I Have a Dream?

I was recently chatting with a co-worker and the conversation drifted into a discussion about health care reform. I decided to forward him an e-mail I had received which contained the text of a letter to the editor of the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger. The letter was submitted to the paper by one Dr. Roger Starner Jones MD of Jackson. I include the content of that letter to the editor here for your reading enjoyment.

23 August 2009

Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

“Why Pay for the Care of the Careless”

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman’s health care?

Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture – a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self, or heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Starner Jones, MD

Jackson


Anyone who spends much time on the internet or sifting through e-mails knows that there is a lot of made up junk floating around out there. I usually make it a point to fact check items before I forward them along. Before I forwarded this item, I fact checked it. I ended up finding far more than the facts.

One of the top items which popped up in a Google search of Starner Jones MD was a Snopes entry. I trust that informed surfers know that Snopes is presently snarled in a controversy as to the political bias of the owners. I had always made every attempt to use multiple sources in the past and Snopes seemed thorough and accurate. I do however now use extra caution when reading through a Snopes entry. What is interesting about my search on Starner Jones MD was that while Snopes did verify that the Mississippi Clarion Ledger did publish the above letter to the editor they also felt compelled to publish a response letter to the editor. For the life of me, I can not determine what the response letter has to do with the veracity of the Starner Jones MD letter. Maybe the detractors of Snopes are correct and they do have a liberal bias. It seems that the truth is only the truth if it has a companion dissenting opinion to go along with it.

I also found a plethora of left wing blogs and opinions regarding the letter. They all said basically the same thing; Starner Jones MD is a white Republican racist. I went back and re-read the letter. I was confused.

No where in the letter did Dr. Jones indicate the coloration of his own skin. To be fair, I did find a photograph purported to be the good doctor. I didn’t check to see if it was actually him. He appears to be what most would call “white” but he seemed more of a light tannish pink to me.

I could not find his political affiliation. I guess his detractors have more time and energy than me to verify this.

That leaves us with the racist tag. Since the liberal dogma is that only “white” males can be racist toward “blacks,” and since we assume the photo of Dr. Starner is real and he is in fact “white,” I looked for proof that the patient was “black.” Could not find it. Dr. Jones’s detractors say that the description is obviously of a “black” person. I find that leap in logic to be racist in and of itself. As a matter of fact, I know more “white” people who fit the description given.

The real truth is that liberals, in order to further their agenda, selectively refuse to separate ideas from skin pigmentation. In this case, Dr. Jones, a “white” doctor, took an idea put forth by the President of the United States, a “black” lawyer, to task. He logically pointed out that it is the culture of America that is broken, not health care. Collectively, regardless of skin color, we Americans are far more interested in spending our money on things which are detrimental to our health while we are averse to spending our money on things which will preserve and improve our health. Anyone who looks at the American situation with any degree of honesty realizes that the only way to combat that point of view is to provide an ad homonym claim of racism.

Dr. Jones’s letter does attack the character of his patient. In so doing, it to some extent attacks every American’s character. I know I spend some of my money on things which are detrimental to my health. I am sure that if you are honest with yourself, you will admit to the same.

Dr. Martin Luther King said the following in his “I Have a Dream” speech:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Using liberal logic, Dr. King’s idea seems to be racist. I would rather think that the true racists are today’s liberals.