Breast cancer

Monday, Aug 21, 2000 7:30 PM UTC

Death and the days of our lives

Writing a soap opera and waiting for my grandmother to die, I didn't know who would finish first -- she or I.

By Kerry Madden

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“Monsignor said we can use ‘Danny Boy’ but not ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ at the funeral Mass,” explains my aunt Sally. We are at the wake for my grandmother, whom we called “GrandMary.” She lay in her casket, dressed in the sky-blue dress she’d worn at a granddaughter’s wedding. She wore her glasses too; rosary weaved between her fingers; magenta fingernail polish. Aunt Sally’s two daughters had painted them the night before she died; GrandMary’s chest rose and fell in bursts of breath as the sisters lovingly manicured each nail.

“Why not ‘Irish Eyes’?” I ask.

“It isn’t Catholic enough for church. The Irish tenor is afraid to sing it without Monsignor’s permission.” Aunt Sally sighed.

There was an audible groan from those standing closest. It was one of the GrandMary’s few wishes; she rarely asked for anything for herself. It seemed such a small thing too. But I knew no one was going to call Monsignor on it because it was also something she would have hated for us to do. We’ve got “Danny Boy,” now leave it alone before Monsignor axes that one too. God love him.

“You should have just asked for forgiveness,” says my mother. “Not permission.”

“That’s right,” says Aunt Sally. “What are they going to tell us? That she can’t have a funeral Mass at St. Ann’s ever again?”

Two weeks earlier, my brother, Casey, had called and said, “You need to go see her. Get on a plane now. I have a frequent flyer ticket. Use it.”

I knew she’d been sick, but at the age of 86, GrandMary was one to rally, so I had been determined not to go. We were worried about money, waiting for my writing jobs to also rally. There were a million reasons to stay home. She lived in Washington D.C., I was in Los Angeles. Our son had just started at a huge public middle school. Each night was filled with science projects, word problems, the Man vs. Nature Packet. Our daughter was trying to memorize her multiplication tables and get ready for Astro Camp. There were piano lessons, art classes, soccer practice. We had a 9-month-old baby bent on life-threatening climbing expeditions.

But when my brother generously offered the ticket, I couldn’t say no. I took a red-eye the following week, thinking I’d go for two days. I was still nursing Norah, but she was eating solid food. Two days wouldn’t be that long away from her, and without her I could focus my attention on GrandMary.

When I arrived on Friday morning and saw how ill she was, I realized I wouldn’t be able to leave. She looked at me and smiled and said, “You haven’t changed.” I held her hand. She was the one who had taken me to Hawaii, San Francisco and Las Vegas on a Catholic tours trip when I was 17. We saw “Cats,” “Evita,” “West Side Story” and tons of movies together. We’d go out to lunch in Georgetown or to the “hot shop” for milkshakes. She sent postcards from Egypt, Rome, Ireland, England and Alaska. I spent many, many summers with her growing up. She never missed a birthday or holiday, sending checks and clothes from Talbots, signing everything, “All my love, GrandMary.”

She was prone to loving exaggeration, making all her children and grandchildren seem like far better people than we really were. When I eloped at the age of 24 and was married by a stranger named Squire Max Wolfe in a lobby at the courthouse on Gay Street in Knoxville, she told everyone that a dear friend (a squire) from England had flown in especially to perform the ceremony at a charming chapel in South Knoxville.

I was the oldest of her 18 grandchildren. She was my grandmother, and as she looked up at me from her bed, I could see what I did not want to see. She was dying.

One month earlier, she’d fallen down at home (where she’d lived for 62 years), and then gradually grown weaker. Doctors suspected that the breast cancer she’d had in the 1980s had metastasized in her bones, which would explain her pain, confusion and rapid decline. They moved her to my aunt’s farm in Maryland and brought in a hospital bed. Hospice started the day I arrived.

When I decided I couldn’t leave, I also realized I couldn’t leave the baby with my husband for however long it was going to take. We chose to banish all thoughts of credit card debt. This would be money we would never regret spending. My husband flew Norah out late on Saturday night and went back right away on Sunday to be with our other two children. We nicknamed him “the baby courier.”

My aunt had told GrandMary that I flew in to meet my publisher and other writers, so she wouldn’t think I’d come to join the flock around her deathbed. Of course, it wasn’t true. My publisher was in New York anyway. My first book was already out of print, and my second book was with an agent. I was waiting to hear if she was finally going to accept it after two years of revisions.

The only thing I absolutely had to do was complete a shadow episode of a soap opera called “Port Charles.” (TV soap producers give writers a chance to write a future episode of a specific show — a shadow episode — to see if they have the smarts to make it in daytime soaps.) My episode was due on Oct. 6. It was Sept. 24 already.

So while my grandmother lay dying downstairs, I was upstairs writing lines like: “That bathrobe looks very familiar!” and “You’re inviting me over? This is a first.” Stage Directions went something like, “ON RACHEL, VERY PLEASED WITH HERSELF.”

Watching Aunt Sally take care of her dying mother was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever experienced. She taught me how to change GrandMary, massage her legs with cream, give her morphine, clean the bedsores on her back. The room had a sickly sweet smell. When I arrived it had been an Indian summer, but as the week wore on the temperatures dropped, rain fell, and the leaves changed suddenly to a gorgeous burnt raspberry-gold we never see in Los Angeles. I would open her window wide just to let her breathe fresh air, but someone always closed it after I left, fearing the farm insects.

My father, who’d also flown in by this time to be with his mother, warily agreed to babysit each day for one hour while I wrote the soap. I would also write at night and during Norah’s naptime. Being a father of the ’60s, this was his first experience as a childcare provider. He loved to cook, so I suggested he cook with Norah on his chest in the baby Snugli. His response: “Goddamn! You want me to cook and wear her in a harness?” My sister said over the phone, “Dad cooking and wearing Norah? That sounds dangerous.”

He opted for walks instead, so I’d put Norah in the stroller for him, loading the baby tray with an array of goldfish crackers, chopped apple bits, bananas, Cheerios. He’d push her up and down the driveway with Rush Limbaugh blasting on his radio headphones.

In the mornings, I would give GrandMary some Cream of Wheat. A friend of Aunt Sally’s, Sharon, had brought over a box, remembering that it was the only thing her mother ate when she was dying. GrandMary loved it, and the first several mornings, she ate whole bowls of the cereal. One morning, she asked me, “Does your show have a lot of curse words?” I said, “No. None.” She smiled. Then she turned and asked my aunt, “Do you have time to work on your scripts while you’re here?”

Aunt Sally, said, “I’m not Kerry, Mom. I’m Sally.”

Oh, of course,” said GrandMary. Then she asked, “What are you all doing here anyway? Don’t you have jobs?”

Each day with my grandmother was like a year, she slipped that much. It was difficult to understand her, so I’d often ask her to repeat herself. She told me to have another child. At that moment, Norah was scaling the hospital bed, pushing buttons, grabbing the ice chips. She’d just knocked over an entire vase of flowers. I replied, “Another one?” There was no way I could make such a promise. Later in the day, GrandMary told me to return to the Catholic faith. Then she looked at me and said, “I don’t know why you’re here, but you’re a godsend.”

One night, she whispered, “They couldn’t understand me.” She was referring to her neighbors who’d been in to visit her. She added, “I couldn’t understand myself.” She also kept asking about the children. “Where are the children? Who has the children? Are the children safe?” Then one morning, she glared at us and cried, “If any harm comes to the children, I will personally blame all of you.”

When a hospice social worker came to counsel us, she told us not to be afraid to talk about death; that now it was like a dance, and GrandMary was waiting for us to make a move. She also told us that a sign of death is when the ear lobes begin to retract, though no one knows why this happens. During this meeting, my father was in the kitchen. He uses profanity the way most people breathe. I don’t even hear it anymore, but there soon came a loud, “You sorry son-of-a-bitch!”

My aunt stiffened and blushed. She said apologetically, “I think he’s listening to the radio.” The hospice worker didn’t bat an eye.

The days passed. I studied GrandMary’s ear lobes, which did seem to be retracting. My Uncle Lefty’s mother-in-law, Liz, came and sat with GrandMary one afternoon and made Aunt Sally go out for a break. She had come two days earlier, leaving us a chocolate cake with maple walnut icing. It was a superb cake that no one ever actually cut, but each time one of us went into the kitchen, we’d slice off slivers. The cake shrank into a strange, twisted shape with everyone lobbing off bites.

The afternoon Liz came to be with GrandMary, I went in to thank her for the cake, but she was praying hard, eyes closed, lips trembling, her hands clasping GrandMary’s. I backed out immediately, knowing I’d just intruded on something intimate and stunningly beautiful. These women had known each other at least 40 years, and one was helping the other to die.

One night, my cousin Mary Margaret visited GrandMary. She held her and said, “My parents never came to any of my basketball games, but you never missed any. I learned so much from you.” Mary Margaret told me how GrandMary was always coaching her on her game in the car on the way home, telling her to be more aggressive when stealing the ball.

The next day, as I fed GrandMary ice chips, she said, “Mary Margaret told me such beautiful things. You never know what you mean to people when all you’re doing is just going along and living. Before you came, Monsignor was here. He remembered my spaghetti suppers at St. Ann’s when I was president of the Mothers’ Club all those years. I didn’t think anybody remembered them.” Then she said, “He told me was going to put a picture of me sitting on the camel in Egypt on top of my coffin. I said, ‘You wouldn’t.’ He said, ‘Try and stop me.’” She glowed, describing how he gave her the Last Rites…how good she felt…How he had called her “The Queen Mary.”

Another night, my aunt tried to get her to brush her teeth, but GrandMary refused. Sally said, “Mom, what would Dad say if you didn’t brush your teeth?” referring to my grandfather, a dentist, who died in 1975. GrandMary looked at her daughter and said,

“He doesn’t give a shit.”

By Act II of the soap, Rachel had tried to seduce Scott and GrandMary tried to get out of bed. She had no strength left, so it took four of us to lift her out of the bed and into her wheelchair. Each movement caused agony, but she rarely cried out. Still, the wince of pain flashing across her face told us everything. We helped into her wheelchair, but her back was so buckled by osteoporosis that she could only look at the floor. We put her in a chair in the living room, and she said, “I don’t how know how to tell you this, but I want to go back to bed.”

By Act III, GrandMary was slipping in and out of consciousness. I didn’t know who would finish first, me or her. I wanted it to be done, so I could sit with her. I wrote more furiously just to finish. I was also anxious for her to die, because I couldn’t bear to see her suffer. I took Norah for long walks on the farm, imploring my uncle, my grandmother’s son who died 20 years ago, to come and get her, that she was ready.

The day before she died, an argument erupted over the use of an IV. GrandMary couldn’t eat anymore and she didn’t have the strength to suck through a straw. Uncle Lefty appeared on the scene and said, “Even the good Lord was offered a drink of water on Mount Calvary. We can give Mama an IV.”

My mother, calling long distance, said, “The Good Lord was offered vinegar if I recall correctly.”

My dad said, “Let her go, Lefty. If an IV is going to prolong her suffering, let her go.” My aunt and the hospice people agreed.

Uncle Lefty came over that afternoon and said, “Mom? Mom? Do you want some Guinness? Blink if you want Guinness.” GrandMary blinked, and he sponged some Guinness onto her tongue. He was satisfied and let the matter of the IV drop. Then he held her and kissed her over and over, whispering, “You’re the best mom. I love you so much. You’re the best mom in the whole world.”

My youngest cousin, Aunt Sally’s daughter and a senior in high school, was heartbroken about losing GrandMary. One night, she stood over her bed sobbing, saying, “GrandMary please! Call me ‘sugarpig’ one more time! You’ve never been at a loss for words! Please, call me ‘sugarpig’ one more time!”

I finished the soap. Scott had not succumbed to Rachel’s charms. Eve was still being blackmailed by Bordiso over a set of letters that held the key to thwarting mind control. I went outside into the brilliantly sunny afternoon and sat with Norah under the apple trees. My sister, who’d just taken the bus in from New York, joined me. We said nothing, just let autumn sun soak into our skin. I thought of how much GrandMary loved the ocean and the sun. She would walk for miles along the beach in Bethany and Rehobeth.

There were things I was never going to be able to ask her now. I’d always wanted to know how she was able to bear it when she lost her youngest son, the uncle who was only five years older than me. How did she stand being married to a domineering Irishman? She loved him, but I think of the stories and wonder how she managed with never a cruel word to anyone.

My grandfather used to come home on Christmas Eve with a tree and go to bed, leaving GrandMary to trim the tree, wrap the presents, and handle the holiday. Once he shot 120 quail which she had to pluck, stuff, and cook for a party. One hundred and twenty quail. Is that an urban family myth? Everyone swears it’s true, and I’ve seen pictures of her holding up endless strings of quail. He would call to her from the bedroom, “Mary, I need another beer!” He reminded me of Jackie Gleason.

The night before she died, we took shifts sitting by her bed. I read Alice McDermott’s “Charming Billy” to her. I’d been reading the novel to her all week because she said, “I sure could use it.” I read her all the parts about the ocean and the beach and the lovely Irish Eva and the young Billy. My cousin, Ray, who’d spent the week entertaining everyone with awful jokes about Jesus and Satan and computers (second only to Uncle Lefty, who told even worse ones about drunk Irishmen), took the next shift.

Ray’s sister-in-law, who’d also spent the week caring for my grandmother with great tenderness, told Ray to tell GrandMary what all the grandchildren were doing. So Ray went through all 18 grandchildren and all eight great-grandchildren and what they were doing with their lives, assuring her that everyone was all right.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of Norah downstairs screaming and my sister trying to feed her. I had a choice to make. I could go see GrandMary or I could check on my daughter who was in a rage. I knew GrandMary would have checked on Norah, so I went into the kitchen to feed her breakfast.

A few minutes later, Aunt Sally came into the room and said, “Come on! It’s time. She’s either passing now or she’s just passed.” We flew into the room. She was curled up in the same position but no longer breathing. Her ear lobes had retracted completely. Her body was still warm. My aunt tried to find a pulse. She called, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” We all started crying. Norah reached for her. It was the first day of October.

The wake lasted for three days. My husband flew in with our two older children for the funeral. Our 10-year-old son, Flannery, insisted on joining the older cousins as a pallbearer. Our 8-year-old daughter, Lucy, wept in my arms for her great-grandmother. Then she asked, “Why haven’t I made my First Communion yet?” I could hear GrandMary saying to me, “Go back to church.”

GrandMary had requested to be wheeled down the side aisle in her casket and up to the center aisle to the altar with all her family following her through the church. We followed the casket singing, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” only in the program there was a typo, “Let There Be Pearce on Earth.” Flannery noticed it and pointed it out during the service. My mother told him to never mind about it.

A few hours later, at the country cemetery by the graveside, the weather turned chilly. The sun disappeared as Monsignor quickly blessed the grave with holy water. My father bent over and kissed his mother’s coffin and said, “Bye Mama. I love you.” Aunt Sally and Uncle Lefty did the same, followed by all the grandchildren and great grandchildren. There was a meal in the church refectory — plenty of Jell-O molds, macaroni salads, casseroles, tea and coffee. The limousine drivers ate together at one table, Monsignor and some of the priests at another.

Norah had caught a fever, which was gone now but had left her covered with a roseola rash. I walked with her back out to the graveside. Wind had already knocked over some of the vases of flowers. I wondered when I would come back here again. They said her headstone might be inscribed with, “All my love, GrandMary” because that’s how she always signed everything.

It was a searingly hot August when I was 13 and knelt in the same place for my grandfather, whose death had been sudden. It was a bitter January when I was 17 and stood in the snow in the same place for my uncle, who had committed suicide. Now I was 37 and grateful for the peaceful autumn afternoon. I was grateful that this gentle woman got to have a gentle death surrounded by people who adored her. I wrapped Norah tightly in her blanket, knelt down and touched the grave. Then I left GrandMary to rest between her husband and her son.

More Kerry Madden.

Tuesday, Feb 7, 2012 5:15 PM UTC

Komen scandal: Goodbye, Karen Handel

One week after the foundation's blunder, its scandal-plagued V.P. steps down

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Karen Handel (Credit: AP/John Bazemore)

It was perhaps inevitable. But it speaks volumes nonetheless. On Tuesday morning, the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced that its vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, was resigning.

It was the latest very public – and very bitter – turn in a story that has thrown the traditionally esteemed Komen foundation for one hell of a loop. Just one week ago, Planned Parenthood announced that Komen was halting its funding for the organization’s breast cancer screenings. The move, the Komen foundation insisted, was about “the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities” – itself a dubious smear on a respected women’s health organization. But it didn’t take long for critics to note that Handel, who was hired just last year, had run for governor of Georgia on a platform of conspicuously anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric. In 2010, she declared “I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,” and that she “strongly supports” laws prohibiting “the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion-related services.” A lady like that in the driver’s seat of your organization just as you’re distancing yourself from Planned Parenthood looks like a whole more than a coincidence.

With a relentless social media nightmare and a surge of high-profile promises of financial support for Planned Parenthood on its hands, the Komen foundation had, by Friday, backed off, apologizing “to the American public for recent decisions” and vowing to “continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood.” Yet the shadow of its anti-Planned Parenthood bigwig loomed large, especially for an organization that insists it has no political agenda. So as a new campaign for Komen to oust Handel was picking up steam across Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday, she stepped down.

Her departure doesn’t appear to be that of a woman cowed by the events of the recent past. She says she has declined any severance package, and in her resignation letter, she says she is “deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it” and that “neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology.” Indeed, Handel could not possibly have gone rogue on this one and implemented the disastrous decision about Planned Parenthood all by her lonesome. But in a Huffington Post story Sunday, Laura Bassett reported that a Komen insider told her “Karen Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria. She said, ‘If we just say it’s about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.’”

For now, the matter seems at an end. A representative for Planned Parenthood referred Salon this Tuesday morning to the organization’s statement from last Friday and told us, “We have no plans to say anything further.” But in this crucial election year, the Komen mess and the departure of Handel send a powerful message — that when you screw around with screenings and services to women who might otherwise not afford them, it does not go unnoticed. You say it’s not political? It’s about women’s health and women’s bodies. It’s political as hell. And it will be in November.

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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Saturday, Feb 4, 2012 12:00 AM UTC

Susan G. Komen’s priceless gift

A radical decision woke the country up to an alarming rightward drift, and gave new life to women’s health advocacy

By Rebecca Traister and Joan Walsh

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Members of Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and more than 20 other organizations hold a "Stand Up for Women's Health" rally in Washington (Credit: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)

The startling intensity that we saw this week in response to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to pull its grants from Planned Parenthood — an intensity that prompted the Komen foundation to reverse its decision today — may be the best thing that’s happened to the conversation about reproductive rights in this country for decades. It certainly should be.

Practically since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, reproductive rights activists have been left to play stilted defense against ideological opponents who grabbed the language of morality, life, love and family as their own, always deploying it with reference to the fetus. The rhetoric around reproductive rights, which has more recently begun to creep into arguments over contraception, has become suffocating in its emotional self-righteousness, but too muscular, too ubiquitous to effectively combat.

But the overreach by the Komen foundation, while surely intended to strike yet another blow on the side of antiabortion activism, succeeded instead in waking a powerful constituency — armed with precisely the language and emotional heft they’ve been lacking for too long.

That this week’s blow against Planned Parenthood came not directly from John Boehner’s House of Representatives – which, ever since taking power a year ago promising to focus on jobs, has manfully focused on the single task of attacking women’s reproductive rights – but instead from a popular, officially nonpartisan organization dedicated wholly to women’s healthcare somehow brought this argument into the open.

The response to Komen was surely so tinderbox explosive because it had been building with every politically theatrical investigation launched by Cliff Stearns and every grisly abortion scene enacted on the House floor by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith. But it was not just Washington wonkery, and was not ginned up or amplified by professional political cranks. It was the reflexive kick of a shin hit just below the knee, and the visceral anger spilled everywhere, from a Planned Parenthood Saved Me tumblr and onto Facebook, where people posted images of Komen’s pink ribbon cut in half. It poured from bank accounts, including that of New York Mayor and former Republican Michael Bloomberg.

It came from often dispassionate media figures like Andrea Mitchell, was tweeted by novelists like Judy Blume, Terry McMillan and William Gibson, actors Ellen Barkin and Martha Plimpton, politicos like Donna Brazile, Reps. Gwen Moore and Jackie Speiers, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and from 22 senators including Frank Lautenberg, Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand, who signed a letter urging Komen to reverse its decision. It came from callers to radio programs, announcing their intentions to drop out of Komen races, and from the American Association of University Women, which canceled a scheduled service event with Komen. In the three days after Komen’s announcement of its Planned Parenthood break, Planned Parenthood received more than $3 million in donations, said PPFA president Cecile Richards in a press call on Friday.

More than that, though: The starkly observable attack against something as crucial and basic as breast exams for poor women, as well as the fact that so many divergent voices were pulled into it, meant that the conversation was not about partisan politics; it was about women. For the first time in what feels like forever, passion and fury were being loudly, proudly given in a full-throated voice, on behalf of women – women as moral actors; women as citizens with rights, health, bodies, freedoms; women as people with families and economic concerns.

Taken together, these factors mark this as a watershed moment in the contemporary conversation about reproductive rights. This is a story in which we see the possibility of a turned tide, a new way to gauge how the public actually feels about women’s rights and health, and a new way to talk about it, as well. Because what we saw this week was big. It was mass. It was emotional. This was so different from the various polls activists on both sides of the abortion question are always throwing around, polls that depend so much on how a question is asked; polls that offer far less clarity than head-banging confusion about where America stands on the issue of reproductive heath. This was not a poll. This was America announcing that it cared about women’s health, and more specifically, that it cared about Planned Parenthood.

In many ways, the activism that forced Komen to backtrack was ignited by Boehner’s House Republicans a year ago, when they voted to cut off all funding to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services. This despite the fact that since 1976’s Hyde Amendment, no federal money has been able to be used to provide abortion services. The organization Republicans want to squash provides more than 800,000 women a year with breast exams, more than 4 million Americans with testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and 2.5 million people with contraception, which prevents unintended pregnancy and thus abortion. But playing to what they must imagine is overriding public sentiment, Republicans have worked tirelessly to lodge the image of Planned Parenthood as an abortion factory deep in the American imagination.

A year ago, some of the anger at this strategy began to bubble over. In response to Smith’s description of a second trimester abortion, read on the House floor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier went to the House well and described her own painful second trimester abortion. “For you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous,” Speier said, directing her comments at Smith. “Planned Parenthood has a right to operate. Planned Parenthood has a right to provide services for family planning. Planned Parenthood has a right to offer abortions. The last time I checked, abortions were legal in this country … I would suggest to you that it would serve us all very well if we moved on with this process and started focusing on creating jobs for the Americans who desperately want them.”

It was around this time that a viral “Thank You Planned Parenthood” meme cropped up online. With participants noting the instances in which they had relied on PPFA for birth control, breast exams, gynelogical care, and yes, abortions. Twitter, Facebook and blogs began to be dotted with “I stand with Planned Parenthood” emblems. Comedian Lizz Winstead kicked off a tour called “Planned Parenthood, I am here for you.”

But this recent wave of defense of Planned Parenthood has remained broad, ambient. The politics of the congressional witch hunt have been so labyrinthine, so convoluted, that it has been difficult to know how to effectively harness an angry response. When, last fall, Rep. Cliff Stearns launched an investigation into PPFA’s bookkeeping, the move was so needless, such a trumped-up piece of political stagecraft (since PPFA does receive federal funds, it must scrupulously account for every dime it spends, no special investigation required) that it was hard to even know how to make sense of it, let alone respond. This week, a caller to WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” professed her belief that the Stearns investigation centered on whether Planned Parenthood was performing late-term abortions.

The demonization of Planned Parenthood should have awakened the country to the radicalism of the right, and how far it has pushed the political conversation. It’s been hard to measure the degree of the radicalism, so slowly and unceasingly has it crept across our consciousness and the political discourse. But it’s important to remember how mainstream Planned Parenthood used to be. It was the respectable, even Republican, advocate for women’s health, including reproductive services; the leaders of the National Abortion Rights Action League were the activist agitators. Sen. Prescott Bush, the father of President George H.W. Bush, served as treasurer of Planned Parenthood’s first national fundraising campaign. Richard Nixon signed the family planning legislation in 1970 that authorized its federal funding.

As a congressman, George Bush and his wife, Barbara, were reliable friends of the organization. Barry Goldwater’s wife, Betty, was a founding member of Arizona Planned Parenthood; President Gerald Ford’s wife, Betty, was a high-profile supporter of the group. More recently, Ann Romney, wife of the 2012 GOP presidential front-runner, donated $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994. And when a Romney relative died of a botched abortion in 1963, the family asked that memorial donations go to Planned Parenthood.

But what happened this week was a clarifying moment. Right-wing extremism, coming this time not from the partisan mill but from a mainstream women’s organization, was put in a direct and unflattering spotlight. Suddenly, so much was clear, and finally, the response was unified and thunderous. Right-wing overreach — and the backlash it inspired — feels a lot like the way other radical GOP power grabs in the last year have galvanized the public to fight back. Attacks on collective bargaining, public workers and unions by Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have produced mass mobilization in those states, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. Public workers – cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers, paramedics, sanitation workers – once were the proud backbone of the middle class. Now they find themselves derided by the GOP as the new welfare queens who are taking more than their fair share. Ohio voters repealed a law that abolished collective bargaining in November, and pro-union organizers in Wisconsin have forced a recall election for Gov. Scott Walker.

Efforts to restrict voting rights are likewise waking up the citizenry; Maine repealed a law that banned same-day voting and registration in November, and Ohio blocked a voter photo ID bill. Even on the issue of reproductive rights, a draconian “personhood” amendment to the state constitution failed to pass in Mississippi, one of the reddest of the red states. Overreach by the right has re-inspired movements – unions, voting rights, women’s rights — that have too long been dormant and too easily dismissed by their ideological opponents as outside the mainstream of American values, when in fact, they used to represent the most American of values.

For defenders of Planned Parenthood, and more broadly for reproductive rights activists, this moment of repositioning is a valuable one. Until now, it has proven very difficult for advocates to resuscitate their side with language anywhere near as powerful as that used by antiabortion forces. Instead they have relied too heavily on the fungible, limp, endlessly open-ended language of “choice.” (Even among “pro-choice” advocates, the “I choose my choice!” joke from “Sex and the City” has become a ubiquitous critique.)

But what happened this week was powerful. It was mass. It was direct. It was emotional. And it restores women as the moral center of this conversation — which is where they belong.

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Rebecca Traister writes for Salon. She is the author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women" (Free Press). Follow @rtraister on Twitter. More Rebecca Traister.

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.

Friday, Feb 3, 2012 11:00 PM UTC

Komen victim of “bullying,” sad abortion foe says

Someone make an "It Gets Better" video for poor Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review

By Alex Pareene

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A very serious anti-bullying message from Kathryn Jean Lopez

Poor Kathryn Jean Lopez, the National Review Online’s resident delicate flower, anti-feminist traditional Catholic, and enemy of all homosexualists and abortionists. She was so delighted when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would no longer be sending grant money to Planned Parenthood to fund breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals, because it meant that her side had “won” a battle in the war against women’s health providers that perform abortions and provide contraception.

She was so excited, in fact, that she forgot that the decision was NOT ABOUT ABORTION WHATEVER GAVE YOU THAT IDEA. Later she posted that hilarious YouTube video of Komen CEO Nancy Brinker explaining that the Planned Parenthood decision was not in any way political, no sir. (At least one commenter noted the disconnect: “Really curious what K-Lo thinks Komen is actually doing here. When the news broke, she seemed pleased and pointed out right-to-lifers had been trying to force Komen to shuck PP. But she also believes Komen’s [ridiculous] assertion that the decision has nothing to do with politics and was just a big coincidence? Hunh?”)

After a great deal of public outcry, Komen reversed itself and said Planned Parenthood would be eligible for future grants.

This, obviously, was very sad news for K-Lo. She seemed stunned at first, but then decided that Komen was the victim of bullying.

The years-long campaign by antiabortion groups to lobby Komen to cease sending money to Planned Parenthood — the campaign Lopez cited in her initial post crowing about that campaign’s victory — was just regular political speech, but the widespread outcry over the decision was, obviously, bullying. (Or, as Daniel Foster put it, “gangsterism.” Foster only approves of reasonable and polite “speech,” which is to say, writing checks.)

Lopez, like many conservatives whose baffling interpretation of common liberal concepts leads them to find “hypocrisies” where none exist (Michelle Obama ate a french fry!!!!), darkly mutters about “that anti-bullying campaign,” because accusing a massive charitable foundation of playing politics with its supposed mission is patently the same thing as humiliating vulnerable young people until they become suicidal.

(Bullying, for Lopez’s future reference, is not just “people being mean to you,” but more accurately lengthy campaigns of abuse carried out against people who are or feel unable to defend themselves. Just ask the students of Anoka-Hennepin public schools if you’re still confused.)

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Friday, Feb 3, 2012 4:57 PM UTC

How the Internet changed Komen’s mind

The torrent of reactions to the cancer group's Planned Parenthood defunding proves the power of social media VIDEO

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Nancy Brinker, founding chair of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (Credit: AP/Salon)

It started with a tweet. And in the end, that’s what won the war. On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood sent out a no-punches-pulling alert that “Susan G. Komen caves under anti-choice pressure, ends funding for breast cancer screenings at PP health centers.” By Friday, Komen for the Cure had said it was sorry, and reversed its decision.

Within minutes on that Tuesday bombshell, the tale had become not just a news story but a social media explosion, with a flurry of responses pouring out across Facebook, Twitter and Komen’s own message boards – overwhelmingly disapproving of Komen for the Cure’s severing of its ties to Planned Parenthood. And in the process, it became an object lesson in how to handle a crisis, how to make it worse, and then how to fix it.

Planned Parenthood is, by now, well versed in how to handle outside attacks and negative publicity. Along the way, the organization has become pretty smooth at it. From the moment that first message about Komen appeared, Planned Parenthood remained relentless in keeping momentum going on the story, posting links to news coverage, retweeting supportive messages, and repeatedly reminding people how to donate to the cause across all of its social media platforms.

Komen, in contrast, could hardly have seemed more spectacularly blundering in all of it. As one commenter posted, “the last thing as unpopular on Facebook as this Komen thing was Michael Jackson’s death.” Not only did the organization clearly not even consider sending out its own preemptive, damage-controlling message, it waited more than a full day before responding to the outcry at all. And when it did, oof. In a tense, frozen-faced message on YouTube, its founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, talked about moving forward with “new strategies” and declared, “We will never bow to political pressure … The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful … and a dangerous distraction.” She never mentioned Planned Parenthood once. Deanna Zandt, consultant and author of “Share This! How You Will Change the World With Social Networking,” told Salon Friday, “I’m going to start using that video in my workshops as an example of what not to do.”

Komen for the Cure is not in the same business as Planned Parenthood – and it doesn’t need to be. But had Komen truly wished to give the appearance of being apolitical, Nancy Brinker might have acknowledged the story in a less obviously gutless way in her message. Surely Brinker could have taken a moment to say something along the lines of, “We’ve had to make some changes that we feel will be of more direct service to low-income women, but we’re proud of our years of association with Planned Parenthood, and support our colleagues in their ongoing efforts for the cause of women’s health.”

Komen’s Twitter feed had been similarly testy of late, with updates that “Our Board approved new grants standards to improve direct services to women” and “Our supporters know that no other #breastcancer organization serves women at the size and scope that Susan G. Komen for the Cure does.”

Why does it matter? Because while Komen was cautiously portioning out terse, defensive responses that smacked of “You should all be grateful for how much we do for you people,” Planned Parenthood and its supporters had been not just expressing their indignation but harnessing it, in ways that will both make you weep and make you laugh. Social media is all about connection. That’s why Planned Parenthood not only posted a letter from a supporter; it made it the organization’s newest petition. “When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve,” it reads in part, “you go after ME.” Direct, personal and powerful.

That’s why Deanna Zandt decided, when people were talking about pulling their money from Komen — “What do you do if you don’t have money to pull?” — to create Planned Parenthood Saved Me with the message to “Pinkwash THIS.” In no time, the Tumblr was flooded with heart-stopping tales of cancer detection, healthcare services, lives saved, all doled out with, significantly, “dignity.” And that’s also why, in the last few days, your Facebook page has likely become a torrent of brilliant eCards and cartoons, and why the Komen Web page was hacked in such a subtly funny manner. You want to get your message across? You want to maintain your credibility with your constituents? Hammer and keep hammering at the heartstrings and the funny bones. And hammer some more.

One could argue that the uppity, snark-lobbing types who tweet their rage and create blogs aren’t the kind of people who can hit Komen where it hurts – in donations. But the backlash was so strong and so sustained that it didn’t take long to ripple right out there to America’s wallets. Planned Parenthood swiftly saw a stunning boom in donations – including a fat promise of up to $250,000 from New York’s billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

So then what happened? A stunning reversal. On Friday morning, Komen issued the statement that “We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.” It’s not exactly a rousing endorsement of PP, nor will it likely deflect scrutiny from its future maneuverings, but it’s amazing nonetheless. Amazing that it happened at all, and even more amazing because in the statement on Twitter, Komen even added that “We want to apologize for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” Clear. Direct. Human, even. The world sent a message. And Komen learned from it.

UPDATE: Looks like Komen is still getting the hang of these things – oddly enough, they’ve already made Nancy Brinker’s original YouTube response on the matter “private.” The better to act like it never happened?

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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Wednesday, Feb 1, 2012 7:40 PM UTC

Komen for the Cure sells out women, again

The pink-ribbon charity, with a Sarah Palin ally as senior policy director, turns its back on Planned Parenthood

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Komen for the Cure sells out women, again

Karen Handel and Sarah Palin in August, 2010. (Credit: AP/John Bazemore)

First, the good: Since its founding 30 years ago, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has put over a billion dollars toward research, screening and awareness in the name of eradicating breast cancer. It’s certainly no coincidence that in that same span of time, breast cancer rates have declined sharply, and what was once a devastating diagnosis is now, for many, a treatable condition.

Yet when the news broke Tuesday that Komen was ending its funding for Planned Parenthood breast cancer screenings and services, the organization’s eagerness to throw Planned Parenthood – and the women who depend upon it – under the bus wasn’t surprising. It’s actually thoroughly unshocking for this venerated organization to pull such a crass, insensitive move.

The very name Susan Komen — with its direct association with a real woman, and founder Nancy G. Brinker’s promise to fight the disease that claimed her sister — is heart-tugging. Today, everyone who knows a woman likely has a breast cancer story – and with it, a Komen-flavored story about donning a pink T-shirt and running in a Race for the Cure, or shopping in October for pink-themed “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” notepads to help raise “awareness.” Along the way, Komen has become the McDonald’s of cancer — an easy-to-remember brand with a logo that demands little thought or effort from the consumer. Write a check, buy a ribbon, voila! You get to feel like you’re curing cancer.

It’s not that Komen is some questionable, Wyclef Jean-esque mess. It gets high marks from both the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator. Yet this is an organization that has repeatedly come under fire for its extravagant promotion of itself as an organization dedicated to a “cure,” when only a small portion of its expenses go to, you know, curing cancer. Komen itself cops to portioning just 24 percent of its funds to research – and 20 percent to fundraising and administration. For an organization with reported revenues of nearly $350 million, that’s still a lot of money for research. It’s an awful lot for itself, too.

Yet Komen remains pretty damn territorial around that whole “cure” thing. In a 2010 story for the Huffington Post, writer Laura Bassett pointed out that, according to Komen’s own financial records, it spends almost “a million dollars a year in donor funds” aggressively going after other organizations that dare to use the phrase “for the cure” – including small charities like Kites for a Cure, Par for the Cure, Surfing for a Cure, Cupcakes for a Cure, and even a dog-sledding event called Mush for the Cure. Let me just give you that number again. A million bucks a year. Robert Smith, better watch your back.

Komen has also, in its relentless pursuit of ubiquity and corporate sponsorship, aligned itself with more dubious product placement than a “Jersey Shore” marathon. It has a whole online store encouraging visitors to “purchase with purpose to end breast cancer forever,” where you can buy “silicone bling watches” and “Passionately Pink” ribbon-shaped cake pans. And because you’ll have to root around for the numbers, you can spend extravagantly on candles and “spirit gloves” without knowing that merely “at least 25 percent of the retail sales price … will go to Komen to help support … research and community programs.” Twenty-five percent of that $4.95 dog leash? Why, that’s more than a whole dollar!

Komen also famously outsources its merchandising. It’s teamed up with the likes of KFC for “Buckets for the Cure” – because nothing says you care about women’s health like a big vat of fried chicken. Komen has additionally sold a pink-hued “Promise Me” perfume that contains several toxins – including galaxolide, a synthetic musk that critics claim is a hormone disruptor. Komen has promised to reformulate the scent this year, but as Uneasy Pink calculated last spring, that’s still a lot of questionable chemicals to buy when roughly only 3 percent of the purchase price will go to Komen’s oft-invoked “cure” anyway.

And what of Komen’s latest, most potentially damaging stunt with Planned Parenthood? Komen says the move is just about “newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities.” You know what else is pretty “new” around Komen? Its senior vice president of public policy, Karen Handel. During the Sarah Palin-endorsed, Tea Party favorite’s 2010 campaign for governor of Georgia, Handel declared, “I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,” making clear that she “strongly supports” laws prohibiting “the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion-related services.” She did, however, emphasize that she “strongly support(s) the noble work of crisis-pregnancy centers.” If you were one of the world’s biggest charities and were looking to hire someone who had women’s welfare as her greatest imperative, would you go for someone who’d send them to a place that offers breast cancer screenings – as well as ovarian cancer screenings and HPV tests? Or someone who prefers a bunch of right-to-life fanatics pretending to be a medical facility? If you picked the former, you’re smarter than Komen for the Cure.

That Komen has raised staggering amounts of money is undeniable. There’s also pretty compelling evidence that it has done so in some pretty boneheaded ways. So given its track record, it’s fair to ask what happens now to the 11 percent of the Komen budget that goes to screening. Does it get funneled toward more glitter bracelets and “Promise Bears”? And what happens to the women who depend upon Planned Parenthood to tell them whether or not they have breast cancer? What becomes of mothers and daughters and wives and friends who believed that Komen’s commitment to “the cure” meant something more than protecting its catchphrase? It’s worth noting that while breast cancer rates are dipping, an October report from the American Cancer Society warned that they are declining more slowly among low-income women, and that “Poor women are now at greater risk for breast cancer death because of less access to screening and better treatments. This continued disparity is impeding real progress against breast cancer.” You know who loses when Komen backs away from Planned Parenthood? Probably not those nice, pink-clad ladies who attend Susan Komen wine-tasting events.

Women’s healthcare is not about lace-trimmed scarves and bottles of perfume. It’s sure as hell not about some feel-good, lip-service version of what my colleague Rebecca Traister calls “infantilizing Pepto-ed advocacy.” It’s not even — for anyone still stupid enough to think Planned Parenthood is some giant fetus-killing complex — about abortion. It’s about screening. It’s about treatment. It’s just that simple. The further away an organization gets from that mission, the more women suffer. It’s just that simple too. And you don’t make good on a “promise” to your dead sister by selling out women who need you most.

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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.