Just when you thought Health Commissioner and High City Pharisee Thomas Frieden was done poking into our private health matters, after he banned trans fat, most cigarette smoking, and began monitoring the private health information records of all city diabetics for starters, comes this truly terrifying, Orwellian story from the NY Times. Apparently, Friedan is so concerned about the city’s AIDS epidemic, that he wants to start "encouraging" high risk men to be "voluntarily" circumsized, anotherwords to have the foreskins of their penises surgically removed. I mean, folks, where is this unbelievable insanity going to end?? Did Frieden ever hear of personal responsibility once in his whole life?
This latest madness of Frieden’s all started when there was just one, single experimental study done recently in Africa, where a small group of men who were circumsized suffered lower rates of HIV infection than normal groups. No sooner did news of this "breakthrough" cross the Atlantic than Frieden was jumping out of his desk chair with cleavers in hand, ready to slice up the family jewels of mostly what he describes as the city’s poor black and hispanic gay men. And this is before this single African study has even been re-tested, studied, confirmed and peer-reviewed.
Now, I have some questions here. Just how is the city going to "encourage" men to part with their most prized flesh, flesh from such a sensitive and important area? Are Frieden and Bloomberg going to offer small "bribes" or "inducements" to get these men to let some hack city doctor cut them up, then pat them on the behind and give them their blessings to have even more risky sex? After all, according to Commissioner Frieden, getting circumsized makes your sex much less risky, so encouraging these men to get a "skin job" will make their future sex safer, and by definition the rest of us will all be safer. Only, most of the rest of us usually don’t make it a point to seek out poor, homosexual vagrants to have sex with.
Ya gotta admire the gall, the sheer nerve, the incredible assumptiveness of a guy like Frieden. But look at it this way, Dr. Mengele never let his better judgement or simple-minded ethical considerations get in the way of Medical Progress, so why should Frieden? Hey, if "encouraging" poor, lower class black and Latino homosexuals to get circumsized can cut the spread of AIDS, maybe Frieden should just ban all sex between all New Yorkers who are not heterosexually married. After all, isn’t homosexual sex always more risky than heterosexual sex? And if it is, why not just ban it altogether? We banned all trans fat in restaurants because trans fat is always riskier than canola oil, after all. With something as dangerous as trans fat, or gay sex, and black and Latino gay sex at that, why take any chances letting average dumb people like us make our own judgements?
Maybe there could eventually be some way in the future for Frieden and Bloomberg to monitor all sex that goes on in NYC. We know for sure that if they could monitor all the sex we’re having, they would do it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t they? I mean, it would definitely make us safer, right?
Now, we know this circumcision thing would all be done the right way, Kosher I mean, if Frieden is doing it. Maybe Frieden could even get his qualified Jewish rabbi friends to do the brises, although that might require a whole new level of brotherhood and solidarity between the black and Latino and Jewish communities. It was one thing when Jewish People of Conscience were willing to walk in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to end the Jim Crow laws, but would Righteous Jews also be willing to "get their hands dirty" circumsizing poor, black and Latino homosexual vagrants? Maybe they would do a Barack Obama, because he’s "clean", but Joe the Neighborhood Pimp?? The questions really make your head spin.
The whole proposal strikes me as so typically Thomas Frieden and Michael Bloomberg, who Jim Lesczynski, our Serf City Editor, so aptly and famously described as the world’s first Jewish puritans. I don’t know whether we should think of Frieden as a Jewish puritan, or a Jewish Nazi; Perhaps Frieden could most accurately be described as the world’s first Jewish Nazi Puritan. I mean, with his non-smoking, non-gourmet, anti-erotic, uber-health-nut mentality and sado-masochist authoritarian tendencies, the person he most reminds me of is a pre-1944 Adolph Hitler, without his own country and armed forces (Whew!).
I tell you, Commissioner Frieden is treading on very thin ice on this one. There is no more personal, sacred territory in one’s life than one’s own sexual identity and physical sexual capabilities and equipment. Thomas Frieden’s latest bright idea to start circumcizing all of us will hopefully be the issue where he went just one step too far and it cost him his neck. When Frieden is eventually forced to resign over this outrage, maybe he can go to Africa and try to save all of them from themselves, and leave us New Yorkers in peace, to save ourselves and our own families, and maybe enjoy our life, if that’s even still allowed in this city.
This latest madness of Frieden’s all started when there was just one, single experimental study done recently in Africa, where a small group of men who were circumsized suffered lower rates of HIV infection than normal groups. No sooner did news of this "breakthrough" cross the Atlantic than Frieden was jumping out of his desk chair with cleavers in hand, ready to slice up the family jewels of mostly what he describes as the city’s poor black and hispanic gay men. And this is before this single African study has even been re-tested, studied, confirmed and peer-reviewed.
Now, I have some questions here. Just how is the city going to "encourage" men to part with their most prized flesh, flesh from such a sensitive and important area? Are Frieden and Bloomberg going to offer small "bribes" or "inducements" to get these men to let some hack city doctor cut them up, then pat them on the behind and give them their blessings to have even more risky sex? After all, according to Commissioner Frieden, getting circumsized makes your sex much less risky, so encouraging these men to get a "skin job" will make their future sex safer, and by definition the rest of us will all be safer. Only, most of the rest of us usually don’t make it a point to seek out poor, homosexual vagrants to have sex with.
Ya gotta admire the gall, the sheer nerve, the incredible assumptiveness of a guy like Frieden. But look at it this way, Dr. Mengele never let his better judgement or simple-minded ethical considerations get in the way of Medical Progress, so why should Frieden? Hey, if "encouraging" poor, lower class black and Latino homosexuals to get circumsized can cut the spread of AIDS, maybe Frieden should just ban all sex between all New Yorkers who are not heterosexually married. After all, isn’t homosexual sex always more risky than heterosexual sex? And if it is, why not just ban it altogether? We banned all trans fat in restaurants because trans fat is always riskier than canola oil, after all. With something as dangerous as trans fat, or gay sex, and black and Latino gay sex at that, why take any chances letting average dumb people like us make our own judgements?
Maybe there could eventually be some way in the future for Frieden and Bloomberg to monitor all sex that goes on in NYC. We know for sure that if they could monitor all the sex we’re having, they would do it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t they? I mean, it would definitely make us safer, right?
Now, we know this circumcision thing would all be done the right way, Kosher I mean, if Frieden is doing it. Maybe Frieden could even get his qualified Jewish rabbi friends to do the brises, although that might require a whole new level of brotherhood and solidarity between the black and Latino and Jewish communities. It was one thing when Jewish People of Conscience were willing to walk in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to end the Jim Crow laws, but would Righteous Jews also be willing to "get their hands dirty" circumsizing poor, black and Latino homosexual vagrants? Maybe they would do a Barack Obama, because he’s "clean", but Joe the Neighborhood Pimp?? The questions really make your head spin.
The whole proposal strikes me as so typically Thomas Frieden and Michael Bloomberg, who Jim Lesczynski, our Serf City Editor, so aptly and famously described as the world’s first Jewish puritans. I don’t know whether we should think of Frieden as a Jewish puritan, or a Jewish Nazi; Perhaps Frieden could most accurately be described as the world’s first Jewish Nazi Puritan. I mean, with his non-smoking, non-gourmet, anti-erotic, uber-health-nut mentality and sado-masochist authoritarian tendencies, the person he most reminds me of is a pre-1944 Adolph Hitler, without his own country and armed forces (Whew!).
I tell you, Commissioner Frieden is treading on very thin ice on this one. There is no more personal, sacred territory in one’s life than one’s own sexual identity and physical sexual capabilities and equipment. Thomas Frieden’s latest bright idea to start circumcizing all of us will hopefully be the issue where he went just one step too far and it cost him his neck. When Frieden is eventually forced to resign over this outrage, maybe he can go to Africa and try to save all of them from themselves, and leave us New Yorkers in peace, to save ourselves and our own families, and maybe enjoy our life, if that’s even still allowed in this city.
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