Posted on 12/08/2004 1:34:49 PM PST by Conservomax
WBZ'S David Brudnoy is saying good-bye to his friends. After living with AIDS for years, David’s cancer, merckle cell carcinoma has spread to his liver and kidneys and his prognosis at Mass General Hospital is not good.
All too often in the news business, its not good news we have to report and this is one of those stories. WBZ's Gary LaPierre had an extended conversation today with a very prominent member of our family here at WBZ, Dr. David Brudnoy.
David Brudnoy asked to have this conversation so that he, a nationally prominent radio talk show host, could say farewell to you... his listening public, his family.
Simply put and to the point, David Brudnoy is looking death straight in the eye today and is saying to his family... his listeners, I’m ready. It was very apparent when I stepped into David’s room at the Mass General today that one of the giant survivors of this sometimes very unforgiving business is talking to his family that’s you... for the last time.
10-years ago I talked to David, a mere skeleton of a man, fighting back from death by full-blown AIDS. This tough guy won.
A little more than a year ago, a deathbed struggle ensues again for David Brudnoy, merkel-cell carcinoma. He launched another 15 round battle with a rare deadly disease and won... until now. David told us today, he's losing this one. I asked him how its different this time.
David "it's gone below the waist. It’s in the liver and kidneys."
While at times, struggling a bit for the breath to speak, David Brudnoy is always, the open book and I couldn't help by ask why, while standing at deaths door he wants to share it all.
David “You go through a couple of days of that… more pain… pointless. No end.”
Gary: “What you are saying to continue would be just to continue your being for a few more days?”
David: “With morphine and a little oxygen and food. I am not starving myself. I am not asking my doctors to do anything illegal. I wish I could but they won't. I will make it through. My head is completely excepting of this. I am absolutely ready.”
David Brudnoy, as only David could do it, gets the chance to say his final farewells to the world.
David: “I think we in the media often times want everybody else to be frank about themselves but want to be covert about ourselves. My life is truly an open book.”
Gary: “It always has been.”
David: “It has been but more so as I contend with these diseases.”
So tonight, he'll be heard in a bed-side interview with WBZ's Gary LaPierre in what will be his final farewell.
All of us here at WBZ have David Brudnoy in our thoughts and prayers today.
So now we have a thread filled with arguments over whether a man was good or bad. Some say "good", some say "bad".
Such a silly argument, based on both sides on a paper-mache notion of what a person is. He was both. He was with no doubt an extraordinary intellect and a grace-filled conversationalist. He was actually interested in his guests without coddling them. He had as clear a consent-based criterion for public morals as any thinker I've ever heard. This is as rare as a Red Sox pennant.
Yet the other stuff may well be true, too. All the nasty stuff on the thread I won't repeat. So what? It matters, but it does not cancel out his good qualities by some tit-for-tat arithmetic. The good is, and the bad is.
Civilized people don't go to wakes and trot out a naughty list and a nice list and calculate a net present value. The reason we don't is that it is mental health for mortals to focus on the good and let God judge the bad.
I am a Christian and a Republican. Homosexuality is wrong and dying of AIDS is not virtuous. I don't agree with libertarians.
Having said all that, what should one say about David Brudnoy? This: "The classiest radio presence I've ever heard: erudite, polite, clearheaded."
Whatever else should be said, God will say, without my help. It is not doubt to speak well of the flawed dead; it is, rather, certainty that I am not the Judge.
The issue is: does an immoral act cancel out a moral one?
Then pray we should. It is hard to both pray for a man and recite his sins.
It is amazing to me how people apparently think that because I have a trace of compassion for Mr. Brudnoy it is assumed that I won't condemn abortion or terrorism. I really have nothing further to say on this subject, but you did flag me and made that rather strange leap of logic; therefore I guess you deserved some sort of answer.
Is that all?
Then have sympathy for David. He became celibate after he was diagnosed. He never advertised his homosexuality as he did not want to be a "poster boy" for homosexual activists. He only came out because the media threatened to out him first.
You must go to that church in Kansas.
af_vet_1981 is a troll. Ignore him.
Forget it. He's clearly not interested in understanding the man. Only sitting in judgment of him.
If there is a God, I'm sure He will examine Brudnoy's life more deeply than those who don't know him at all and resort to using Google to dig up dirt to post on FR.
His intelligence, wit, and grasp of the issues bowled me over.
He is in my prayers.
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