Tired of Tiger

Society's thirst for celebrity got to me this week. I don't care that Tiger played again. I don't care how he did and whether his wife was there. I don't care what everyone and his brother, sister, cousin, and uncle think of Tiger playing again. And I sure don't care what Tiger thinks about Tiger playing again. Will someone please tell me why this is news. One of my colleagues has news alerts on her computer that tell her when a big story breaks. This time the flashing news: Tiger is playing again. We spend our days here at CURE writing about cancer, a major cause of death in our country. In fact, over the last week, during which time I have heard from everyone and their dog that Tiger is playing again, an estimated 10,000 Americans died of cancer. That's right. We lose 1,500 American's every day to cancer. To put that another way, the Titanic goes down daily with men, women, and children aboard. And for a more recent analogy, we lost around 3,000 Americans when the Twin Towers fell in New York City in 2001. Today, they fall again every other day with the loss of American life to cancer. I have two friends going through treatment for serious breast cancer right now. This weekend there was a gathering of people from around the country who have liver tumors. These folks came to Dallas to get the moral support it takes to keep on fighting while trying to find the next move that may allow them to see their children grow up. Tiger is not the man everyone thought he was. Big deal. He doesn't have to worry about health insurance or having enough money to pay the out-of-pocket cost for medication. When I read that one in six cancer patients with high out-of-pocket costs are not filling their prescriptions for oral oncology medications, I sure don't care whether Tiger is playing again. Something is wrong here. Journalists have gotten lazy about what makes news. And the public needs to remember as they are screaming about morals that they put the guy on the pedestal to begin with, so they shouldn't be surprised when he falls off. Just don't bore the rest of us with the details. Some of us are dealing with real life and death issues and really don't care that Tiger is playing again.