Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic Has Stage IV Cancer
And I Refuse to Feel Any Pity for Her
5 min readMay 12, 2020
Of all the strangers I follow on Twitter that have cancer Caitlin Flanagan is my favorite.
This was the first line of a Tweet I started to write recommending an article she wrote for The Atlantic recently lamenting her battle with Stage IV cancer during a global pandemic with Donald J. Trump serving as President of the United States but I kept writing and writing and quickly realized that unless I wanted to create one of those annoyingly long Tweet threads that sane people avoid I would need to turn my writing in to an essay.
I want to make it clear, I do not know Mrs. Flanagan, I just follow her on Twitter. I have not even read that much of her work but I have read enough to know she is a good writer and a smart, interesting woman and in my world these are good things, really good things.
I have not followed her for long on Twitter so the cancer bombshell was new for me and I cried like a baby. Now before you laugh at me for being so trite, ‘dude, you do not even know the lady’, calm down, obviously I cry for my own selfish reasons.
One, I cry easy and often, laugh at me for that, some days it’s all I have that reminds me I am still alive and I am almost convinced that if I go too long without crying I will die. ‘Officer, I have no idea, we were talking about how much Trump sucks and he just dropped dead’. The coroner may or may not notice, ‘oh yeah, there it is, he forgot to reboot his life with the tears, his body just powered down, you do not see it often but it happens’.
Two, it would simply suck if she died before I had the opportunity to randomly meet her some day. Nothing weird, I am no stalker, who has the time, plus I have a long list of interesting people I hope to randomly meet some day. I am still pissed at Dostoevsky for not living 200 years so that I could randomly meet him now and say, ‘Fyodor, what’s up!’ Plus, I would love to ask him how he knew to write a book about me, ‘The Idiot’, long before I was even born.
Three, I really selfishly want to read the essay she writes after she wins this latest battle with cancer and humanity survives after solving the Corona Virus puzzle. I am no editor but, hint, hint, I think the title ‘Fuck You Cancer and Fuck You Donald Trump’ has a nice ring to it.
Last but not least and here is the thing, as much as I cry, I never cry when someone dies as life is never easier than after you die with no stress, depression, anxiety, fear, disease, heartbreak, confusion, pain or cable TV bill to bring you down. Plus, you know the joke, none of us get out alive, death is simply the price we all pay for getting the opportunity to live.
I had old parents, most of my relatives were really old and I learned at an early age that the tragedy of life was not death, the tragedy was in not having really lived your life and this is a woman that has obviously lived her life.
She graduated from the University of Virginia. Go Wahoos! She is a staff writer for The Atlantic, was one at The New Yorker and is the author of two books. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary award and has appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher.
I had never heard of Bitch magazine but they made her their first “Douchebag All-Star” and I could not be more jealous. I have no idea if Bitch is open to bribes but I would be willing to cut off President Trump’s manhood* on live TV, the ratings, if not the penis, would be HUGE, if they would make me a “Douchebag All-Star”. My past girlfriends can confirm I make the team but not everyone can be an All-Star!
By the way, my crack research department got most of this information from Wikipedia so if I got anything wrong, do not blame me, go update her entry on the site.
Oh yeah, she also appears to have a great family and lots of love in her life which is ultimately the lottery we all hope to win in life.
In her essay she posed a question, Stage IV cancer during a pandemic when Donald Trump is the president! Could it get any worse? I propose that her answer of no is wrong.
Could it get any worse?
Of course, imagine having to go through all of this alone, without any love to help wash away the tears while regretting you never really lived your life or pursued your dreams. I do not manage the rankings but I am guessing that Mrs. Flanagan is in the top one percent. No, not that one percent, though I would bet that she is willing to release her tax returns if the President will release his, the one percent I refer to is those people that when the time comes to pay the bill for life, with death, have few regrets, less than the rest of us.
So, yes, I do have great empathy for her, cancer is a nasty wanker and I can only imagine how terrifying all of this is for her and her loved ones, and, yes, I cried when I read the article, I cried because I felt pity but the pity I felt was definitely not for Caitlin Flanagan.
