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Thus Spake the Crocodile…(Sujatha)

 

Carefully crafted, teary-eyed sentiments indeed. As well they should be, given the outrage poured on Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to stop giving grants to the Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening and preventative education. This could mean a huge drop in liberal contributions to the Orgy of Pinkfulness that the Komen Foundation sustains not only in October, but year-round as part of its effort to ‘eradicate breast cancer’, a goal that remains muddied by the numerous partnerships it forges with corporations who don’t exactly promote good health through their products.

“Critics of the decision have pointed to the fact that Komen recently hired a vice president who had pushed for the defunding of Planned Parenthood during a gubernatorial run. 

According to Komen, the decision was born not out of political pressure but rather as part of an ongoing effort to exact “stronger performance criteria for our grantees.”

The outrage has so far garnered from the public a substantial proportion of the funds that Planned Parenthood stood to lose.

Planned Parenthood said Wednesday that it received more than $400,000 from 6,000 donors in the 24 hours after news broke that its affiliates would be losing grants for breast screenings from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer foundation.

Komen, meanwhile, incurred heated criticism from some members of Congress, numerous liberal advocacy groups and some newspaper editorial writers. But it was applauded by many conservative religious and anti-abortion groups that abhor Planned Parenthood for its role as the leading U.S. abortion provider.

If we are all a little less pinked-out after this, we can thank Karen Handel for her decision to push through the defunding ‘organizations under investigation’ rule. But I have a feeling that come October, the frenzy for the Pinking of America will rebound, as it always does, with the fresh legions of the newly-diagnosed.

 

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13 responses to “Thus Spake the Crocodile…(Sujatha)”

  1. Ruchira

    Sujatha, thanks for commenting on the Komen fiasco on our blog. The backlash against this has been unprecedented. I hope that message is loud and clear. Planned Parenthood has been the whipping dog for social conservatives for too long. Whatever one thinks of abortion, the fact that many women use the organization for crucial health services (including contraception, the most effective measure against abortion) is lost on its politically and religiously motivated opponents. I am hoping especially that the demagogues in congress are taking note.
    P Z Myers has some comments on charitable donations to breast cancer foundations.

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  2. Dean C. Rowan

    That didn’t take long.

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  3. Sujatha

    Oh no, we shall be drowned in the Ocean of Pink again, come October!
    I suspect that Brinker, Handel et al. must have gotten the message, not only from large chunks of their donors, but quite a few of the corporate sponsors who saw the usefulness of Pinkwashing to be slipping away from their coffers, with the Komen Foundation’s mucky makeover.
    All Hail People Power!

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  4. Sujatha

    Or is this just a head fake by the Komen Foundation?
    http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/komen-reversal-decision-planned-parenthood-funding?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+

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  5. Dean C. Rowan

    Uhm…

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  6. Elatia Harris

    I actually had no idea the leadership of Komen & Co. was a big botoxed Republican. Yecch. I won’t trust them again with my tiny annual contribution. If they back down from defunding PP, it won’t be for real. Maybe whoever has an interest in women’s health, especially the health of women who are poor, should just give what they can afford to Planned Parenthood.

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  7. Sujatha

    Elatia, if you read the PZ Myers article that Ruchira linked to in her comment, it’s evident that SGK isn’t all bad. Lot of good studies and research have been funded, and they do have a pretty comprehensive and non-fearmongering website with useful information on breast cancer and resources. But the fundraising thing became a monster that took on a life of its own, and once it began to thrive on the blood from corporations that had vested interests, the foundation and its promotions became a huge elaborate smokescreen for more unsavory stuff.
    Judging by the involvement of Handel, Ari Fleischer and others, it seems to have morphed into a right-wing Trojan horse, which has now been unmasked for what it is now.
    The ‘apology’ may not do it much good with the donors that it has lost, they will now be looking at it without the rose-colored spectacles.

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  8. Norman Costa

    Few things are as political as substituting religion for science, criminalizing sexual orientation and gender identity, pulling breast cancer detection out from under poor women, and the confiscation of women’s control over their own reproduction. This is but an example of a faith-based nihilism – better to destroy people and institutions, utterly, than be tolerant and respectful.

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  9. Norman Costa

    @ Elatia:
    If I may edit one of your phrases – “…a big botoxed, and surgically altered, Republican.”

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  10. prasad

    I don’t understand why Komen didn’t do the obvious thing to start with and simply clarify that their funding of PP was narrowly tailored toward breast cancer prevention and screening.
    I’m struck too by how much less clout pro-lifers have in the breast cancer pinkness gig than their opponents. Presumably Komen gets a lot more money from pro-choice people and organizations than it does from pro-lifer ones. This is surprising, the more so since abortion support/opposition itself is not really gendered according to polls.
    Will Wilkinson made an amusing observation before Komen did backtracked:

    By itself, the predictable way this episode has everyone hunkering down in the familiar culture war trenches is completely boring. What’s interesting is that Komen and Planned Parenthood are both largely admirable organizations doing necessary and urgent work for women’s health, and this controversy is going to work out well for both of them. Had Planned Parenthood and the Komen Foundation colluded to profit by riling our culture’s warring tribes, they couldn’t have done it much better.

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  11. Sujatha

    Norman: Did you see this? So much for the ‘no politics’ claim. http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/2012/02/02/22-mike-luckovich-cartoon-komen-controversy/
    Prasad: Komen could have quietly altered their policies, except that some pro-life groups tried to play up the ‘win’ for their side and crowed about it in the media. The net result was intensive lobbying and negative comments on the social media that just exploded like a time bomb before Brinker et al. could put together a coherent response that didn’t have a political subtext. Even the backtracking is just a stance.
    Going forward, I think PP has won the war of the donors, while Komen will no longer command the Pink cachet that it once had with the less political stance. The whole episode may not blow over as easily for Komen Foundation as I had thought initially, or Will Wilkinson (background, Cato Institute, Koch-brothers funded libertarian thinktank) posits.
    I think that Komen has managed to poison their name both with the pro-choice and pro-life factions, and will lose out on the count. PP was never going to get the pro-life support, but they will now be the beneficiaries at the cost of SGK.

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  12. prasad

    Sujatha, I think that’s the surprise for me…that there was so much more opposition from the cultural left than there was support from the cultural right. I suppose they miscalculated, but more than that I think they simply goofed; they should never have made so inept a decision, but having made it they might as well have stuck to their guns. Now, as you say, no-one likes them.
    Re Wilkinson, I know of his background, though it doesn’t “bother” me particularly when it comes to reading him regularly. In any case, he’s a left-libertarian in the sense of being socially liberal, so on abortion he’s on my side.

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  13. Norman Costa

    @ Prasad:
    “-I don’t understand why Komen didn’t … [etc].”
    That’s because the change of policy was coordinated with the nuisance investigation that was concocted in Congress. This was a deliberate attempt at a take down of PP and any-and-all people whom they serve. This is not just pro-life vs pro-choice. This is pro-life with a big dose of anti-women who are poor and want to control their own reproduction.
    In another news story, Brinker talked about what she does for all women, then made the point that she is not a feminist. I could care less whether she is a feminist or not. However, her litany of pro-women accomplishments that was wedded to “I am not a feminist,” was an attempt to marginalize feminists when it comes to who is looking out for the needs of women. This woman is about as politically savvy as they come, and she plays here political cards very, very well.

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