[Dean's World] Celia Farber: 60 Minutes, Tonight

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Posted by Celia Farber:
60 Minutes, Tonight
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1203303512.shtml


   Segment 1 reported that a Bayer anti-clotting drug called "Trasylol"
   that was killing 1,000 Americans per month from renal failure while
   the FDA looked the other way.

   It was conceded that safety is not longer one of the benchmarks of FDA
   drug approval, but rather, a drug is approved if there is a lack of
   substantive proof that it is hazardous.

   Segment #2 was light and fairly silly--covering a study that
   supposedly measured human happiness and/or contentment, and found that
   the gold medal goes to Denmark. It's the happiest country in the
   world, except for the fact that they apparently have not expressed any
   happiness since they won the World Cup.

   Four young Danes sat around and piously told American viewers not to
   be workaholics, to spend time with family--and yet these are people
   who admit their government gives them 100% paid six month paternity
   leaves, and pays them to attend university.

   The men were handsome metrosexuals, bicycling to work. The only thing
   they could articulate about Danish character is that when you wish to
   get off a bus in Denmark, you don't say, "I am getting off," but
   rather, you rustle your bags until the person grasps that you need to
   get off. "Danes believe in their right not to be spoken to," one of
   them explained. Morley Safer deployed every cliche in the book in the
   grand tradition of Americans whipping themselves at the feet of
   morally superior Scandinavians who have never had to worry about
   putting food on their family's dinner table. How many times do I have
   to see footage of Danes licking ice cream cones and riding bicycles as
   though this were the final station of moral human development.

   Good for them.

   One wishes Morley Safer, in his reverie about Hans Christen Anderssen
   and herring, would at least have refrained from referring to Hamlet as
   "depressed."

   Hamlet was clear as a bell. He was neither "depressed," nor
   "ambivalent," nor "young," nor, most likely if you really study the
   works of 'Shakespeare'---Danish.

   Even if I sound crabby, I too have a soft spot for Danish men,
   primarily because of their gutteral cadences, which make the female
   ear HAPPY.

   When I am dying I want to have the voice of a Danish SAS pilot piped
   through headphones very loud, telling me about weather conditions in
   Copenhagen. Great stuff.