Have you ever zealously embraced gallows humor in the presence of a person who is dying? Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"?
December 24, 2025
"Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer."
Wrote Ben Sasse, quoted in "Republican former senator Ben Sasse says he has terminal cancer/The 53-year-old — who was one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump during his first term — said in a lengthy social media post he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and suggested he doesn’t have long to live" (WaPo).
"Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die. Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence... I’m not going down without a fight. One subpart of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more.... Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape."
Posts
63 comments:
My sweet kitty - a rescue - she died recently with a tumor or mass in her pancreas.
sucks.
I hope Mr. Sasse can avoid the horrible side effects prior to his passing.
Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"?
I am guessing it means to finish the race at speed. To run through tape, rather than shuffling off this mortal coil.
Not sure about the "irreverent". As Voltaire said, this is no time to be making new enemies.
I have a dear friend who was just diagnosed with this. I'll be avoiding this thread.
I have heard gallows humor in the weeks leading into an expected death. But at a certain point, reverence takes over.
On the bright side, there's a very low chance someone will try to steal his dead penis.
Yes. My dad is as dying of lung cancer and on his last day we were able to laugh together for 2 hours. He asked, “Is it right to laugh so much before death?” I replied,”What else would you prefer?” He laughed as he shrugged. Golden memory.
I think it's healthy to accept death. even joke about it. None of us will escape this life alive.
I have a friend in Altadena CA who kept up a steady stream of gallows humor as his house burned down.
A close friend died of this same cancer several years ago. And yes, gallows humor was often deployed, along with all the rest that comes with grieving with and for someone who is still alive. Tearing up here just thinking about it all over again.
He must mean irreverent toward Death, because he's reverent to God. Once you know God has saved you, you can laugh at/about Death. And breaking the tape may be a reference to Paul's athletic analogies about running the good race, fighting the good fight, etc.
Wrt your other question: Soldiers at war, all of whom are in a way about to die, readily embrace gallows humor with each other. CC, JSM
We are all going to die at some point.
It is the knowing when that makes it hard.
Life is better when it is a surprise. The character Paul Atreides tried to teach us this.
His Wiki says, inter alia, that he served as the chief of staff for the DOJ Office of Legal Policy under W and Ashcroft, even though he doesn't have a JD - he's a PhD historian. Pretty ballsy of that Admin, not leaving law to the lawyers. CC, JSM
2 Timothy 4:7
i had to look up who this Ben Sasse was..
turns out; he was one of the 1st never Trumpers or such.
I wish him well in his new career
Just because he reports he and his children are making jokes at home (remember, the wife was so ill he stepped down from the U Florida presidency that he left the Senate for, doesn't mean he's inviting others to do the same.... Matt Schlapp got slapped down in the Twitter comments for writing essentially that even though Sasse was a bad politician, he wished him well ..)
Dying is hard. Best to observe from the sidelines imo as he and his make their peace w/ what is to come
I personally wouldn't have opened the comments comparing this to some lady's dead cat, but I'm sure your ppl here don't mean to be insensitive. If you make somebody's death into content for comment fodder, you have to expect that.
Privacy has it's place but he lived a very public enriching life... The 14 year old boy driver (who needs rules? lol) will be most affected, especially if the mother is sickly too. Hopefully they have extended kin to step up... privately. That lil one will miss his social advantages enjoyed to date, no doubt.
The daughters seem educated and hopefully will be ok....
Merry Christmas; please don't leave this story at the top of the blog all day, even if death is part of life? He's no Mike Pence, so an immediate pass into Heaven is not to be assumed...and he's so young, it's hard to celebrate God's calling him home away from his loved ones.
I hope, reading gilbar's comment that the American president learned something from the Reiner comment backlash... And the VP doesn't tell Sasse to eat shit and die.
Pan-can took my father in 1962, and just last month one of my wife's older brothers died of it. He wasn't making any jokes in his last weeks. In fact he was so drugged up most of the time that he wasn't communicating much at all.
He had been getting cut a lot to deal with some skin cancers, but the family had been led to believe they had caught the inside stuff early enough to be dealt with, but that wasn't the case.
"Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"?"
I presume it's escaping state and local taxes.
At long last.
Sweet, sweet death. Can it come too soon when the rewards are so tasty?
John Mosby: "Wrt your other question: Soldiers at war, all of whom are in a way about to die, readily embrace gallows humor with each other. CC, JSM"
I was an AF C-130 navigator in the '80's. Gallows humor was always used. It releases stress and helps you cope. The fleet lost one to two 130's a year, plus all the other aircraft types that went down. I met a B-52 student nav the night before his plane crashed on takeoff. He went to a mutual friend's apartment to pick up his TV that he lent them. Our thoughts were, "... there but for the grace of God, may he RIP." And what did we say out loud? He should have left it because he doesn't need it now; he won't be watching the story of his crash on the news at six..." Not funny, you say? It was that day to us...
John Mosby: "Wrt your other question: Soldiers at war, all of whom are in a way about to die, readily embrace gallows humor with each other. CC, JSM"
I was an AF C-130 navigator in the '80's. Gallows humor was always used. It releases stress and helps you cope. The fleet lost one to two 130's a year, plus all the other aircraft types that went down. I met a B-52 student nav the night before his plane crashed on takeoff. He went to a mutual friend's apartment to pick up his TV that he lent them. Our thoughts were, "... there but for the grace of God, may he RIP." And what did we say out loud? He should have left it because he doesn't need it now; he won't be watching the story of his crash on the news at six..." Not funny, you say? It was that day to us...
I have a couple of friends dating back to jr. high school who are dying the slow deaths associated with multiple myeloma for one and cirrhosis of the liver for the other… both living alone. I make it a point to talk with them and stay engaged.
And I give thanks and count my blessings for the love and companionship of my wife of 50 years next month. Thank you, Lord!
I worry most about how others handle it. I'm fine with it. There is no escaping for anyone. I don't want people to be uncomfortable because of me. I will try to keep it as light as is possible. Final words should be a punchline.
I've never understood the fear people have of "dying alone". I would prefer it. I would prefer that my friends and family hear about it after it's over, so you avoid all that crappy part. People can remember you as you were in normal times, which is why you need to keep those good.
Evolution of life is a progressive process. Death is a wicked solution of Her Choice.
My mother's last words after being told "I'll see you tomorrow grannie" were "Not if I see you first". It was really too perfect for her to end it like that.
I gave my elderly and sick uncle a T shirt that said "Not Dead Yet." He loved it.
"I've never understood the fear people have of 'dying alone'"
"Everyone dies alone except for suicide bombers and pregnant women, and sometimes they're the same thing." A little topical GWOT gallows humor.
I have to wonder just how many of the COVID m-RNA injections he took given he was a huge advocate for getting the jabs.
Dona nobis pachem
The Stoics had it right: "Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back."
Death is not wicked. It is not generally her or his Choice.
"Greeting Death as an old friend, they departed this life as equals."
I have always liked the old joke:
"I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather and not screaming in terror like his passengers."
He must compete even in death. Let's focus on fun rather than grief, sadness and the solemnity of death. Feels hollow because it is.
We gathered around an uncle at his deathbed and asked him if he wanted to be buried or cremated. He said, "surprise me".
"Have you ever zealously embraced gallows humor in the presence of a person who is dying?"
My late wife always did our personal taxes. We knew she didn't have long but tackled the job one last time with relish. "Death and Taxes" was one of her favorite bitches. She had also lost a big toe after having open heart surgery a couple of years earlier. My contribution was was that she had dipped a toe in the river Styx and came out alive. If you can't stare in death's eye and laugh...
The love of my life.
My stepfather died of this in the fall of this year. He fought it for a year and a half, but ultimately it won. He came home and died a month later. I heard him stop breathing at 4 am. He was 76 years old. Cherish good health above everything else, because once it's gone, it's hard to regain!
The tape at the end of the race is the end of life. Death is irreverent, it makes fools of us all.
Shakespeare: death mocking kings and beggars alike
Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw!”
Proof once again, the media loves dead or dying Republicans, especially those who dislike Trump.
Since we're quoting the Bard:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
Sasse is a pompous ass. A grifting never-Trumper. I can remember him screeching in 2016 that "Trump was going to lose the senate. We'll be wiped out". And than constantly attacking Trump though at least 2019 when it came time for re-election. Then he gladly accepted trump's endorsement, and maintained radio silence until November 2020, then he went back to attacking. He voted for Impeachment in Jan 2021.
He wrote a longwinded book that no one read, and thought he was the road to the Presidency until November 2016.
BTW, I saw Scott Adams on Twitter, and he seemed to be doing better despite, he said, a bad case of Asthma.
On August 5, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Department of Health and Human Services would terminate nearly $500 million in grants and contracts for mRNA vaccine development, affecting 22 projects.
A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering was developing an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat. A few years ago, the team conducted a small trial to assess the vaccine’s safety. Sixteen patients with pancreatic cancer received the vaccine, and half of them exhibited a strong immune response. A follow-up study found that in six of those patients, the pancreatic cancer hadn’t relapsed after three years.
but there won’t be any more mRNA research soon under the Trump administration, with RFK Jr. in charge of HHS. All cancer research has been affected, but cancers without immunotherapies or other effective alternatives to radiation and chemotherapy are those most in need of mRNA vaccine research.
All this stupidity against mRNA research of any kind, despite Tatiana Schlossberg, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s cousin, being diagnosed with terminal acute myeloid leukemia.
There's a huge difference between mRNA gene therapy used as a population-wide prophylactic versus a targeted therapy for individuals already with terminal disease.
One of the most promising avenues toward new cancer treatments is vaccines, therapies designed to prompt an immune response against a patient’s tumors. Many rely on the same mRNA technology that built the Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. So when the federal government announced it was ending major funding of mRNA vaccines, cancer researchers and patients began to wonder what that might mean for them.
The Tuesday evening announcement by the Health and Human Services Department said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) was terminating nearly $500 million in grants supporting development of mRNA vaccines for flu, Covid, or other infectious diseases.
STAT spoke with several cancer vaccine experts, all of whom said that the cancellations didn’t appear to extend to oncology research or development. But they expressed concern that if the Trump administration takes a hostile posture towards mRNA broadly as a technology, other applications like cancer therapy may eventually be hindered as well.
My mother came down with it at 56 and lasted 8 months. After radiation didn't do much, they put her in the hospital for extra-strength chemo, which killed her a few hours after the doctor reported that it wasn't working and she had 6-8 weeks. We told funny stories after, but I don't know if it was gallows humor or relief.
Five year survival rate was 3% 40 years ago. She was misdiagnosed for several months, which is common. As her father and his mother had also it, though when much older, it's been hanging over my and my siblings' heads ever since, in the Sword of Damocles sense, not a gallows.
Brundlefly getting it wrong stop the presses
The tape is set up at the finish line of a race. I don't know how they do it now, but you can see pictures of older athletes finishing the race with the broken tape on their chests.
Irreverent seems to be a misplaced modifier, but there's probably a Greek term for that figure of speech. Hyperbaton? It has the baton from foot races.
My little brother passed away from pancreatic cancer last year. He exercised and watched his weight and didn't smoke or drink, but fate has a way of playing tricks on people.
By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death; and let it go which way it will. He that dies this year is quit for the next.”
AI tells me:
HHS stated the cuts were specific to research on respiratory pathogens (like COVID-19 and bird flu) and that the agency still supports mRNA research in oncology.
Soon when controversy arises, we'll all be saying "Talk to the hand," i.e. "Let my AI and your AI sort this out among themselves." Then we can move on to more important matters.
Once you have seen your children grow into adults, death seems less of a threat. It is best avoided if possible, but it will only be a return to the state you were in prior to conception. In my own case, I suspect that will be a very quiet state.
Both my grandmothers and my mother died of pancreatic cancer. One gran died before I was born, and the other when I was quite small, but I was there for my mom. Took her about three months from diagnosis to death.
Took the same amount of time for one of my work friends, a huge (in a good way) football player, Marine officer, and federal agent. Guess your overall health doesn't matter. CC, JSM
My father-in-law was diagnosed with PanCan on Valentines Day, 2009. By December 7, he was dead.
One of my best friends from the USAF just beat bone marrow cancer ... only to find out he now has PanCan.
It's a brutal disease.
I last saw Ben Sasse five years ago at this time. He was still a US Senator and the Biden Administration was about to begin. Of course at the event I asked a question about the incoming Biden people. He said the foreign policy people were okay, but the domestic policy people were a disaster. How right he was after 20% inflation and 10-20 million illegal aliens.
He is very slight. Maybe 5’ 5”” and 165. He wrestled at Fremont HS and maybe at Yale. He looked like he could still wrestle.
He probably saved Midland University in Fremont from BK when he was President. He executed on a smart turnaround plan that emphasized partial scholarships for lots of athletic teams.
He is a real intellectual and wrote two books while in the Senate. I saw him interviewed on Book TV about his second book. I think it is about happiness and the Harvard/AEI happiness guru interviewed him. He said, “After reading this book, I want to move to Fremont.”
One piece of advice he had was to set down roots and buy a cemetery plot in your town.
He resigned from the Senate to take the President’s job at FL. He was probably frustrated with the inability to get anything done in the Senate. He was better suited to an executive position.
There was some controversy when he was at Florida. I didn’t follow it, but I suspected it was the usual academic BS from those resistant to positive change.
When he ran for the Senate it was an open seat. A lawyer friend my high school, Creighton Prep, ran against him in the primary. There was also a super rich banker. Sasse won the primary by hard work and by the force of his personality and ideas.
My friend and mentor, Fr. John Schlegel, S.J., also died of pancreatic cancer. There is a surgery called the Whipple surgery and it isn’t very effective although a high school classmate of mine wife had the surgery and it worked. But right now, pancreatic cancer has the worst survival rate.
Fr. Schlegel went on a big tour after his diagnosis and his friends had parties for him. I went to the Omaha one and it was a great event. I suggested to Ben that he do the same thing.
Ben Sasse is a great Nebraskan and I’m glad the rest of the country could see that.
Sasse went to Harvard; not Yale. Sorry!
Either way, very impressive for a kid from Fremont HS.
His doctorate was from Yale.
“ When he was appointed, enrollment was at a historic low and the college was "on the verge of bankruptcy".During his tenure as president, enrollment grew from 590 to 1,300 students. When nearby Dana College was forced to close, Sasse hired much of its faculty and enabled most of its students to transfer to Midland.” From Wikipedia.
Fremont is a small town. He saved lots of jobs and grew the college.
Today, Midland University has 1,700 students and 80% participate in athletics.
So impressive.
There is a surgery called the Whipple surgery and it isn’t very effective
The husband of the woman who looked after my grandmother at night had surgery for it c. 1980. They told her if he lived 10 days, he would survive. He bled to death on the ninth. Unlike other organs, the pancreas doesn't have an outer membrane, it's stuck to surrounding organs, which makes it difficult to remove. Many people don't have serious symptoms or get diagnosed until it's spread to the liver. The Navy doctor thought Mom's was a hiatal hernia for a month.
I do not fear death. I would rather not be in pain for a long time while dying. I suppose when you are on your deathbed, Hospice will arrange for you to get the painkillers you need. You know, the ones your doctor wouldn't give you for the pain you suffered through the months or even years leading up to that final illness. I do have gallows humor, but only about me. I use a LOT of dark humor in my social media posts, but out of respect for some close friends who have siblings or parents that have passed (ovarian cancer for a dear friend whose sister I dated in high school and remain dating friends to this day), I refrain from that subject. Just as I don't make fun of Downs Syndrome children and adults -- just real retards like Walz.
Those who disagree with Sasse 's politics need to understand that now is not the right moment to let us know about your superior political insight. You have lots of other opportunities to do that in a way that doesn't violate our valuable cultural norms.
Are we only sad when our friends suffer? We're all humans and we should respect the dignity of human life.
Death can kiss my ass.
He may be using humor to get a running start against despair. Eventually the laughing does stop, but instead of complaining, lamenting and bemoaning there's quiet stoicism. But isn't how that ends up for most people with a long and fatal illness? Complain and rage as much as one likes in the beginning, but when the end is in sight people become grimly resolved to face it.
I wouldn't be too hard on Sasse politically. He followed the academico-political course of honors -- Harvard and Yale, with a little Oxford and St. John's College thrown in -- and found when he got where he was going that it was irrelevant or a hinderance.
Yancey Ward said...
The Stoics had it right: "Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back."
Yup. Pretty much.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.