New Yorker magazine alert thread

Read the sniper story, and I almost hate to admit this, but I LOLed at this part:

I got him there and he was talking all kinds of goddam bullshit. I mean, this off-the-wall shit—how he’s Dracula, how he’s a werewolf, and all this shit.”

Weirdly credulous or at least steadfastly neutral article on the controversies around Lyme disease by Michael Specter.

I wonder if the framing was influenced by the comments on a throwaway piece he did during the election on Mitt Romney promoting more funding for chronic Lyme disease: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/mitt-romney-versus-lyme-disease-and-science.html

The new article accepts the equation of illness (how people feel sick) and disease (damage to the body) wholeheartedly. Mentions "antibodies" and "metabolic abnormalities" as evidence of chronic Lyme, without specifics as to how those findings are caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, or how they supposedly explain the long list of symptoms. Mentions treatments for Lyme that are unlikely to help the supposed underlying pathology, but do help, but holds back from drawing the explicit conclusion that this argues against, not for, the theory of chronic Lyme.

By the end of the article even he even accepts the chronic Lyme community's favorite metaphor for their struggle to establish a new disease in the absence of convincing pathology:

The atmosphere resembles that of the early days of aids activism, when many of the individuals most at risk lost confidence in their doctors and sought their own medical answers.

This from the guy who wrote the "for God's sake, get a flu shot" article last winter. Don't remember him valorizing vaccine skeptics as standing against an uncaring medical establishment. Sigh.

lyme disease is a weird thing. at some point in high school i started becoming debilitated, had trouble walking, had extreme pain in my extremities, and for months the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. someone finally tested me for lyme disease (despite finding no ticks) and i tested positive. treatment completely alleviated my symptoms. idk that this relates to the chronic lyme 'community,' but it seemed to me at the time that the doctors were pretty confused by the entire ordeal and i wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more related to lyme that the medical 'community' hasn't uncovered yet. have we done a thread about this yet?

i'm sure there's some talk previously. chronic lyme is a tough subject to discuss with patients, particularly in the northeast where it's more endemic, but so much of the treatment some patients receive is contrary to the evidence available. many patients get extended courses of antibiotics and feel better eventually, but it's not clear that there's any biological basis for it or that these people wouldn't have improved without abx. furthermore a lot of the "tests" done by "lyme-literate" institutions, again particularly in the northeast, aren't really validated

haven't read this article in a year or so but this is where the most recent evidence is: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra072023

also haven't read the NYer piece but i gather it deals with "chronic lyme"?

oh man just perused a couple of the advocacy blogs mentioned in the piece.

http://jmgarnet76.blogspot.com/2012/08/re-introducing-myself-to-all-of-you.html

poor woman was getting naltrexone for her lyme disease

specter is usually OK. i remember his pieces on GM food, GM mosquitos, and dr oz within the last year all being good

Next week's cover:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/s403x403/1011892_10151736731965329_639397415_n.jpg

aw

<3

Chronic lyme is a personal subject for me, because it has effectively ruled my sister's life for the past 10 years. I haven't read the article yet, but I've read lots of other things about it, and she's been through the gamut of tests and treatments, skepticism and sometimes outright dismissal, and finds the entire idea of a "controversy" as to the existence of the thing that has made her life agony for months at a time infuriating. As do I. It is obviously true that the mechanisms and interplays that cause chronic lyme are still mysterious. It is also true that not all therapies work for everyone -- but there are therapies that work to one degree or another for a whole lot of people. But believe me, it is a very real thing.

I mean, chronic lyme is the reason why she and her husband never had another child (fortunately, they'd had one before she got sick). It's the reason she has for months or years at a time had to give up playing the fiddle, which she loves. It's the reason that merely going to a part-time job can be exhausting and debilitating for her. This isn't a person who was ever sick much in her life before, she was an energetic, healthy, happy, busy mom and teacher until BAM.

There shouldn't be any dismissal of the fact that she's sick. Whatever the cause of her suffering, the fact that she is suffering shouldn't be minimized.

The controversy is whether chronic infection with the Lyme spirochete is the cause of symptoms like that, and whether chronic antibiotic treatment is helpful and necessary.

We don't (and won't ever) fully understand the complexity of the body, especially since each person is in some ways different than everyone else. There will always be room for doubt and more questions to research.

What I look for as a neurologist is evidence of damage to the nervous system. Symptoms are an indication of potential damage but are not sufficient proof: many severe and persisting symptoms can arise from an otherwise normal nervous system. The patients I've seen with a diagnosis of chronic Lyme (not as common in Canada as in the US) have had normal examinations and tests (MRI, CSF, nerve conduction studies). In the absence of some indicator of how Lyme is damaging the nervous system (infection -> damage -> symptoms), there's no particular reason to believe it is the cause of the symptoms, at least from a neurological point of view.

This is a separate debate from the non-controversial evidence of acute/subacute Lyme infection causing neurological problems. There's a long list of neurological conditions that Lyme can cause, but they can be proven by the usual methods (damaged nerve function on electrical tests, inflammatory changes in spinal fluid, lesions on MRI, etc). Treatment of the infection is definitely helpful in those cases, which usually improve considerably but can leave residual neurological damage behind (scars in the brain or spinal card, etc).

It's good that there are treatments that your sister and others with similar symptoms have found helpful. I offer symptomatic treatment to patients whenever I can. Antibiotic treatment is not intended to be symptomatic but curative of the supposed underlying cause. When I'm not convinced that an infection is in fact the cause of the symptoms, I can't in good conscience recommend it.

I would argue that this is in fact a really unfortunate portrayal of common attitudes. First, it's actually not conducive to gay rights or gay dignity to act as though every close male relationship is necessarily a sexual or romantic relationship. But worse, this is subtly a perfect distillation of how your average liberal views gay people, as Muppets: sexless, harmless, inoffensive, childish, silly, and ultimately mere fodder for the condescending entertainment of straight people.

Personally, I don't think that a group that has for decades labored against a brutally oppressive regime that humiliated them, assaulted them, and systematically denied them equal rights should be analogized to imaginary characters that have been built out of felt for the edutainment of children, nor that American liberalism's obsession with meaningless symbolism and empty uplift is a long-term strategy for success.

where is that from. i wrote "<3" as a response to that image earlier today but i actually think i agree with that quote.

fre-fre-freddie

I don't disagree with the quote, but the cover is really a play on the already widespread half-joking speculation that ernie and bert are a gay couple, speculation that is often fueled by the show's writing

i think it's a bit ridiculous to take offense at being represented by "FELT characters designed for the EDUTAINMENT of CHILDREN" and to take offense at the use of "symbolism" in a magazine-cover illustration

there's a lot to agree with in that quote ("ultimately mere fodder") but

this is subtly a perfect distillation of how your average liberal views gay people, as Muppets: sexless

what?

liberals generally have the same stereotyped view everyone else does, that gay people (especially men) are leading this debauched life of continual grindr-initiated hookups. i know gay men that don't fit that pattern that are made to feel uncomfortable for not living up to this imaginary standard.

ya i was gonna mention that as well

happy to defer to anyone better represented by the cover than I am but yeah: what Bert & Ernie stand in for on the cover is a couple who are a couple at home & can't/haven't come out publicly, being affectionate privately. this seems like a pretty good & funny read on them & on a big thing one could hope is changing with the news. it isn't untrue thatrepresentation iof coupescouples is important or is frequently subject to patronising interpretations but this is neat & exists in its own world successfully enough to be seem too terrible imo

phone; should read representation of couples

would've had less trouble with Big Bird and Snuffleupagus tbh

freddie has this.... thing about "liberal representations of gay people"

it is like a lot of freddies things about 1/3 accurate and 2/3ds projection

"My father, a theater professor, introduced my siblings and me to queer people throughout our childhood, and the existence and acceptance of them was an assumed part of the landscape. And these people were queer, in the old sense, not the sanitized, sexless TV gays that are the dominant image of homosexuality today. "

should have been beavis & butthead

in all fairness, they have lived together for decades. they probably are pretty sexless by now. hahahaha! #rayromano4ever

it would have been more on point to show E&B working on a joint tax return

"Ernie! There are people here from The New Yorker magazine!"

i think freddie suffers from a problem endemic to the liberal community; he's more principled than he is coherent.

"Bert and Ernie clearly love each other. But does Ernie suck Bert’s cock? I don't think so."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/06/28/bert_and_ernie_on_new_yorker_cover_for_gay_marriage_a_terrible_way_to_commemorate.html

a lotta "thoughts" out there about this. #chooseyourbattles

#crazyforhashtagstoday

"Bert and Ernie clearly love each other. But does Ernie suck Bert’s cock? I don't think so."

well he does now, in my mind, and I am really not happy about that slate.com

http://www.authenticmanprogram.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bert-ernie-banana.png

they aren't even the gayest muppets. you got kermit, grover, the count...

statler & waldorf

Dr. Honeydew and Beaker

ernie has never struck me as gay. bert, yes. maybe ernie was an old high school friend and he just ended up with bert and bert likes having help with the rent? seems more likely.

So Ernie's just a boy who helps with the rent. A "rentboy," if you will.

statler & waldorf

Yeah, if anybody in the Henson universe is a gay couple, it's these two.

Are there any openly gay couples on Sesame Street? Honest question. At this point there should be.

they aren't even the gayest muppets. you got kermit, grover, the count...

― scott seward, Friday, June 28, 2013 1:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always though kermit was just afraid of sex

there is a character with a parent in prison, which is both awesome and crushingly depressing in what it represents

did you ever see the very special episode prequel where the muppet dad kills grover

tbh i'm just glad it wasn't peppermint patty and marcie

elmo was probably behind the whole thing

i can see both sides of the "should bert & ernie be appropriated like this" coin enough that what really annoys me about the new yorker cover is that a) they're admiring a shot of the ENTIRE supreme court and b) that the appropriating is being done by the new yorker

I realize it's not totally my place to say, but this ultimately comes off as another Thing To Be Vaguely Outraged About On The Internet