Are You....

Are you going to take the H1N1 vaccine?

Sebellius swears it's safe, and we like, uh, trust her, right?

Editor of HuffPo's Health Unit Mocks Death of Cornell Student

Friday, September 11, 2009, a 20 year old student at Cornell University, Warren Schor, pictured left, died of complications from the swine flu. IvyGate Blog chose the tragedy as an occasion for mockery and silliness.

IvyGate is a blog that purports itself to be a "news and gossip blog that covers the Ivy League" and is written by current and former students. In the past they've covered stories such as the Princeton class president who set a squirrel on fire and more recently, mocking the distribution at Harvard of a pamphlet instructing students not to defecate in the shower.

When Warren Schor died last week, IvyGate published this article, originally under the byline of Molly Fitzpatrick, now under the byline of Adam Clark Estes. The article mocks Schor's death and the administration attempts to encourage students to stay healthy by practicing good hygiene. So intent was IvyGate on its mission of mockery that they couldn't even get the dead student's name right in the original article, first identifying him as "William" Schor, until offended commenters called out the error.

The comments following the article are unanimously offended by the post; one even points out the mysterious change in authorship: "You change the name of the author of the post but yet you keep the disrespectful and inconsiderate tone of it. At the very least get rid of that tasteless photo. Ivy Gate Media should be ashamed. Shame on you."

So why the change of byline? Was Fitzpatrick embarrassed and having second thoughts about her poor taste? Was she pressed to pull the article? Why did blog editor Adam Clark Estes take ownership of the post?

In addition to his responsibilities as editor of IvyGate, Estes is also Associate Editor of Huffington Post Investigative Fund, described by Arianna Huffington this way: "This nonprofit Fund will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers." The site considers itself a "watchdog" of sorts, reporting on fraud, abuse, and waste in government.

In June, Estes announced the formation of the Investigative Fund's Health Unit whose purpose is to track the progress of ObamaCare. So why is a Huffington Post editor and one in charge of the Health Unit, mocking the death of a young man with H1N1?

Following the death of Schor, Cornell University officials suspended most social activities for a week in an attempt to quell the H1N1 outbreak on campus and protect the students, a move which Estes saw fit to poke fun of: "[The] Inter-Fraternity Council had instated a weeklong [sic] moratorium on social events to help prevent the spread of the disease. But, due to a flood of flu-related visits, Gannett also has stopped scheduling routine appointments, so they may just be canceling frat parties to avoid the standard Sunday morning rush for Plan B. After the jump—a lesson in hygiene and how your Atari will kill you. "

Estes (or Fitzpatrick) then wrote, in response to administration officials asking students to wash their hands, "you should never take it for granted that a frat house will have soap."

And if the mocking tone and the botched initial identification of Schor were not enough, IvyGate saw fit to illustrate the piece with a photo of a pig and the word "Crap!" over it. Tasteless.

It is unfortunate that Estes and Fitzpatrick, and I'm assigning responsibility to both, chose to mock the death of Warren Schor. The young man has a family that is grieving and a close network of friends. As editor of IvyGate, Estes assumes the responsibility for this post whether he wrote it or not; the change of byline was probably unnecessary.

IvyGate has reached a new low in insensitivity and should respond to the requests of its readers, as well as a common sense of decency, apologize to the family, and pull the post.

Update: Linked by The Daley Gator! And Carol's Closet! Also Backyard Conservative, thanks! Also Legal Insurrection! Welcome Michelle Malkin readers!

Update 2: Now a Memeorandum thread.

Update 3: This morning, IvyGate posted an update to their story. They took down the picture of the pig and replaced it with a "more somber picture" and modified some of the language. I'll let you decide if you think it's an apology of if one is needed:

UPDATE: Some have questioned whether it's appropriate to have jokes in the same post that acknowledges a death. No element of this post mocks the deceased or those grieving—in fact, any humor is directed at the administration and their lack of response that precluded the student's death. However, since we wrote most the post before the death, then updated it afterwards, the tone may now be off. It's our policy never to take down posts, but as a concession we've added a more somber picture and adjusted some language.

From the comments following the post, it's not enough for some.

Take our Mayor, Please!

With the news of Ray Nagin's quarantine, some are pleading with China to hang on to old Ray there for a bit (all in good fun, of course!~)

The Crescent City has enough problems without having to worry about a Nagin generated Swine Flu epidemic. In fact, Mayor Nagin has caused many of the city's current problems, so it is only appropriate that he stay out of the city for the remainder of his term. During his 11 month quarantine, Nagin can return to health and the City of New Orleans can recover from another serious disease, the Nagin Flu.

The symptoms of the Nagin Flu are quite severe and multi-faceted. They include a lack of cranes in the sky, an anemic hurricane recovery, a poor public education system, horrific street conditions, rampant violent crime, boneheaded comments from City Hall, outlandish promises that are never kept, too many city vehicles, not enough working crime cameras, a strip club loving technology director, an email obsessed and arrogant sanitation director, and a disillusioned and disgusted populace just to name a few. Clearly if there is a disease as dangerous as the Swine Flu, it is the Nagin Flu.

In fact, the Nagin Flu has infected 465,000 people, the pre-Katrina population of New Orleans, which is even more people than the Swine Flu has afflicted. Sadly, the victims of the Nagin Flu have been mostly concentrated in the City of New Orleans. Other cities have benefited from the Nagin Flu as our citizens and businesses have flocked to other areas during the seven year duration of this epidemic.

Greta Perry, over at Kiss My Gumbo, is collecting Nagin jokes if you have any!

Political Correctness Gone Amok

Political correctness gone amok:

"The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday. Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and 'we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu,' he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel."

and

"At a news briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took pains to repeatedly refer to the flu as the 'H1N1 virus.'"

The "Mexican flu" is better because....? why? We don't mind offending Mexicans? Stupid.