Tired, hackneyed, cliche...but true:

It's the media who tells the electorate who are the "serious" candidates and who are not, who are legitimate and who are "fringe." It's a luxury to be well-informed today, given the information avalanche, and many people rely a bit on their favorite newspapers or talking heads to give them a bit of heads up. When a candidate is routinely ignored (Edwards) or ridiculed (Kucinich) or referred to as "out there" (Paul), then it takes hold, like it or not. (Thanks, Mr. Humidity, for the apt Chomsky quotation--it was perfect).

On the Diane Rehm Show the other day I heard some pundit arrogantly brush off Ron Paul, absolutely definitively, dismissively, with the utmost self-possession. It was breathtaking, given that candidate's fanatical support and millions raised by regular people. The pundit disposed of Paul with a smallish remark about Paul's "bizarre speeches" in the debates, and I simply couldn't get over the hubris. Here is a candidate with thoughtful, consistent views that obviously resonate with a significant portion of the population (though not me), whose distinction from others in his party has provided a home for Republicans against the war and whose honesty has lit a fire under millions of college students--here is a man who is being completely dismissed by the punditocracy in a way that is both outrageous and ubiquitous. Welcome to John Edwards' world.

I honestly don't know which is better--the "foolish" label attached to third-party candidates and so-called "fringe" candidates or the complete silent treatment of Edwards. At any rate, I know that someone like Giuliani, whose poll numbers and delegates are at rock bottom, is still treated virtually the same as the "leaders" on the Republican side. Who decides this stuff?

I'm OK with it. If for example science proved The Secret phenom in terms of neuroscience ("The positive thoughts you deliberately entertain about the store clerk subtly change your attitude--and behavior--toward the clerk, which distract the clerk from her mother's Alzheimer's, which makes her feel good, which makes her smile and act friendly toward you...." or whatever) then it makes sense. But mostly I think it's just Blame the Victim. Like babies born in Darfur somehow caused and therefore deserve their own suffering or something. Or praying for cancer victims--ugh. So the ones who die didn't want it bad enough? Didn't have enough faith? Didn't have a network of pray-ers big enough?

I like Joe and Teresa Graedon's THE PEOPLE'S PHARMACY (syndicated column in the newspaper) b/c it seems to embrace both traditional and alternative therapies, as long as there's evidence (even if anecdotal) that they work. Mostly you find that practitioners of either eschew the other.

I'm trying to understand your antagonism toward science: Are you putting homeopathy in the "science" category? Because I wouldn't. Nor would I call it materialist, since ironically there is no material there when it comes to homeopathic remedies.

I get that your wife needed something more than doctors and pills and medicine, but for some, that is precisely what makes them feel in control. We are all different. I think that if I were diagnosed with a grave illness, I would want all the medical information I could get. I would be one of those reading the obscure studies, looking for a cure that the professionals didn't know about. I'm not suggesting it would translate into anything actually useful, just that I think it would make me feel better, in the way your wife needed something more spiritual to make her feel better.

Who knows, I guess. I find myself becoming more and more attached to science as I grow older, but I suppose in the face of immanent mortality, I might search deeper too. It's easy to intellectualize when it isn't happening to you.

I'm so sorry about your wife.

At the end of the day, it's all science. In some cases, it might just be a matter of technicians catching up to spirituality; that is, proving after the fact what people have intuitively felt all along. If studies began to show conclusively that positive thoughts or prayer or smiling or kindness or beautiful clothing or music or meditation or living in yellow houses with picket fences cured cancer, eliminated heart disease, or warded off aging, we would sooner or later discover exactly which neurons were involved.

You raise a great point about the subjectivity of pain.

I have a friend who, in the traditional sense, does almost nothing to "contribute" to her family of husband and three teenage children. She sleeps until noon each day, gets out of the house (shopping, lunch, light workout) for a couple of hours in the afternoon, has dinner (prepared by hubby) and sits down with a magazine or the television and a glass of wine for the rest of the night. Her husband does the cleaning, the grocery and other shopping, the carting of kids, the cooking, the outdoor maintenance of their large home.

The explanation? Fibromyalgia. She has good days and those few good hours every day, but mostly she says she is in chronic, low-grade pain. As an outsider, a witness so to speak, sometimes I see it more clearly than other times. One night she had a party at her house and she was the lovely hostess for hours. When all were gone (except me), she literally began to cry from the pain all over. At that moment, it seemed obvious that whatever the hell was wrong with her was real. Other times, though, I have to admit it's frustratingly out of reach of my understanding. (What I've left out is the history of evidence that she manipulates people routinely and lies openly--long story, not relevant, other than to legitimize my occasional skepticism about her pain). But those distressingly real moments where her pain is nakedly apparent give me pause and remind me that I AM NOT HER. While she sometimes seems self-indulgent, I cannot ever know her or anyone else's pain.

Me too.