It's hard to be a racist in a hospital

My late father-in-law was a racist. He didn't much care for Jews either, at leat not until his younger son got together with one, settled down, got married, started a career in IT, and lived what the old man believed to be a normal life. He had few dealings with either black people or Jews. His friends were all guys from the old neighborhood in Jersey city. His doctors were all Italians from the old neighborhood, or at the very least, guys with Italian names.

In his final years, he spent a lot of time in hospitals. His doctors were sometimes Jewish. The nurses and aides who attended him were Asian and Black and Latino. Lo and behold, he became one of those old guys who flirts with the nurses. And once he actually had dealings with people who weren't Italians, he discovered that maybe they weren't as different, evil, or threatening to his way of life as he thought. Yes, he worshipped before the altar of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but by the time he died, he had mellowed out considerably on matters of race.

Somehow I don't think that James Von Brunn is going to do this, despite the fact that doctors, nurses, and aides who are Jewish, Black, Asian, Muslim, and a host of other groups he hates, are now charged with keeping this POS alive:

In von Brunn's twisted world, being Jewish or black are offenses serious enough to warrant death. And so, eyewitnesses say, von Brunn entered the museum, aimed his rifle, pulled the trigger and took a black man's life.

Odd how things turn out.

Von Brunn, who was wounded by special police officers returning fire, was transported to GW, as was his victim, Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39. There, Johns was pronounced dead while the hospital's staff worked feverishly to keep von Brunn alive.

I don't know how that elderly white supremacist would take this but, according to a hospital spokeswoman, from the time von Brunn entered the emergency room, through his surgery in the operating room, to his placement in the intensive-care unit, he has been under the care of a diverse medical staff that includes blacks, Jews and Middle Easterners.

If there's someplace we go after we die, there'd better be an extra-special good one for the men and women who are dressing James Von Brunn's wounds, cleaning up his piss and shit, changing his IV bags, and doing what they would do for anyone else -- including his victim, who unfortunately wasn't as lucky as the attacker: whatever is necessary to keep him alive.

Because that is what they do.

My father-in-law realized this, and in this realization he gained a kind of redemption.