Frist Is Fristenstein According To Aged Paper Clipee

Good People Begetting Good People....

Or Not

by Winsip Custer CPW News Service

Dietrich Schleiermacher Barth was paper clipped.  "My name was added to the list of Paper Clipees who traveled out of Germany and Italy to the United States following World War II.  I'm not sure why I was included in the list of military, science and political notables who were of special interest  to the West, but I took it as an act of God....kind of like my family name," he said.

I asked him if Schleirmacher was Friedrich Schleirmacher the theologian most remembered for his belief that God is the author of evil.  "My parents didn't tell me, but they sometimes called me 'you little devil'," he said laughingly.  "You see, my distant relative Karl Barth was big on the sovereignty of God, but I was too old to have been named for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but I like his writings immensely."

I asked Mr. Barth what he has been doing since coming to the United States.  He said "I have just been enjoying life, my garden, my coffee and tea.  I live on a very small pension that afforded me one meal a day and some minor pleasures like the coffee and tea, but just how much does a single man with no family need to get by?" he asked.  "Occasionally I splurge and buy a new book....well ....new for me....usually at a used book store."

I asked Mr. Barth if he had been reading any good books lately.  "Good?  How do you define 'good'?" He asked.   "Of favorable character and decency?  Free from injury or disease? Commercially sound? Agreeable?  Pleasant?  Clever?  Amusing?  Wholesome?  Profitable?  Advantageous?  Honorable?  Deserving of respect? Upstanding?  Praiseworthy?  You see, you have asked a wide open question and for someone who has been through the rigors of Hitler's Germany, I'm slow to accept such labels," he said, "But I have been reading a book that underscores the very question you raise."

I asked him if he would share his findings with me.

"Certainly.   I have been reading a book by Senator William Frist of Tennessee whose HCA/Columbia Hospital was, under the direction of the lawyer Richard Scott, a close associate of Richard Rainwater, George Walker Bush's partner in their baseball team in Texas. Scott is now the governor of Florida, but his HCA/Columbia system received the largest Medicare fraud fine in U.S. history....about $1.7 billion.  Mr. Scott got off virtually Scott-free, but with his $400 million severance package.  Columbia/HCA was to become the Walmart of America's health care system.  He was stealing from Peter....or in this case John Q. Public to pay Paul....ah, Richard and William.  Unfortunately, the HCA/Columbia system's corporate climate seemed to take its direction more from the likes of a Las Vegas casino promoter or Joseph Mengele, than from say, Madame Currie or Florence Nightingale."

I asked Mr. Barth to elaborate.  

"Well, consider the title of the book...Good People Beget Good People.  Right off the bat you have a serious problem.  Christians have long maintained that 'good' is a problematic term. Suffice it to say that those who have reviewed  the book have said it more clearly than I ever could," said Barth providing a couple of reviews.  One wrote.....

This is a fascinating study of the extraordinary mix of in-breeding, animal sacrifice, and corruption required to produce the world's worst human being. Coming from a family of mildly despicable cheats, the Frists had a leg up on normal human beings...but it still took an enormous amount of laboratory work and careful training to produce not just a self-involved twit but an unspeakable monster.

This book is Frankenstein of our century, a marvellous account of the line between science and morality, and the "Dr. Frist" character is a chilling reminder of the true evil inherent in all humanity...even if readers will find Dr. Frist himself an impossibly overdrawn character. Surely, no actual human could be so evil. Nevertheless, he stands like Shelley's monster as an emblem of the path we as a species must never take.

By damning this "Dr. Frist" character and the bizarre process that created him, this sterling work serves as a moral guide, a hope for the future.

Barth lifted another sheet of paper.  Its author wrote....

I suppose it all had something to do with going from the medical business, these days in such disrepute, what with nobody being able to afford seeing a doctor and getting no results when they do, and going into the even MORE disreputable business of politics. What? You say it will get better, that is to say, MORE GOOD, when GOOD people, begotten by GOOD people, get into it? That's GOOD! So, just in case there was a mistake, don't just settle for a GOOD person. Make sure that it was a GOOD person, who was sired and dammed and GOODLY begotten, by GOOD persons, who had GOOD thoughts while they were begetting this GOOD person. And, for full measure of GOODNESS, make sure the GOOD person was born in a GOOD place, in the middle of a GOOD country, and there's only one that can be counted on to be GOOD, namely America. But, just to make sure, get the GOOD person in a reliably GOOD state, like the State of Tennessee. That will be GOOD, even if you're NO GOOD yourself. 


Another....


This book bears further scrutiny based on the recent revealations Frist dumped vast amounts of family stock just ahead of the plunge. Frist is on the record denying being in possession of any prior knowledge about the company's status. Unfortunately, phone and other records prove otherwise. Oops. Considering the fact that Frist is a public figure, that the money involved was a far larger amount than the one involved in the Martha Stewart case and the fact that the lie is so recent and fresh he cannot claim a faulty memory, it makes one wonder if this "Good People" will do "Hard Time".

Yet another....


Great people do not hide from U.S. citizens the fact that during the 1990s and beyond, children were overdosed on mercury via routine childhood vaccinations. Great people help little children recover from mercury-induced autism, attention deficits, tics and other mental and physical illnesses. And great people do not defraud Medicare and get fined $640 million. The Frists are a greedy, self-serving family and Senator Bill belongs in prison.


"You see the problem?" asked Barth.  "That last review was written before the fine jumped to $1.7 billion.  Jesus, whom some characterized as the Good Physician or the Good Shepherd and he said of himself when labeled with the term 'good'....'why callest me good?  Only God is good.'   I believe he knew damn well that anyone that uses that description to describe any form of humanity is blasphemous.  It would be like talking about the 'good termite'.....something that invades...and we are all invaders to greater and lesser degrees.....something that invades the house and consumes its contents before it is detected by others.  This free and loose use of the term 'good' to describe our leaders when they so nearly identify themselves with Jesus, is also what makes other religions....especially Islam which says it reveres Jesus....and who if they did, would lay down their stones, is what makes them distrust us all the more.  No, none are good....no not one."

I asked if Mr. Barth was aware that Dr. Frist had saved the life of General David Petraeus, one of our most celebrated military leaders, after Patraeus was accidentally shot at Fort Campbell Kentucky near Nashville.

General Petraeus
fainting before
Congressional
hearing

"Yes, I have read the conflicting accounts of just what happened there and I can tell you that I am concerned about that story," said Barth.  "One account said that the soldier, whose name I cannot find, only forty feet away from the General, dropped to his knees using the butt of his rifle to break the fall, just as he was trained to do, and the rifle discharged.  Another account by Reagan and Bush speech writer and expert propagandist, Peggy Noonan, author of the interesting phrase...interesting when you consider the darkness associated with it... 'a thousand points of light'...she says that the soldier tripped and forgetting to take his finger off of his trigger coincidentally discharged it into the General's chest. I have read with great interest Christian T Miller's book, Blood Money, which begins with the account of West Point's beloved Col. Theodore "Ted" Westhusing who taught ethics at the Academy and whose encounter with General Petraeus in Baghdad included a demand for accountability....a demand that was followed by Westhusing's death within four hours....some say a suicide.....others say murder.  It's the kind of thing that despotic regimes do all over the world and that Hitler's mind controllers perfected with great relish in Nazi Germany.   Some had shown how traumatic events can be used to mold and shape the human will beyond the norm.  The modern psychiatric diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder is often directly related to such traumatic events.   I'm just saying that the 'friendly fire'  that General Petraeus experienced at Fort Campbell may not have been so 'friendly'," said Barth. "And if what I suspect is true, I'd have fainted when I was called before Congress, too.  Good?  Good?  I believe that however you look at it, Jesus was right.  "None are good save God Almighty.  And we are not him."


For a "Letter To Col. Westhusing"....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJX6DWi0vg