WARNING: THE LINKED ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF AN EXTREMELY DISTURBING PARASITIC DISEASE. If you're very sensitive and/or have been having a particularly bad week, you probably don't want to know.
And now:
Let's all ask ourselves...what has each of us done with our last twenty years? Because Jimmy Carter, besides working for peace in the Middle East and building houses with Habitat, has spent his last twenty years all but wiping the horrific guinea worm off the face of the earth.
As Johann Hari (one of my favorite journalists ever) puts it:
"When Jimmy Carter first encountered the disease, some 3.5 million people were riddled with guinea worm. Tens of millions of people had endured it, from Europe to Asia; it was regarded as an intractable, eternal problem. The idea of eradicating it was mocked as “utopian”. But today, the number has been slashed by more than 99 percent. Fewer than 10,000 people in a few remaining pockets of Ghana and Sudan still suffer – and soon, there will be none at all."
Yeah. Jimmy Carter made that happen.
And it's not even what he won his Nobel for.
Can you believe that??
SOMEBODY GIVE HIM ANOTHER ONE!! RIGHT NOW!! JESUS CHRIST!!
We need to invent a new category. The Nobel Prize for Ass-Kickingest Human. And he gets to win it every year.
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If you're not at work, and are the kind of person who would appreciate the irony of a bunch of humor writers putting incredibly nasty words in the mouth of the (genuinely) saintly Carter, I invite you to check out this essay from the Onion, purportedly "by" Carter, which pretty much says it all:
"I Got What America Needs Right Here."
Yes he does.
(And see, they don't even know about the guinea worm thing! They don't mention it! Thus, unhappily, proving their own point--Jimmy Carter is possibly even awesomer than Batman, and nobody in America knows or cares--even further! Even his fans don't appreciate him enough!)
I fear that we do not deserve Jimmy Carter.
