Parker v. Parker: “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”
The race for the Alabama 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Bud Cramer has been one of the nastiest that I’ve witnessed in a long time. The two candidates, Republican Wayne Parker and Democrat Parker Griffith, have spent considerably more time and money slinging mud and impugning the other’s character than they have actually talking about themselves, their qualifications and exactly how they plan to help their constituents once they’re in office (Update: please see my correction to this paragraph in the comments section).
Just how bad has it been? So bad that even the editorial board at the Huntsville Times is fed up and has refused to endorse either candidate. And neither will I.
I don’t know either gentleman, although I know a little more about Wayne Parker since his kid has played soccer against my kid and he’s an elder at a church across the street from mine. Parker Griffith is a retired radiation oncologist who was already out of that profession and into other ventures when I moved to Huntsville in 1993, so I don’t know him at all.
All I know is what I’ve seen in their ads, and they haven’t really helped me gain more knowledge about their qualifications. So, I’m left with the rather round about way of choosing a candidate by deciding which candidate’s ads offended me the most and then voting against that one–or not voting for either.
At the center of this campaign has been Wayne Parker’s accusation, based on the release of what were supposed to be sealed, confidential peer reviews of Parker Griffith’s medical charts from the late 1980s, that he was a substandard physician who undertreated cancer patients so that he could make more money. If you haven’t followed this, you can get up to speed here.
I’m not here to defend Parker Griffith’s medical care, although many former patients and colleagues have stepped up to do just that. I can only point out that chart reviews only tell part of the story. It sounds like Parker Griffith didn’t keep particularly good notes–you’d be suprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many physicians don’t. A chart review doesn’t include an examination of the patient nor the thoughts that were going on inside the doctor’s head when treatment decisions were being made.
We were told in school that “if it’s not in the chart, then it didn’t happen.” In other words, if you want to let people know what you were thinking, document, document, document. Yet, many doctors fail to do a good job at that, and it would appear that Parker Griffith’s documentation at times was substandard.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean his care was. I’ve been involved in a lot of peer review, both as the reviewer and the review-ee, and I know for a fact, because I have seen it happen, that chart review can be used against a doctor in an untoward, “political” fashion by someone holding a grudge. So, on the surface, I find Parker Griffith’s assertion that he was the victim of a politically-motivated hit job by fellow doctors who were put out with him over his opening of a cancer treatment center which would compete directly with Huntsville Hospital to be, at the very least, plausible.
I’m quite sure that if somebody really wanted to go over my patient charts with a fine tooth comb, cherry pick some questionable entries and then make me look like a bad doctor, they would probably have no trouble doing so.
What really irks me here is the way Wayne Parker has taken these leaked, 20-year-old confidential documents and flung them out into the public forum where average voters and laypeople for the most part don’t understand the nuance, art and practice of medicine and the clinical and legal issues surrounding it and used them to paint his opponent as a monster who intentionally undertreated cancer patients so that he could make more money.
Such a conclusion is an overreaching extrapolation of the data in those charts, to say the least. If such a monster actually existed, then Parker Griffith’s peers at Huntsville Hospital during that time would have had an ethical obligation to turn him into the Alabama Medical Board ASAP in order to strip him of his license and to protect the public.
The fact that that apparently didn’t happen speaks volumes. Yet, this attack has been Wayne Parker’s main argument in this election and it has been effective. Parker Griffith may very well lose the election because of it.
And then, there was the whole “Islam thing,” too.
In a recent televised debate, both candidates were asked, “If Jesus were running for Congress, how would he have run his campaign?” (only in the Deep South, right?)
Wayne Parker responded by saying Jesus was not “meek and mild” but instead a “man’s man” who would “always speak the truth” and call out his opponents for their hypocrisy and misdeeds.
I took this to mean that if potentially misleading confidential peer reviews had been leaked to Jesus that he wouldn’t have hesitated to use them to smear one of his opponents either.
Parker Griffith responded by saying that Jesus would have focused more on the struggling masses and then he said this:
“(Jesus) would probably be ashamed of both of us a little bit.”
In the climatic scene in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the Grandmother, who has always lived a selfish and judgmental life, is about to be brutally murdered by an escaped convict, The Misfit. In her final seconds, she has a moment of illumination when she sees herself and The Misfit as who they both truly are–mutually fallen members of the same human family in need of Grace and redemption.
After she’s dead, The Misfit, who has been startled to his core by this moment of Grace, says, “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
It didn’t appear to me that anybody was holding a gun to Parker Griffith’s head when he spoke those words of truth. Neither Wayne Parker nor Parker Griffith may be truly “good men,” but it may very well be that one is a better man than the other.
8 Comments
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kdeats
To think that someone can compare 2008 technology and the treatment of cancer to 1980’s technology and the treatment of cancer. Look at all the advancements we take advantage of today that weren’t even thought about back then. Cell Phones, personal computers, bluetooth, wi-fi, If you were to compare Parker Griffith’s practice techniques to those of a practicing oncologist, they might look a little sub-par. But he IS NOT a practicing oncologist…nor should his POLITICAL views be based on his previous career when there was SUB STANDARD TECHNOLOGY. IF that is the case then we could say because someone is a bad husband and they got a divorce wouldn’t make them fit for any office. SILLY: come on people use some common sense. OH my grandmother was treated by Dr. Griffith when she was dying from Pancreatic cancer. But you don’t here me gripping because he didn’t let her live more than 3 months like Randy Pausch or Patrick Swazi, No that is the way things went in 1981, they did ALL they could do with what they had. I can’t wait for this mess to be over with.
Mike the Eyeguy
Me either, kdeats.
Like I said, many patients, patient’s family members and colleagues have stepped forward in Parker Griffith’s defense. Count kdeats among them.
JRB
It seems to me that this is a fine example of the means destroying the ends. We would like to think that the campaigns are meant to illuminate stories, facts and philosophies, and many a candidate falls victim (READ: MCCAIN/PALIN) to the wrong-headed notion that the means of their campaign should not be the story itself, only the vehicle of the preferred narrative. This is why the GOP decried Obama claiming the campaign as executive experience, despite that he has presided over a 20 month, $500 million enterprise with a paid staff of thousands. Here the conduct of the campaign is vastly more telling than the weak, unethical and misleading attempts to paint the other guy.
Parker should lose because of his campaign.
Mike the Eyeguy
I don’t know “The Wayne Parker Story” like so many of my friends do. I didn’t grow up here. Apparently, “everybody knows Wayne.” The only “Wayne story” I know is the one I’ve seen and heard this fall. I mean, I know everybody says he’s a “nice guy” and an elder and a Sunday school teacher and all, and of course, “a conservative family guy,” yada yada…
But what am I supposed to think when I get all these slick, RNC-funded and produced fliers depicting cancer patients suffering at the hands of his opponent in my mailbox every few days?
I’ll tell you what I think: I think somebody has sold his soul.
Mike the Eyeguy
From The Huntsville Times, here’s how much the respective parties have spent on positive and negative ads in their campaigns:
Dem: $430,000–positive
$259,000–negative
Rep: $14,000–positive
$303,000–negative
So Parker Griffith has spent more on telling about his own qualifications than he has attacking his opponent. Wayne Parker has spent much, much more on attacking his opponent than he has telling about his own qualifications.
So really, my first paragraph stands corrected.
kdeats
well I was only 1 when my Grandmother died…so I don’t know about defend but I will be logical and reasonable
Laurie
The biggest problem with these vicious techniques is that they work, as has been proven over and over by the late Lee Atwater and his disciple Karl Rove. If your candidate doesn’t have something positive to offer, it’s imperative that you make voters afraid of his/her opponent.
What troubles me most is that these attacks are so widespread in the party that claims the most self-proclaimed “Christian” followers.
Before he died of a brain tumor at the age of 40, Atwater had this to say in an apology to one of the many people he had attacked in this way:
“my illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything.”
Unfortunately this lesson was not learned by the people who came after him.
My prayer is that the campaigns that have gone the least negative will win this year, perhaps making strategists rethink whether or not this is the best way to run not just a campaign, but a country.
Mike the Eyeguy
kdeats–“logical and reasonable”–just like I taught you. 😉
Laurie–I remember Atwater’s own “moment of illumination” quite well. Unfortunately, for today’s Rove acolytes, it will probably take a gun to the head or a brain tumor of their own before they will finally wise up.
I firmly predict that Senator McCain will end up apologizing for some of the things he did and authorized within the next 2-3 months. Deep down, the old lion is just too honorable a guy not to–I think.