty and then be accused of murder unless the accuser is absolutely sure. Foti is not absolutely sure. In fact, he has no idea what he is talking about.