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| Women successfully campaigned against Komen's decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood. (photo: Gallo/Getty Images) |
12 February 12
Organisations that influence social, cultural and political issues in the US have been hijacked by the far right.
erhaps
over the past week you've heard of the foundation named after Susan G
Komen? You know the folks I'm talking about, the ones who have turned
breast cancer fundraising into a non-stop Nike-like branding campaign
that translates into helpful suggestions,
like how you should chomp down on the extra crispy bucket of Kentucky
Fried Chicken to fight cancer (get heart disease, but cure cancer!).
Yeah, those guys.
They've had a bad week or two, to put it kindly. But their self-immolation at the hands of Tea Party cranks, such as their recently resigned senior vice president for public policy,
Karen Handel, is worth looking at for what it tells us about the demise
of institutions in the US. Because the thing is, their corruption of a
charity meant to help find a cure for breast cancer with their Sharia
Christianity, is only one of many examples of this phenomenon in the
United States.
Whether it's the courts, Congress, state legislatures,
media, churches, academia, non-profits or a variety of other
institutions, these important organisations that set the social,
cultural and political parameters in our democracy, and served us well
(overall - on the issue of race, for example, it took many of them a
while to get with the programme) have been thoroughly hijacked by what
the late historian Richard Hofstadter referred to as those exhibiting
the "paranoid style". READ MORE
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