By: Paul S. Marchand
For almost three decades, the Susan G. Komen foundation enjoyed an unsullied reputation for fighting the good fight on breast cancer. Its astonishingly effective public relations effort was successful not only in getting macho straight guys, including cops and firefighters, to wear pink, but also in bringing together persons of every conceivable social, economic, or political outlook in the fight against breast cancer.
Until this week.
In an unbelievably ill considered, nay, stupid decision, the Komen foundation decided to discontinue grants to Planned Parenthood, ostensibly because Planned Parenthood had been the subject of an investigation being undertaken by a Republican Florida Congressman.
In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that the happenstance of the investigation was merely a fortuitous pretext for a politically motivated decision by Komen Foundation VP Karen Handel. Handel, a prominent Republican activist and unsuccessful office seeker in the state of Georgia, has a long and malodorous reputation for being an opponent of a woman’s right to choose. The decision to inject the Komen Foundation into the Culture Wars over reproduction appears to be made, or at least heavily influenced, by Ms. Handel.
Today, the Komen Foundation, in the face of a well-deserved torrent of scorn, reversed itself, announcing that it would restore its grants to Planned Parenthood.
Unfortunately for the Komen Foundation, its humiliating climbdown may not be sufficient to restore a reputation left in less than tatters by its ill-conceived foray into divisive, Culture War, wedge issue politics.
What had given the Komen Foundation the moral authority to bring together Republicans, Democrats, men, women, and every other sort and condition of American had been the public perception of the Komen Foundation as being above politics and partisanship; breast cancer, like AIDS, is an equal opportunity killer. Few if any Americans do not know someone who has lived with the terrifying reality of breast cancer.
Because such a huge number of Americans have been touched by the reality of breast cancer, it was possible to get macho straight guys to wear pink; it was possible to bring together at Komen Foundation Runs for the Cure people who might otherwise not give one another the time of day. The Komen Foundation operated in what amounted to a political and cultural safe space, an increasingly rare phenomenon in a society that has come to polarize itself along almost every conceivable line of division.
As long as the Komen Foundation stayed away from the kind of overtly political activity that has left other eleemosynary institutions bruised, broken, and hemorrhaging credibility, it was remarkably successful in maintaining a safe space for doing the good work it had been established to do. Its decision to discontinue its relationship with Planned Parenthood, no matter how quickly reversed, blew that safe space right off the map.
Now, unfortunately, instead of being seen as the curatrix of a successful, nonpolitical, “bring people together” effort, the Komen Foundation is now, and will be, perceived as just another Culture War operative. The quality of goodness, even of innocence, which had been such an integral part of the Komen Foundation’s appeal is gone.
None of this needed to happen. The Komen Foundation deserves no kudos for its volte-face; its original decision should never have been made in the first place; one does not praise a child for cleaning up a mess the child has made. The Komen Foundation also deserves significant criticism for being foolish enough to bring on to its senior management staff a right-wing, anti-choice activist with a clear Culture War agendum; the failure of the Komen Foundation to vet Karen Handel more carefully than it did is inexcusable and unacceptable.
The saddest part of this whole tawdry episode is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations like the Komen Foundation to continue to exist as islands of common ground. Our culture has been increasingly hijacked by extremists who are more moved by Mao Zedong’s insistence on always putting politics in command than they are by any sense of moral imperative to do good by and for one’s neighbors.
If the Komen Foundation can rightfully be excoriated for being stupid enough to hire an executive of such right-wing Maoist tendencies as Karen Handel, a mistake for which it will probably pay a huge price, we should also feel a sense of outrage that we have allowed our society to be hijacked by political apparatchiks who see in organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation not vehicles for the accomplishment of positive social good, but merely as subjects for their lascivious ogling and wedge issue politics.
Having inserted its institutional foot into its institutional mouth, and chewed it right down to the bone, the Komen Foundation may well find itself permanently crippled. The women of America deserved better than that.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not necessarily the views of any organization with which he is associated.
For almost three decades, the Susan G. Komen foundation enjoyed an unsullied reputation for fighting the good fight on breast cancer. Its astonishingly effective public relations effort was successful not only in getting macho straight guys, including cops and firefighters, to wear pink, but also in bringing together persons of every conceivable social, economic, or political outlook in the fight against breast cancer.
Until this week.
In an unbelievably ill considered, nay, stupid decision, the Komen foundation decided to discontinue grants to Planned Parenthood, ostensibly because Planned Parenthood had been the subject of an investigation being undertaken by a Republican Florida Congressman.
In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that the happenstance of the investigation was merely a fortuitous pretext for a politically motivated decision by Komen Foundation VP Karen Handel. Handel, a prominent Republican activist and unsuccessful office seeker in the state of Georgia, has a long and malodorous reputation for being an opponent of a woman’s right to choose. The decision to inject the Komen Foundation into the Culture Wars over reproduction appears to be made, or at least heavily influenced, by Ms. Handel.
Today, the Komen Foundation, in the face of a well-deserved torrent of scorn, reversed itself, announcing that it would restore its grants to Planned Parenthood.
Unfortunately for the Komen Foundation, its humiliating climbdown may not be sufficient to restore a reputation left in less than tatters by its ill-conceived foray into divisive, Culture War, wedge issue politics.
What had given the Komen Foundation the moral authority to bring together Republicans, Democrats, men, women, and every other sort and condition of American had been the public perception of the Komen Foundation as being above politics and partisanship; breast cancer, like AIDS, is an equal opportunity killer. Few if any Americans do not know someone who has lived with the terrifying reality of breast cancer.
Because such a huge number of Americans have been touched by the reality of breast cancer, it was possible to get macho straight guys to wear pink; it was possible to bring together at Komen Foundation Runs for the Cure people who might otherwise not give one another the time of day. The Komen Foundation operated in what amounted to a political and cultural safe space, an increasingly rare phenomenon in a society that has come to polarize itself along almost every conceivable line of division.
As long as the Komen Foundation stayed away from the kind of overtly political activity that has left other eleemosynary institutions bruised, broken, and hemorrhaging credibility, it was remarkably successful in maintaining a safe space for doing the good work it had been established to do. Its decision to discontinue its relationship with Planned Parenthood, no matter how quickly reversed, blew that safe space right off the map.
Now, unfortunately, instead of being seen as the curatrix of a successful, nonpolitical, “bring people together” effort, the Komen Foundation is now, and will be, perceived as just another Culture War operative. The quality of goodness, even of innocence, which had been such an integral part of the Komen Foundation’s appeal is gone.
None of this needed to happen. The Komen Foundation deserves no kudos for its volte-face; its original decision should never have been made in the first place; one does not praise a child for cleaning up a mess the child has made. The Komen Foundation also deserves significant criticism for being foolish enough to bring on to its senior management staff a right-wing, anti-choice activist with a clear Culture War agendum; the failure of the Komen Foundation to vet Karen Handel more carefully than it did is inexcusable and unacceptable.
The saddest part of this whole tawdry episode is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations like the Komen Foundation to continue to exist as islands of common ground. Our culture has been increasingly hijacked by extremists who are more moved by Mao Zedong’s insistence on always putting politics in command than they are by any sense of moral imperative to do good by and for one’s neighbors.
If the Komen Foundation can rightfully be excoriated for being stupid enough to hire an executive of such right-wing Maoist tendencies as Karen Handel, a mistake for which it will probably pay a huge price, we should also feel a sense of outrage that we have allowed our society to be hijacked by political apparatchiks who see in organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation not vehicles for the accomplishment of positive social good, but merely as subjects for their lascivious ogling and wedge issue politics.
Having inserted its institutional foot into its institutional mouth, and chewed it right down to the bone, the Komen Foundation may well find itself permanently crippled. The women of America deserved better than that.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not necessarily the views of any organization with which he is associated.
