Check it, Peons: Your CNN Humiliation Compartmentalized

Friday, June 01, 2007

TB IN THE SKY: THE ANDREW SPEAKER STORY


So, by now we've all heard the odd story of personal injury lawyer Andrew Speaker from Atlanta, who has a drug-resistant strain of TB. Although at first he did not know his TB was so severe, he knew he had TB. Yet he STILL chose to travel for his fabulous destination wedding in Greece, make a stop in Paris, then honeymoon in Rome, then jet off to Prague, then fearing he could not get proper treatment for his vicious strain of TB, fly into Canada to sneak into the U.S. despite being told by federal officials not to get on a long commercial flight...
I think this guy is a selfish prick.
I don't care that his neighbors say he's a nice guy. They weren't sitting next to him in a cramped plane without proper ventilation. I don't care that his doctors only reccommended that he "put off his wedding" but did not explicitly tell him not to go. Use some common sense. If you know you have TB you should respect the people who will be forced to sit by you for 8 hours on a plane. If he really wanted to get married, he could have just done it in Atlanta, and not risked infecting innocent people in an enclosed space.

However, that is not the point of this post. The point is:

This story has all the makings, with just a few tweaks, of a great made-for-TV movie. Plus, the fact that his father-in-law is a TB specialist already reads like fiction. But in my fictionalized made-for-TV movie, the father-in-law personally infected him with TB. He injected it in his arm on a balmy Atlanta evening after a lavish outdoor gala because:
A.) he never thought he was good enough for his little girl
and
B.) so he could have a case study at his disposal and not have to travel to remote parts of Russia and Asia.

And no, I don't care if that's not possible medically. This is a TV drama. And a bad TV drama at that.

Also, have you seen what the wife looks like? Southern belle, with white-blonde hair and shapely legs. Again, perfect for my movie. In my fictionalized movie, he is torn about going on the trip, but she coaxes him into it with her sexy charms.
Naturally, in my movie he has to start hacking and wheezing on one of the trans-Atlantic flights, possibly spitting up blood, causing pandemonium and at least one over-turned food cart. On the plane there would be a couple of nuns, some acrobats, a famous movie star, and a rascally stowaway kid with a cute puppy.

THE CAST AND CREW:

ANDREW SPEAKER: Ian Ziering
ANDREW'S FIANCEE: Jennie Garth
FATHER-IN-LAW: Patrick Duffy
NUNS: Valerie Bertanelli and Donna Mills
ACROBATS: The Vegas cast of Cirque de Soleil
FAMOUS MOVIE STAR: Morgan Fairchild
RASCALLY STOWAWAY KID: Any Fanning sibling will do
THEME SONG "My Cough Will Go On" SUNG BY: Celine Dion
COSTUMES BY: Nolan Miller

4 comments:

Philip Carey said...

He is an absolute prick. And, how stupid is his wife? Why would you want to travel with someone that you know has TB?

Andrew: "Cough, cough...sorry honey, I hope you don't die now."

Sarah the Moron: "Oh Andrew, you're so swee....oh, look--a puppy!"

Idiot.

J said...

Two parts of his story scream BULLSHIT to me:

#1 - Why did he take a different path home, than he had originally planned? Why drive into the country? People who don't think they are doing anything wrong, don't opt to drive over the US/Canada border when they could fly. He KNEW he was avoiding the feds, and he carfully planned his travel to avoid running into as few officers as possible.

#2 - He recorded a conversation with his doctor before he left town, where the doctor specificially suggests Speaker not travel, but he can't make him not travel. Um, he RECORDED the conversation? Who DOES that, unless they KNOW they are going to commit wrongdoing and they are trying to cover their ass? Only a lawyer, I suppose!

OK, sorry..here's a 3rd reason I hate these people - what's with the bullshit statement 'we felt our government was abandoning us' when they were told to check into an Italian clinic immediately and not travel? His motives to not check himself into a clinic overseas were purely selfish, and not about feeling his government was leaving him in a foreign country to die. They never said he would stay there forever - he's just padding his case and making it seem as if he would stay there (saying "I knew I had to get to Denver, or I'd die in Italy.") Um, too bad, chief. If you KNEW that, why did you leave in the first place?

Hang him, and his bimbo wife.

Anonymous said...

These two are total assholes.
Oh boo hoo we planned our wedding for so long. We just couldn't let a little TB stand in our way.
FUCK YOU!

Anonymous said...

Just shows what you can get away with when you're you a rich, white, frat boy, wheeling-dealing southern lawyer!