By PAUL MCELROY
DRIFTWOOD COLUMNIST
I do worry about the Americans. I worried about them long before Trump emerged from under his rock because I have watched American television and couldn’t escape the advertisements for medicines without either having a finger hovering over the mute button or my head exploding.
The United States is either a nation of the permanently unwell or of chronic hypochondriacs, which is a bit ironic in a country where having an ingrowing toenail can bankrupt you.
Equally, it is puzzling that a nation whose health tsar seems to embody all the wholesome attributes of Simon the Leper should be so preoccupied with its own wellbeing. Or maybe it’s because of their cadaverous health secretary that they have become more fearful of any potential malady.
On CNN and MSNBC (or MSNow, as it prefers to be called these days, presumably as a result of a new CEO who, after doing some hard thinking, had an idea), every four advertisements in five is for some miracle cure, invariably of an ailment I’ve never heard of and most certainly don’t want. Others are more prosaic but are still not a suitable topic for polite conversation, especially around the dinner table.
There is, for instance, the young woman working in her garden while brazenly extolling the virtues of a particular laxative but, if she’ll excuse me for saying so, however winsome she might be I have absolutely zero interest in her bowels, regular or otherwise! And that also goes for the ladies with wind and troublesome bladders. I’m sure it’s desperately uncomfortable, but I’d just as soon they kept it to themselves.
Worse still are the pills and nostrums, advertised this time by young women in various degrees of undress, aimed at chaps who are having problems in the bedroom department. Bowels and bladders are bad enough, but a gentleman’s tackle is really below the belt.
But it’s the more serious maladies that I worry about, most of which I’d never heard of but now live in fear of getting. American shingles, for instance. I’d heard of shingles, of course, and have even been inoculated against it, but I had no idea, according to the MSNow ads that pop up about every 15 seconds, that in the U.S. shingles presents itself as a fiery pox that will burn through your shirt unless you take the precaution of immunizing yourself. Presumably the American variety is significantly more potent than our own, although both are best avoided.
And American heartburn! Mortifying. Show the slightest sign of feeling slightly queasy after another giant dinner of whatever it is you’ve just hoovered up and the restaurant staff will take to the stage and sing about it in gruesome detail.
Then there are the quack potions for restoring your memory. Never mind that none of them have been proven to work for an ordinarily healthy person who merely occasionally misplaces their car keys — or their car. Even the tiny print at the bottom of the screen points out that these particular nostrums are probably of no use to man nor beast and the folk they’ve quite obviously paid to advertise them are best ignored. And then forgotten.
The small print is always terrifying. For a regular arthritis pill: “Serious infections, including tuberculosis and fungal infections, have occurred, sometimes leading to hospitalization or death. Tell your doctor if you have fever, cough, weight loss or fatigue.” Death!? Tuberculosis!? And they always come over the cheery part which offers instant relief from shortness of breath and a probable first place in the Vancouver marathon.
At least the American drugs, unlike the nation itself today, are democratic. There’s pretty much something for everyone, from the fat to the emaciated, blocked noses to the running sores, the depressed and the hyperactive. There is even a drug for a guy who appears to have a finger with a mind of its own and another for some old fellah, a doctor no less, who is terrified of stairs because he has pins and needles in his feet. Killer pins and needles, eh? Who knew.
The whole Big Pharma message is slightly biblical: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” Except of course, this is the United States, where nothing is free and the halt and the lame will have paid an arm and a leg to walk again.
But it’s the dental ads that keep me awake at night, those All-American teeth that glow in the dark, so white, so perfect they can be seen from space; far too good to be wasted on mere chewing. They never show the “before” pictures of the poor souls whose lives have been blighted by a mouthful of teeth that would shame Shrek, but the remedy is almost as shocking: wide, rictus grins displaying teeth just too perfect to be taken seriously.
And here’s an interesting fact. Despite having the world’s most aesthetically appealing teeth, America’s actual dental health comes way down the World Health Organization league of healthy choppers. The Scandinavians, needless to say, lead the world and even the Brits, who have long been scorned for having teeth best hidden behind a bushy moustache, are much healthier, mouthwise, than the luminescent Yanks. Europe is more into drilling and filling than buffing, while it’s likely most Americans can’t afford decent teeth unless they whittle them themselves.
Neither, I assume, can many of them afford these medicines which might just make their lives more bearable.
paulmcelroy@shaw.ca