Public Nuisances / Chicken Koop
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES CHICKEN KOOP by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Any fair-minded deliberations on the life and labors of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, whose attempt to introduce into American fashion...
...And Sen...
...but they are living in dread of all the horrors that he and his fellow zealots have dreamed up...
...Americans are actually living much longer, no thanks to Dr...
...This is not the work of a systematic mind but of a modern pol who knows how to exploit the apprehensions of the public...
...As is typical of the modern political operator, he populates his crusades with good guys and fall guys...
...Having admitted as much Dr...
...He was an evangelical Christian, and a belief in the immorality of abortion and homosexuality was only a consequence of his piety...
...He brags about taking no exercise and being a workaholic...
...He is to inspire the Republic's 545,000 public health officials to greater feats on behalf of a sound body and sound mind...
...The office of Surgeon General is now a useful tool by which New Age Liberals can further tyrannize Americans with the New Age's bogus fears and procrustean remedies...
...He consumes junk foods happily and two martinis with lunch even more happily...
...But, aside from this sympathy for the young and his commitment to religion, his approach to all other public matters appears to be shallow if zealous...
...Businessmen are often the fall guys...
...His solution to the spread of AIDS is the placebo propounded by all dope-fetchers, to wit: he urges education...
...Dr...
...As with most evangelical Christians, he was not on the offensive, expanding the power of church against state...
...Koop as "someone who we deeply admire...
...If your cholesterol is OK and you think your genes are good, why should you sit on a hill the rest of your life and eat yogurt...
...But the game pediatrician from Philadelphia's Children's Hospital has come down through the bloody years of Reaganism laden with honors...
...Last summer, when his report on nutrition came out, he again identified the tycoons of the food industry as the greedy malefactors of our cholesterol count...
...Freud to recognize that such a superabundance of knowledge imparted at so early an age could cause confusion that might haunt a person all the days of his life...
...In recent years, however, all the nooks and crannies of American life have been penetrated by politics...
...Before Dr...
...Bethell confers this award upon that conservative who suddenly rises in the esteem of Liberals by seeing the world from their point of view and making a heroic point of his tergiversations...
...Who doubts that certain approaches to sex education have started the pipes to warm in the central heating systems of more than a few teenagers...
...Pursuant to some dietary ideal he would order food producers to tamper with their products and labels...
...Or for that matter deny yourself the pleasure of a smoke...
...Koop, and the great enlightenment should begin with kindergarten and continue until all kinks have been covered...
...Thus as the months slipped by so did Surgeon General Koop, and in June 1987 our own Tom Bethell awarded the Surgeon General his Strange New Respect Award "for putting condoms before continence...
...To be sure he began as a gifted pediatrician, manifesting a profound sympathy for the victims of birth defects, whose impairments he dutifully corrected...
...around nowadays, and they have contributed to a very unwholesome state of mind...
...D r. Koop has not honored his promise not to turn his office into a "pulpit...
...rather he was the embattled believer attempting topreserve traditional morality from the onslaughts of New Age ideologues directing the police power of the state against the church...
...Truth be known, sex education has been as much a failure as drug education...
...How is it that this early opponent of so many of Liberalism's noble causes has survived...
...I do not mean to quibble with Beth-ell, but I cannot see that Dr...
...His campaign against tobacco is a campaign against the tobacco tycoon who peddles "disease, disability, and death...
...Koop was ever a conservative...
...If Dr...
...And Mr...
...And when it comes to one of his favorite subjectsAIDS—he castigates hospital personnel unwilling to treat AIDS patients...
...One does not have to be a disciple of Dr...
...He is, as one senator solemnly stated, America's "Voice of Public Health," and up until recent years that Voice has been confident and serene...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator...
...Koop revealed precisely how unserious a man he is...
...Former critic Henry Waxman (D.-Calif...
...He is a man of superlative political intuition, as could be spotted late in his confirmation hearings when he proclaimed, "It is not my intent to use any government post as a pulpit for ideology...
...Koop's seeming insensitivity to issues affecting women...
...Koop's arrival in the limelight, the office of Surgeon General was as obscure as that of the Librarian of Congress and just as controversial...
...He was a moralizer for their family-first causes, identified by the Washington Post as "one of the nation's leading opponents of legalized abortion...
...Koop's nomination...
...There are a lot of such charlatans THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1989 35...
...Thus he must endure the feminists, the militant pederasts, the extreme environmentalists, the consumerists, and the Naderites of every genus or brave their contumely...
...How sex education might benefit kindergarteners who have only recently discovered that their private parts are useful in discharging bodily waste, I cannot imagine...
...I t is not clear that Surgeon General Koop recognized at the time of his nomination the crucial position his new job held in modern American politics...
...All the constituent elements of the New Age now barrage the Surgeon General's office with their shining visions...
...In statement after statement, he has endorsed a cruel, outdated, patronizing, and discredited stereotype of women...
...But the child who has just discovered that the bed is not a toilet ought not to be burdened with further knowledge of the bed's many useful purposes...
...Well, after proper precautions are taken, hospital personnel should minister to all patients, but it is curious that this man of science opposes mandatory AIDS tests in hospitals and clinics...
...He would simply ban TV shows that offend his protean standards...
...The National Institute of Justice 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1989 has actually found that certain approaches to drug education encourage drug use...
...When he interloped into the issue of television violence, he fastened upon the "network executives" whom he pronounced "caught between their conscience and their pocketbooks...
...So boisterous and defamatory did the campaign become that one would have expected the Surgeon General to remain for years as one of Liberalism's bugbears...
...Jeffrey Levi of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force extols Dr...
...In fact personal liberty has no place in his constellation of values...
...Despite his exhortations to nutritional perfection, meticulous hygiene, salubrious living, Dr...
...speaks of his "tremendous integrity...
...He is that rarity among men of science, the intuitive pol...
...It is not out of libertarian scruple that he opposes these tests...
...The April 8, 1981, Louisville Times spoke for many Liberal news organizations when it observed that "he is a religious extremist who doubts the wisdom of the constitutional separation of church and state, opposes common forms of contraception, and condemns followers of mainline religious groups that don't agree with his rigid opposition to abortion...
...Either way, the Voice cannot be as hearty as the public record reveals American health to be...
...But once in office Dr...
...The Surgeon General leads the 7,299 members of the Public Health Service's Commissioned Corps in the effort to promote health...
...Furthermore, he is an aficionado of the condom...
...Koop is quite fat...
...Koop scares us . . . his position on important issues clearly disqualifies him from becoming surgeon general...
...He can talk about homophobia [sic] and discrimination with the best of them...
...Any fair-minded deliberations on the life and labors of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, whose attempt to introduce into American fashion the uniform of the Paraguayan navy failed so dismally, must begin with the laudations he received in the spring of 1981 immediately after his nomination...
...He beseeches the sexually aroused —whether homosexual or heterosexual—to roll on those condoms, consult a nearby sex manual, and recall all relevant data proffered in Sex Ed...
...Koop might now do the noble thing and retire...
...I pass on...
...Edward M. Kennedy voiced the sentiments of Capitol Hill's remnant, saying, "an even greater concern is Dr...
...In those early months many conservatives were ebullient over Dr...
...Then he took a swat at the administration's policy on baby formula in the under-developed world...
...for with this century's great advancesin nutrition, hygiene, and medical science, American longevity has increased at unparalleled rates...
...If he worries the citizenry any further our next Surgeon General will have to be a clinical psychiatrist...
...Throughout his tenure he has preached from it on behalf of all manner of trendy kookery and intolerance...
...The Voice grows apprehensive and grim...
...Koop would ban all smoking everywhere...
...That was the fate of other objects of Liberal scrupling, such as former Attorney General Edwin Meese and former Secretary of the Interior James Watt...
...Koop proved his modern political mettle, which is to say his capacity for publicity, braggadocio, and sniffing out the course of least resistance...
...Genes are indeed a major determinant of health...
...Last summer, during the unveiling of his report on nutrition, Dr...
...And so when asked at the unveiling of his nutritional report why he ignored its dietary recommendations in his own life, he replied, "For myself I'm counting on my genes...
...He came to Washington denouncing abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and more, but he caught on fast...
...Koop that lasted nine months...
...His prior statements were not necessarily politically motivated...
...Senator Kennedy, whose attention to women's sensitivity is widely celebrated and frequently immoral, then entered upon a campaign of vilification against Dr...
...Rather he has always been a sciolist, skating zealously on the surface of things...
...Sex education is the cure for all the perils of Eros, according to Dr...
...With no evidence that smoke from the cigarette of another is any more pernicious to the nonsmoker than the smoker's perfume or noisy chatter, Dr...
...From opposing abortion and homosexuality he has slipped into a mindless tolerance, with no explanation offered...
...Koop has his way Americans will be the most erudite sex partners in the world and condoms will be everywhere...
Vol. 22 • June 1989 • No. 6
