Identity Politics Pt II

You can put this down as another definition of chutzpah, once defined by a physicist I knew as "killing your mother and father and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan."

That ceased to be funny when the Menendez brothers nearly got away with murder. And there's nothing funny about Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

A medical school that trains minority students plans to sue Los Angeles County, saying the government betrayed the school and its patients when it downsized a troubled inner-city hospital.

Los Angeles County -- finally and at long last -- voted to turn over control of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center to another hospital after reports of mismanagement and sloppy care. [Read; multiple deaths and sub-human care.]

Now Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science is planning to sue for breach of contract. The suit alleges the downsizing of King/Drew — now renamed Harbor-MLK Community Hospital — forced the medical school to withdraw the accreditation for its residency programs, leading to the elimination of 15 training programs.

And a good thing too. Not even the notoriously uninvolved [when it comes to non-political racial baiting events] Los Angeles Times could contain their disgust at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

See Medical Tragedies - identity politics in medicine, posted February 2006 on this blog

I will confidently predict, however, that Los Angeles County government will turn over millions to buy off the lawsuit because it is, after all, just taxpayer money. There's more where that came from and a lot more silence to be had from the Los Angeles Times.