Hello there, fellow students and Starkvillians (at least I think that’s what you are called)! I realize that you are probably reading this on Halloween, but I’m actually writing this to turn in by my deadline, Oct. 28. That is the tenth month in the eighth year of the second millennia. Why is this significant? Well, there’s several reasons.
Today, Oct. 28, is actually my mom’s birthday, if you really care to know. More importantly though, this past weekend, while most of you remained in the Starkville area for Homecoming, I was in New Orleans for Voodoo Fest listening to overwhelming amounts of music. I’m sorry I missed Homecoming, but given the name of our town, I didn’t want to risk it. What do I mean?
Well, did you know that stark means “severely simple; without qualification; providing no shelter, etc?” Nevertheless, I’m sure that it was I who was the coward, because there’s no doubt that this weekend, you did your part in not giving Starkville the meaning of its name.
And as a result of my cowardly mistake of going to New Orleans, I ended up exploring Bourbon Street Friday night, listening to music all day Saturday (Lil Wayne, Thievery Corporation, Mars Volta, Ghostland Observatory, Nine Inch Nails), dancing to Electronica with tall, crazy dressed Europeans Saturday night until 8:30 in the morning on Sunday, sleeping some, listening to more music all day Sunday (Dashboard Confessional, REM) and finally driving back Sunday night arriving in Starkville at 3:30 Monday morning.
So, like any good opinion writer in my position, and especially one who likes numbers, I am going to give you some facts and figures in the hopes of angering you and getting you to think about something. Thank goodness it is still presidential election season; I can get plenty of material on that. And since many of us have never taken an American government class, and even fewer of us even have a vague idea of how our government works, we have no idea about the real, grave issues confronting this country. Instead, we settle on things we can understand to make our decisions – things that really don’t matter. We settle on issues like race, abortion and middle names like “Hussein.” Drink that coffee up my friend, and let’s have fun with one of these issues: age.
Barack Obama is running to become the fifth youngest president. In fact, he is young enough to be John McCain’s son, who is running to be the oldest president ever elected. That’s intense. Furthermore, McCain has a history of skin cancers, specifically a particularly dangerous, treasonous type called melanoma, to be exact, it’s stage IIA melanoma, but there are differing opinions on that as well. Why? Well, since 2000, McCain would not release his medical records. He finally released them earlier this year, but his 1,173 pages were only available to a cautiously preferred group of reporters for a pithy three hours. They were not allowed to make copies or phone calls. Why such mystery?
An aggressive operation was done in order to remove McCain’s cancer, the lymph nodes in the area, and a section of his parotid glands. An operation of this magnitude is usually done for much more serious aggressive cancers than a stage IIA melanoma. Then again, this could have been done out of zealous caution, because after all, he is John McCain. Regardless, a stage IIA melanoma has a death rate of 34 percent. According to infoplease.com, in 2004, only 13.7 percent of Americans live to be 70, and only 8.1 percent live to be 80.
Do any of these statistics and issues matter? I say “yes” and “no.” We cannot live in a world of what ifs. If I were a cancer survivor, I would hate to have someone tell me I could not participate in public service because I might die from cancer. What about Joe Biden? He has had two brain aneurysms. Is he not medically qualified to be a senator or a vice president? That’s why candidates are so careful with their medical records today. Maybe that’s why Obama has only released one page of his medical records? These things can make or break your election. It shouldn’t be that way.
I hope you didn’t find this opinion piece a waste of your time. It has plenty of opinionated material, if you think about it. My semi-permanent opinion of Starkville, my opinion of politics and some opinions on health issues. You learned when my mom’s birthday was. You learned that I went to a music festival, so that means there is about a 50 percent chance that I’m an MSU hippie kid. Taking into consideration that I went the year before, and the fact that my previous article was on the encroachment of rights as it relates to hookah use, that percentage is probably much higher. I probably even made some of you mad by talking about McCain’s health.
Lastly, though, you learned that I’m never seriously serious unless I am. And I am serious when I say this: If you think McCain and his health issues, along with his lack of true disclosure of his medical records, next to Barack Obama’s release of only one page of his own medical records is a forefront issue in American politics, something is seriously wrong with your concept of how this system works.
Julio Cespedes is a junior majoring in biological engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].