As opioid epidemic raged, drug company executives made fun of West Virginians (mountainstatespotlight.org)

I don't know how anyone could be so callous. Making a profit over other people's misfortune isn't enough. You have to make fun of them too?

> He said the documents were cherry-picked out of context and defended the corporate culture at AmerisourceBergen, one of the three opioid distributors on trial in Charleston, and said it was of the “highest caliber.” -AmerisourceBergen executive Chris Zimmerman

Wordplay and making up new lyrics to old melodies is fun (keep up the good work, Misbehavin’ Maidens [generally NSFW]), but doing it about a group one is not part of is risky, and might be mean, callous, ignorant, exploitative, etc.

> “We’re a company, we’re not an enforcement agency and we’re not a regulatory agency,” Zimmerman said

Reminds me of “ExxonMobile wants you to take responsibility for climate change, study says”.[0] Why should ExxonMobile executives care about the rate and manner of petroleum resource-conversion? Do they and their families and friends, and all the other entangled life, live on this planet? Have their geologists collected data that might be useful?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27158321

Hillary Clinton: "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?"

https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorabl...

Reminds me of the 'Grandma Millie' laughter during the CA 'energy-crisis' created by Enron. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/enron-traders-caught-on-tape/]

Unfortunately, the Enron CEO had a heart attack before he did jail time for 10 counts of securities fraud. But the drug company executives are still living.

Wait until you find out how much HackerNews regulars argued about West Virginian opioid usage being real or over reported or just straight out made up

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270855