In the National Football League, when there is a replay challenge to a call made by the officials, the head guy in the zebra striped shirt makes his way to the little “instant photos while you wait” looking booth on the side of the field to watch the replays for a period of time (sometimes longer than others) and then he comes out to the field to face the cameras and turn on his microphone to announce the “verdict”.
That usually consists of either saying that “The call on the field stands”, which means “we were right, or we can’t see anything that proves we were wrong–or we just got lucky on this one.” The other answer is “The call on the field has been reversed.” Both statements from the head referee are usually followed by a not always clear explanation of exactly what happened on the video replay.
Today, the leadership of the Susan G. Komen Foundation went with that second answer and said they wanted to “apologize to the American public for the recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” The decisions were about the ending of future grants to Planned Parenthood to cover cancers screenings and mammograms to low income women.
And those decisions touched off what could only be described as a true shitstorm.
Give the Komen folks some credit for realizing what they had wrought. They heard a lot of negative reaction and reacted (finally) to that.
But TalkingPointsMemo.com reports that the Komen Foundation’s position has not been completely reversed. What today’s move accomplishes is that Planned Parenthood won’t be necessarily barred from receiving a grant from the Komen Foundation just because a spurious Congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood is underway.
What Komen didn’t say was that they will definitely get any future grants. That’s called leaving the back door open…just in case.
For its part, Planned Parenthood’s President, Cecile Richards says she is taking the Komen folks “at their word”, and believing that the grant funding will not be cut in the future.
It will be more than a little interesting to see if the many people who gave their time and money to the Komen Foundation’s “Race for the Cure” will take them “at their word” as well.
Because sometimes in life, just like in the NFL, even after the replay–you still don’t agree with what the final outcome of the game was.