CDC head Tom Frieden

Tom Frieden Mr. Rogers

The dolt who heads the CDC, Tom Frieden, used to be NYC's health commissioner. Basically, he's Mr. Rogers in a lab coat. Frieden enacted every single item on Bloomburg's nanny-state list -- and did so with enthusiasm. He is a complete nitwit so I'm not surprised that he screwed up the early Ebola response. He's that kind of a fella.

Just to give you an idea of what his NYC "health" policies were like, let's talk cigarettes for a moment. At the time, I smoked four packs a day and was quite happy doing so.

Frieden, in a half-assed effort to stop fires caused by unwatched, lit cigarettes, removed the chemical that makes cigarettes burn in a steady fashion. In its place, he added a new thickness to the paper. So how did this play out on the ground (i.e., in smokers' lungs)? The cigarettes were much stronger after the change. They really whomped your lungs, in a way that cigarettes never did before. As a militant smoker, I was thrilled.

And then he arranged for the price of cigarettes to soar. This had a predictable effect: we now smoked our cigarettes down to the barest nub, which...uh, causes cancer. We had to because we couldn't afford to smoke casually anymore; it was too expensive. So we smoked with a new sense of determination, instilled in us by dear Dr. Frieden. In fact, many of us, myself included for a time, switched to non-filter cigarettes so we could smoke more of the cigarette. We didn't want those damned filters to get in the way. You should have seen us, smoking our unfiltered cigarettes until they were hardly there anymore. At times the tiny lit stub actually flew into my lungs as I tried to snatch that last puff.

That's what Tom Frieden did for cigarette smokers. So just imagine what he'll do for people with Ebola.

Science for dummies

Why must they always gear science shows toward nitwits? What about the rest of us, the ones who can think?

I just tried to watch an episode of "How the Universe Was Made" on the Science channel. Oy. The narrator might as well have been Mr. Rogers. He spoke s-l-o-w-l-y. Very s-l-o-w-l-y. And as usual, everything was illustrated with simpleton video, like cars crashing. Because no one can understand about asteroids in the Kuiper Belt hitting each other unless they see cars crashing.

It drives me crazy. Please make some science shows for people with brains. We'd love to watch stuff like that -- but there isn't any. Morgan Freeman's show, "Through the Wormhole" is the closest thing to an intelligent science show. But there, the problem is that he presents authentic geniuses and wingnuts, without telling you who's who. Plus the show tries really hard to present everything as strange. It's the way reality is. It's not strange at all. But they do present things with impact and style, so I guess I have to admit someone's at least opened the door to decent TV science shows. (And yes, NOVA is a Mr. Rogers show. It doesn't get my vote.)

Anyone out there agree (or disagree)? The Mr. Rogers approach drives me nuts.