Sweet Poetic License
I knew of the Bloggess, but I’m pretty sure I’d never been to her blog. I can’t even keep up with the blogs of all my friends here in the DOC, so I simply don’t have time, energy or interest to track down other blogs that I won’t have time to read. I know she’s got a popular, well-read, reportedly entertaining blog, and people think she’s all that and a bag of black pepper kettle chips, but I had no opinion of her. Yesterday, I saw a few people had posted a link to her blog on Facebook, prefacing the link with comments that led me to the conclusion that Bloggess had raised the ire of quite a few people with diabetes. Curiosity is a natural character flaw of mine, one that has gotten me in more than a random pickle, so I clicked to find out for myself what this otherwise well-regarded blogger lady had done.
It seems that one of the big sugar companies had promoted a contest to bloggers, asking them to write and post a limerick about their company and product for the opportunity to win an ipad. I’m not an igirl, but I know lots of people are icrazy, so I can only guess that this contest elicited a fair number of limericks from people looking to start or expand their respective igizmo collections.
Just because I’m not susceptible to the guerrilla marketing strategies of sugar companies recruiting bloggers into the icult doesn’t mean I’m totally impervious to other bribes though. If Ben & Jerry offered a lifetime supply of ice cream in exchange for a snappy limerick, I could see myself generating a new blog about something not related to health – reptiles and puppies that fart too much, crap that annoys me, the virtues of cardigans – for the sake of having a place to post a limerick so I could potentially win some Fair Goodness Cake or Clusterfluff, which is the best ice cream flavor name ever by the way. Virtually everyone can be gotten for a price, and in my world ice cream trumps icrap.
Since I have no incentive to get in on the hardcore product testing and company-sponsored contest action, I’m content to let the mommybloggers and whoever else jump through the marketers’ hoops. I generally don’t pay any attention to that sort of thing, but this time, I was drawn in by the connection to diabetes. Apparently, Bloggess got a form letter inviting her to submit a limerick for the sugar company’s ipad contest. My cursory impression is that the Bloggess’s thing is bitterly snarky humor about her life, people, things, stuff, whatnot, etc., and dropping f-bombs. My blog is much less about those things than her blog, but get to know me offline, and you’ll see she and I have a few things in common. Bloggess accepted the sugar company’s invitation, although more as a joke than anything, and being true to form, her limerick was snarky, used the most obvious thing that rhymes with Nantucket, and relayed the story of a girl who ate too much sugar, got diabetes, and lost her legs.
On the one hand, I know the internet is to be taken with a grain of salt, and her blog is specifically meant to be funny. As I thought about it though, since there’s a correlation between diet and increased risk for cancer, would it have been just as funny and defended just as adamantly by her readers if the poem had been about someone with cancer? My adapted version of her limerick:
There once was a girl from Nantucket,
Who bought KFC by the bucket.
Chicken and biscuits weren’t the answer
So she ultimately got cancer
Then she lost both her breasts and said, “Fuck it”.
My version seems equivalent to her diabetes joke, so is it equally funny? If the cancer joke crosses a line, does the diabetes joke also cross a line? If the cancer joke is more offensive, can someone explain why?
It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that I really appreciate un-PC diabetes humor. Jason and I cope with this stupid disease by relying on jokes about how I make him eat fruits and vegetables because I plan to harvest his organs, how he doesn’t know whether to give me glucagon or shoot me in the head when I’m having a seizure because I act like a zombie, and other comparable nonsense that is actually a reflection of a long list of worries, fears, and in some cases, harsh realities of life with type 1 diabetes. I think it’s one thing for a joke to be a coping mechanism used by an “insider”, and it’s another for it to be used by an “outsider” who likely doesn’t understand the implications of the joke, like the potential to unwittingly perpetuate a myth about sugar causing diabetes.
To her credit, she responded to the comments that were critical of the poem very diplomatically, expressing that she understood why a few commenters were unhappy with the limerick. She’s actually no stranger to chronic illness, and admitted getting tired of explaining to people that being elderly isn’t a prerequisite for having arthritis. Not to discount her frustration combating misconceptions about her condition, because as an outsider, I won’t pretend to “get it”, but at least she isn’t being perpetually, explicitly and implicitly, sometimes hostilely blamed by the media, absolute strangers, marginal acquaintances, friends and even family for her medical issues, as many of us in the DOC have experienced. I remember being accused by a kid in my 1st grade class of having diabetes because I ate too much sugar, and I’ve spent 33 years trying to explain to people that sugar doesn’t cause diabetes, defending the way my mom fed me when I was a kid, defending myself, and trying to educate people. I don’t drop blog f-bombs like Bloggess, but I find it fucking exhausting to forever be explaining that eating too much sugar doesn’t cause diabetes. While I can appreciate a good joke, in this case, I’d be much more appreciative of her readers’ sensitivity, of which they showed little, to the psychological and social challenges that are inherent to living with diabetes, and I like a good laugh, but not at the expense of easing the frustration of diabetes, for the sake of entertaining people who don’t know or care how incessantly tiresome their misconceptions are.
There was a girl who got type 1 diabetes
Because her immune system was depleted
She didn’t cause her disease
By eating candies
But was pissed for being blamed and mistreated
Wonderful points. While my curiosity is piqued by the “F-bombs”, I will avoid going to her site. I don’t want to get upset or annoyed. Like you, I have found myself frequently explaining that “No, I did not feed my 3 year old Joe too much sugar…sugar consumption had nothing to do with his diagnosis.”
I love that last limerick. it is perfect!
Great post Lee Ann. So much truth here that those outside of the OC will not get, but should.
My favorite comment on her post was one who said she didn’t understand why we were all so offended but that she had a son with special needs so Bloggess better not use the R-word or she would be mad.
HUH?
I had a comment all typed up to post on her blog. I left it up for a few hours without hitting “Post”. I didn’t know if I wanted to start or not. I was very clever and actually had the same sentiment you have. I made a similar limerick purposely using ‘retard’ in response to one of the comments. In the end, I didn’t post it. I get too involved with these type of things. Ask Tricia. I’m constantly fighting 9/11 conspiracy theorists. So, thank you for your response.
Very well said, all around. I love the last bit.
LOVE it! Sometimes the endless loop of defensive justifications as to how I didn’t just one day gee whizzikers decide to bring Diabetes on myself by eating a Blizzard can make me feel like punching someone in the face. It’s a strange thing, this blame the victim mentality that accompanies Diabetes. Even if a person has Type Two, it doesn’t mean they brought it about themselves by eating a dumptruck load of sugar (genetics?! Are you listening?!!). No one would think to tell a cancer victim: “hey, you know that exposure to toxic chemicals that brought about your disease? Well it’s your fault.”
Thanks for the post – gives me plenty of snappy comebacks and f-bombs to deliver to the sugar smackers out there
Great post. As always
so beautifully and eloquently said, lee ann. truly.
Lee Ann, Thanks for a thoughtful overview of the issue (one which I would have otherwise missed completely) and the issues related to misconceptions. While I doubt her post was done with ill-will, as you note, perpetuating myths about other chronic diseases is something I think the D-OC and others need to do a better job of dispelling, regardless of which disease we may be referring to. I try to acknowledge when I’m not an authority on something and generally welcome corrections when they are pointed out. If only the mainstream press would adopt such flexibility!
Bravo!! Wonderfully written!!
Well said!!
Now I’m all hungry for black pepper chips.
It’s good that there are blogs out there like this one that focus on education, because we could all use a bit more of it. My blog is a humor blog (although many would contest that) so education’s not my focus. I do dark, irreverent humor that helps people laugh at tragedy. In fact, today’s post is making jokes about cancer and God. I do not recommend it to anyone, but it’s helped me get through tough patches without breaking and it’s helped others too. Not all of my readers are perfect and some might overstep a line. Likewise, I got a lot of nasty emails from people calling me a whore and wishing me to die because I wrote a limerick. No one is perfect, but I try to understand that we’re all different. A ton of diabetics loved the limerick (which was not aimed at making fun of diabetics, but instead at making fun of a sugar company asking me – a blogger who is notorious for NEVER giving free publicity to companies – to write a limerick – a form of poetry which is defined by being obscene and tasteless.)
Diabetes runs in my family so I know enough about it to know that education is needed and that blogs like yours can help. I also know what it’s like to be blamed for your autoimmune disease. You couldn’t possibly be expected to know it, but I am blamed for my arthritis quite often, as so many people assume that diet causes it. Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t tell me that I would be cured if I stopped eating gluten and meat and dairy, or that I need to exercise more because my weight is what’s causing me to be wheel-chair bound during flares. None of these things are true or proven and each day I deal with chemo drugs, injections, and increased risks for fatal infections. Not only that, but this disease is genetic and can strike at any age so I know my daughter may one day battle it herself. I also have anti-cardiolipin syndrome, which required 700 shots in my stomach to stop the avalanche of fetal deaths I dealt with. I know the fear in the eyes of people who hear that you have an autoimmune disease and immediately wipe their hands because they assume you’re contagious. I know what it’s like to be born with a mental illness so severe that it affects every part of your life. It sucks…as I’m sure you and your readers know first-hand after dealing with seeing yourself or your family deal with the pain of an illness that can take so much.
Some people are called to educate. Some people are called to find cures. My calling was to find laughter even in the darkest of subjects, so that others can as well. It’s fine if you don’t understand it, or if it doesn’t speak to you personally, but I have a folder of letters from people who didn’t kill themselves even when going through the worst moments of their lives and they credit a small part of that to me and to the fact that I made them laugh at the things that were scariest to them. Laughter in the face of adversity and misinformation is a powerful weapon, and it’s one I never plan to put down.
Sorry for such a long comment. I just wanted to let you know that there is room in the world for all types…the irreverent, the serious, the crazies and even the people who call me a whore for making a poem about sugar. It takes all kinds to make the world go around.
I commented on the Bloggess’ limerick. The gist of it was this:
Other than the fact that it is based on a misconception, your limerick is kind of amusing. But I’m amused easily, sometimes by stuff that reinforces wrong-headed stereotypes, like racist humor, or your limerick.
I found your limerick funny, too.
I like your balanced attitude toward having a sense of humor, but knowing when a joke is based on a fallacy, not a fact.
It’s kind of amazing how many people commented on the Bloggess post saying that is wasn’t supposed to be serious, yet there are obviously many of them who think that sugar causes diabetes.
I don’t think the diabetes mythology is going away soon.
Great post. So well said.
Here’s my thought: (I”m not as mature and nice as you!)
There once was a blogger with wetbrain
She must have it, what else would explain
Her absolute ignorance at what is diabetic
If she’s in her right mind, it’s very pathetic
Because that’s a pretty high level of dipshit to maintain.
I love your response —- so well written and as always your creativity shines through.
Hey – BTW – did I detect a little snarkyness about MommyBloggers — umm you know jumping through hoops??
Since I am late seeing this post I was able to read Bloggess’s response. I think more of her now after reading her response but I still don’t think she fully understands what we deal with on a daily basis. Her RA is similar to Sophie’s UC and it looks like they are treated with the same meds. I’ve too heard all of the comments about changing Sophie’s diet to ‘cure’ her and I can promise you they are much less offensive than the comments I get about Nate’s T1.
Again, great post as usual.
What an excellent take, Lee Ann! Great post.
Wow Lee-Ann – you have a way with words that make my world go BING!!! Great post – and now I have a craving for the shaky can treats I give to my cats!!! Wonder if there is a contest going on for a years supplies of those tasty morsels? \\^,,^//
Go and expose yourself to some own fire at British blog Shoot Up or Put Up‘s limerick forum: there are 324 (on 25 August, 20110) poems to offend and horrify you (including quite a lot mentioning amputation, and an unproven theory that you can enlarge your bosom by means of lipohypertrophy if you infuse or inject it with insulin)…as insider, I know writing them has been rather therapeutic; hope reading ‘em does the same
Great post, Lee Ann. Pretty much sums up my belated thoughts on it. Always appreciate the humor, assuming it’s the right time to have humor and the humor is not totally off the wall that it’s not even funny.
[...] humor as much as the next person, but does it matter who says the joke? When a famous humor blogger uses diabetes as the punchline, is it going too far? Lee Ann Thill eloquently examines this [...]
[...] humor as much as the next person, but does it matter who says the joke? When a famous humor blogger uses diabetes as the punchline, is it going too far? Lee Ann Thill eloquently examines this [...]