| DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2001� 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 Michael Kinsley Discloses He Has Parkinson's Disease
 Sun Dec 09 2001 14:02:13 ET
 
 Eight years ago journalist Michael Kinsley was diagnosed with Parkinson's at 
the age of 42, he writes in a TIME  essay disclosing he has the disease.
 
 "There are three ways to deal with news like this: acceptance, confrontation 
or denial."  Denial was Kinsley's choice.
 
 He defines denial as  "letting 
the disease affect your life as little as possible. In fact...pretending as 
best you can that you don't have it."
 
 But "deceiving those around you is 
more troublesome," Kinsley writes, "especially if you are a journalist, 
whose whole professional value system is rapped up in the idea of truth: 
demanding it of others, telling it yourself."  Kinsley writes, "I've come to 
the conclusion that most of the people I interact with every day actually do 
know my secret and are pretending not to."
 
 Now Parkinson's "is a hot 
disease, thanks to celebrity sufferers like the Pope, Billy Graham, Janet 
Reno, Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox.  Even, they say, Yasser Arafat."
 
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