Not long ago, very late at night, Erica Lafferty was projectile vomiting while trying to listen to a podcast. Lafferty is undergoing treatment for Stage II orbital lymphoma, a tumor that she says roughly tripled in size over 14 weeks. Her family and friends recently set up a GoFundMe to help her pay for her treatment, and Lafferty had noticed a donation, and a note, that she didn’t quite understand. It was from a name she didn’t recognize, and in their comment, the person called themselves “a wonk.”
Googling the two terms together, Lafferty found a Reddit thread and realized she’d recently been discussed on Knowledge Fight, a podcast where two former comedians from Chicago, Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes, microscopically analyze Alex Jones and Infowars, using a combination of mockery, outrage, analysis, interviews, and play-by-plays of his broadcasts.
Lafferty is an accidental and deeply reluctant Jones expert herself. After her mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in December of 2012, shot trying to protect her students, Lafferty was targeted by conspiracy theorists who insisted that her mother had never lived, or died, at the school. Lafferty was one of several plaintiffs in a Connecticut lawsuit against Jones; in October, he was ordered to pay a total default judgment of $965 million to them, plus $473 million in punitive damages awarded by the judge. The jury awarded Lafferty $76 million, plus more in punitive damages, totaling around $100 million in all.
The gigantic judgments levied against Jones offered a moment of bittersweet vindication for the families, who were terrorized for years by conspiracy theorists—Jones the largest and loudest among them. But none of the plaintiffs have, as yet, seen a dime of the money awarded to them. Jones and Infowars have both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and the bankruptcy proceedings have become increasingly baroque, with the plaintiffs often objecting that Jones seems to be hiding or moving money during the process. There is no indication as to when the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, who are now also creditors in the bankruptcy, might be paid, or how much the judgment could be reduced.
And now, less than a year later, Lafferty is also being treated for the lymphoma, a process she says has already been brutal. (Lafferty’s cancer battle was first reported by the Hartford Courant and Connecticut Public Radio.) Lafferty says her insurance has refused to cover her chemotherapy drugs, deeming them “elective” since the cancer is still not very advanced; she’s also undergoing radioactive iodine therapy, which carries other significant costs.
“Everything you touch is a biohazard,” Lafferty said. Towels and bed linens can only be used once and then have to be discarded; the patient has to sleep alone for seven days after treatment and avoid all physical contact with others for a period of time. “I have to pay to have a biohazard company to come and pick up my waste and dispose of it in a safe manner,” Lafferty says. When she and her husband made an Amazon list pre-treatment to try to tally up her costs for everything that would have to be used, thrown away, and replaced repeatedly, “it was like several thousand dollars” per round of treatment, she said. Her doctors expect she will need to undergo six to seven rounds of treatment over the next year.
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As well as being the kind of nonsense that trump would be all over, it really does show capitalism's ability to give the world things it not only doesn't need, but are actually grossly offensive in an era of climate disaster and massive inequality.
why can't we have flying bicycles to annoy people with flying cars
we're going to need flying traffic lights.
