Rejection!

Dear loyal readers (or more specifically, my 10 closest friends),


I want to share my Washington Post "America's Next Great Pundit" submission that was wholly rejected. This piece is me being a serious journalist. Be cruel with your comments, it is the only way I can learn.


Love,



Sticky Buns




The Swine Flu is all around, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will not let us forget it. She is everywhere, on television at school hand washing events, university lectures, and state health departments, toting her message and her Purell. Her unwavering dedication to the prevention and eradication of this H1N1 interloper is unlike anything we have seen from recent public officials.


However, while Secretary Sebelius is out battling the evils of improper sneeze etiquette with silver dollar -sized doses of hand sanitizer, the rest of us are left to deal with the reality of this spreading virus in our world. Even as I write this, in the children’s section of the public library, I am surrounded by sniffling, runny nosed toddlers, who seem to take sheer joy in sharing their germs with one another in an infinite number of ways. This of course, increases my anxiety by the second. At work, sanitizer dispensers have become ubiquitous, installed on every wall. Guides have been placed in bathroom stalls with step- by -step instructions for proper hand washing. Whenever someone comes into the office with the slightest stuffy nose, I avoid all direct contact and stand no closer than six feet. I keep rubbing alcohol on my desk, and find myself wiping down my computer and phone every 10 minutes. However, has this sterile obsession lead to less people becoming ill? Has this anti-germ insanity prevented illness? Yes, of course it has. Modern medicine and hygiene has prevented thousands of people from becoming infected.


Paranoia in the wake of communicable disease is nothing new. In fact, a healthy respect for any newly emerged virulent strain of disease is what keeps the masses protected. Quarantines, on top of public education, are vital for keeping infectious disease at bay. During the 1918 outbreak of the “Spanish Flu,” a strain of H1NI, more than 50 million people worldwide were killed, but fatalities would surely have been higher had communities not reacted strongly to local outbreaks.


While some may see Sebelius as a fear monger of malady, I am thrilled she is at the helm of HHS during this crisis. While the uneducated minority wavers on whether to vaccinate themselves or their children against this deadly flu, Kathleen Sebelius fights public ignorance with fact while squirting a healthy dose of Purell in the face of this danger.