Archive for October 30th, 2008
Giving in to a flu shot
Those ubiquitous flu shots (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mccord/295079027/sizes/m/#cc_license)
Flu shots weren’t for me, I thought. Why would I want to be injected with the inactive viris, at the risk of getting flu symptoms now, to guard against the uncertainty of getting it down the road. Then there’s thimerosal, the ominous mercury preservative still apparently used in the vaccine.
But then I had the flu bad last winter in Baltimore. We’re talking a 103-degree fever that made my brain swell and throb, a fever that hurt so bad it made me cry. I had to practically crawl to the parking lot after the flu hit me at work. My whole body ached when I coughed.
Still, I wanted to embrace the natural, echinacea-can-keep-me-healthy Oregon lifestyle. I was just going to tough it out this year. But then we heard the flu hits really hard here, particularly in a university town that students, scholars and athletes from around the country and across the globe pass through. Plus, with our health insurance, the $15 shots were free through the Oregon State health center.
Now there’s a slight tingling down my left side where I had the shot and my toes feel achy. My throat is a bit scratchy. Are these symptoms psychosomatic or real? I just better not come down with full-fledged influenza this year.
Did ya’ll get flu shots this year? Do you think the benefits outweigh the risks? You certainly don’t here about the shortage of flu shots like we had in 2004, now that more drug makers have flooded the market.
Barack Obama and David Simon: a Daily Show/Colbert Report Double-Header
We all knew Obama would do a telecast interview on The Daily Show tonight, an appearance perhaps eclipsed by his 30-minute infomercial. But it surprised me to see Baltimore’s finest David Simon follow suit on The Colbert Report. What was the hook for Simon’s appearance? The Generation Kill mini-series ended this summer, with little fanfare. There was no mention of his new New Orleans-set project. Colbert was struggling to make the interview relevant. He seized upon David Simon’s characters that defy easy protagonist/antagonist classification and his critiques of a capitalist culture that requires institutions to “do more with less.”
“Barack Obama says he loves your show: is that because you’re a socialist,” Colbert dead-panned. That segewayed into a more substantive defense of progressive taxation.
Colbert hit a nerve talking about how Simon resented the prize-obsessed world of newspaper journalism. That’s why you went into TV then, Colbert said, taunting, because we don’t care about prizes at all. You know Simon has to be somewhat bitter about the lack of Emmy recognition for The Wire. Maybe he himself was Pulitzer Prize-obsessed while at The Sun, so he had to leave before that impulse got the better of him.
He’s proud to be one of the first on the 200+ plus Sun newroom staffers who have taken buy-outs over the past 15 years. So in some vague way we’re part of the same club.
“Journalism kind of spit me out,” Simon said.
BaltimOregon to Maine 