Winner of the insanity prize

(Note to Camerabanger: I poke around but I don’t see an address. rhughes3@rochester.rr.com and I’ll send a calendar.)

Are they kidding?

Venezuela’s claim our nation infected Hugo Chavez with cancer is the most insane assertion I’ve heard in years.
It qualifies for the “Marcy, it’s everywhere” award.
I admit I’m a so-called “bleeding-heart Liberal” who thinks Rush Limbaugh is a blowhard idiot (Gasp!), but I have an intimate knowledge of cancer.
My wife died from it.
Cancer is not the product of infection. You’re not “infected” with cancer. My wife and I lived in the same conditions for years, yet she got cancer, and I haven’t so far.
Cancer is not so much a disease, like flu or pneumonia. Errant growths are not stymied by the body’s immune-system, so develop into tumors that grow unchecked.
Challenging conditions like smoking or asbestos might prompt errant growths, although my wife had neither, and was a paragon of good health.
Yet she developed cancer. I’m probably not as healthy as she was, yet so far no cancer for me.
You don’t contract cancer by exposure. I’m pretty sure my wife and I were pretty close while she had cancer, yet I seem to be okay. (We slept in the same bed.)
So Venezuela’s assertion Chavez was infected by us is preposterous, even ridiculous.
Venezuela claims Chavez was in remission a few times.
So was my wife.
There are various strong chemos that do that, but her cancer always came back.
It killed Chavez too.

• RE: “Marcy, it’s everywhere!” —“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-do-Wells. At one time she asked how I managed to dredge up so much insane material to blog, and I responded “Marcy, it’s everywhere!”