Pink Ribbons, Inc.

excerpt from
Chapter 3:
Stamping Out Breast Cancer: The Neoliberal State and the Volunteer Citizen

Table of Contents
Author Q and A
Breast Cancer Fact Sheet
Book Information

$24.95 cloth/jacket
ISBN 0-8166-4898-0

The breast cancer research stamp, unveiled by First Lady Hillary Clinton and Postmaster General William Henderson on July 29, 1998, costs forty-five cents and is valid for postage in the amount of the prevailing first-class letter rate. Seventy percent of funds raised are donated to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and 30 percent to the Breast Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense (DOD). This is the first stamp in the history of the United States to be endowed with the capacity to raise funds for any institution or body other than the U.S. Postal Service. In June 2004, the breast cancer stamp surpassed sales of the Elvis Presley stamp to become the best---selling stamp of all time. By June 2005, revenues from the stamp had reached $45.6 million, and by November of that year, the NCI had collected $33.5 million, and the DOD, $13 million.

Following the ratification of the Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act (the legislation that brought the stamp into being), the 106th Congress witnessed the introduction of fourteen more bills that would create fund---raising postage stamps, including the Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Trust Fund Act, the Faces of AIDS Stamp Act, the Hunger Relief Stamp Act, the Look Listen and Live Stamp Act (for rail grade crossing safety education), Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness “Semipostal” Stamp, the Stamp Out Diabetes Act, the Stamp Out Domestic Violence Act, and the Stamp Out Prostate Cancer Act. In response, Congress signed into law the Semipostal Authorization Act on July 28, 2000, which authorized the postal authorities to sell special stamps promoting health, education, or any national interest without first seeking permission from Congress. It was not until four years later, however, that a second “semipostal” was actually approved. On June 7, 2002, the Heroes of 2001 stamp, depicting Thomas E. Franklin’s now famous photograph of three firefighters raising the U.S. flag at the World Trade Center site in New York City, was issued to generate funds for the families of relief personnel killed or disabled in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

That the second fund---raising stamp in United States history should emerge after September 11, 2001, makes sense in the context of dominant responses to the events of that day. While the Bush administration made plans for a military reaction, “ordinary” Americans were told that they could best help the nation to recover from this tragedy by doing two things: shopping and volunteering, with the donation of money a frequently cited example of the types of volunteerism in which people could engage. In his November 8, 2001, address to the nation, President Bush declared:

Flags are flying everywhere—on houses, in store windows, on cars and lapels. Financial donations to the victims’ families have reached more than a billion dollars. Countless Americans gave blood in the aftermath of the attacks. New Yorkers opened their homes to evacuated neighbors. We are waiting patiently in long security lines. Children across America have organized lemonade and cookie sales for children in Afghanistan.

And we can do more. Since September the 11th, many Americans, especially young Americans, are rethinking their career choices. They’re being drawn to careers of service, as police or firemen, emergency health workers, teachers, counselors, or in the military. And this is good for America.

Many ask, what can I do to help in our fight? The answer is simple. All of us can become a September the 11th volunteer by making a commitment to service in our own communities.

In this context, the Heroes of 2001 stamp offered an accessible and efficient vehicle through which citizens could fulfill both expectations at once: like so many recently created cogs in the machinery of philanthropic production in the United States, the stamp enabled people to do good for others at the same time that they went about their everyday practices of consumption.
As we have already seen, breast cancer nonprofit organizations, in partnership with corporate marketing executives, have led the way in developing consumer-oriented philanthropic activities over the past two decades. But during this period politicians at both the state and federal levels have also participated in the cultivation of breast cancer as a popular cause. Engaging in what a 1996 New York Times article called the “battle for the breast,” politicians from across the political spectrum have responded to intensified organizing around the disease by offering highly publicized support for breast cancer initiatives, particularly those with a philanthropic component.

Members of Congress became particularly interested in breast cancer, Carol Weisman argues, during the height of the abortion wars in the 1990s. The disease was viewed as a politically “safe” subject, “a good women’s issue for both antiabortion and abortion rights legislators,” that could help male legislators, in particular, win the allegiance of that most valuable, and slippery, of voters: the suburban, middle-class woman. Weisman cites the case of Senator Arlen Specter, a mostly prochoice, fiscally conservative Republican who had famously and aggressively interrogated Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and as a result found himself in trouble with women voters. In the face of his Democrat opponent Lynn Yeakel’s renowned television campaign drawing attention to his behavior at the hearings and in an attempt to win back those voters, Specter became a key advocate of breast cancer initiatives in the 1992 election.

Mary Vavrus draws our attention to another key element of the historical context that helps explain political interest in the disease. Her research reveals how the so-called gender gap in voting was by this period of time the primary metaphor employed to discuss women’s electoral behavior (even though it was already known to be an unreliable tool by which to explain or predict voting choices). This pattern of voting, in which a significant percentage of women opt for one candidate and a significant percentage of men for the opposition, has been generative of a range of strategies designed to attract the votes of white, middle-class, suburban women who, accurately or not, were characterized by pollsters, politicians, and media pundits as swing voters. Vavrus also suggests that between 1992 and 1996 a key shift occurred in news discourse on women and electoral politics: in 1992 (The Year of the Woman), women were widely portrayed as wielders of political power, but in 1996 they came to be viewed as a demographic group of swing voters who were collectively designated as “soccer moms” and thus defined primarily by their filial obligations. Accompanying this shift, Vavrus notes, was an intensified ideology of consumerism in which electoral choices were increasingly reduced to “personal choices around product consumption and ‘lifestyle.’” In this context, it is not surprising that since the 1992 elections, numerous politicians—particularly those known for their conservative, antichoice, antifeminist (or some combination thereof) positions—made breast cancer a central part of their platform. And, moreover, that consumption-oriented philanthropy in the form of the breast cancer stamp became a primary tool for eliciting electoral support. In the 1996 elections, for example, conservative senators such as Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Ted Stevens of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia all vied for the “breast vote.” Another conservative Republican, Senator Lauch Faircloth, used his support of the breast cancer stamp during his reelection bid in 1998. In commercials that appeared on Lifetime television, Faircloth claimed, “For most people, a stamp is a way to send a letter. For one man, it’s a way to provide hope.” Faircloth strategists told the Weekly Standard, “We’re trying to show people, especially women, that Lauch Faircloth is not an unreasonable guy. It did a lot of good for us. Tons. It’s been one of the most successful spots in the campaign.”

Breast cancer also became a key issue in the race for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. When George W. Bush made television commercials featuring Republican Party activist and breast cancer survivor Geri Ravish criticizing the record of Bush’s Republican primary opponent, John McCain, on financing breast cancer “issues,” McCain responded with publicity countering Ravish’s claims and highlighting Bush’s own failures to support spending on certain breast cancer programs. Setting aside for a moment the question of the types of breast cancer policy that these politicians advocate (it is useful to point out that none of the men mentioned above scored highly by the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s legislative criteria during that period), the enthusiasm with which conservative representatives now turn to particular forms of breast cancer activism might be suggestive of the sociopolitical norms and values that the disease has come to represent at this time.

Indeed, in the process of tracing the history of political interest in breast cancer and, more specifically, the story of the breast cancer fundraising stamp, it becomes clear how support for the battle against the disease is frequently generated through appeals that link success in this undertaking to the preservation of national motherhood, normative femininity, and the spirit of “American generosity,” even as politicians of all stripes repeatedly attest to the bipartisan and apolitical “nature” of the cause. Moreover, although the breast cancer research stamp is in part a response to well-executed political organizing and an effect of the mainstream parties’ efforts to attract women voters, it can also be understood as a symptom of the renewed political interest in volunteerism and philanthropy as modes of governing. In the context of the near blanket consensus that the era of “big government” is and should be at an end and of the concomitant cutbacks in state-funded social programs (but not, crucially in other realms), initiatives based on individual or corporate giving have come to be understood in dominant discourse as a more desirable alternative. They are commonly viewed as more flexible, efficient, and personal than state-funded support, and participation in such activities is thought to build self-reliant, virtuous citizens. The promise of tools such as the breast cancer stamp is thus under-stood to go beyond the reduction of state spending to include a capacity for producing desirable citizens and new visions of U.S. society.

In his analysis of the history of neoliberal political thought, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Nikolas Rose has identified the desire to “govern at a distance” as a central tenet of mainstream politics in the United States and Britain in the past quarter century. Neoliberalism has not abandoned the “will to govern,” he argues, but instead reflects the pervasive view that the failure of government to achieve its objectives in particular realms is to be overcome by inventing new strategies of governance that will succeed. Frequently, these new strategies do not depend on the creation of more or better funded state programs and socially identified citizens who understand themselves as members of a single, integrated, national society; rather, they rely on the development of an enabling state that is no longer required to answer all of society’s problems but that encourages and facilitates the active involvement of individuals, corporations, foundations, charities, schools, hospitals, community associations, and so on in resolving these problems. In this context, the story of the Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act, a measure that has enabled individual citizens to voluntarily participate in funding breast cancer research, provides a lens through which to explore contemporary political thought on the relative merits of state versus individual responsibility in providing for the common good and on the implication of the recent history of breast cancer in these debates.



excerpt from Chapter 3: Stamping Out Breast Cancer: The Neoliberal State and the Volunteer Citizen Table of Contents Author Q and A Breast Cancer Fact Sheet Book Information		$24.95 cloth/jacket ISBN 0-8166-4898-0
The breast cancer research stamp, unveiled by First Lady Hillary Clinton and Postmaster General William Henderson on July 29, 1998, costs forty-five cents and is valid for postage in the amount of the prevailing first-class letter rate. Seventy percent of funds raised are donated to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and 30 percent to the Breast Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense (DOD). This is the first stamp in the history of the United States to be endowed with the capacity to raise funds for any institution or body other than the U.S. Postal Service. In June 2004, the breast cancer stamp surpassed sales of the Elvis Presley stamp to become the best---selling stamp of all time. By June 2005, revenues from the stamp had reached $45.6 million, and by November of that year, the NCI had collected $33.5 million, and the DOD, $13 million. Following the ratification of the Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act (the legislation that brought the stamp into being), the 106th Congress witnessed the introduction of fourteen more bills that would create fund---raising postage stamps, including the Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Trust Fund Act, the Faces of AIDS Stamp Act, the Hunger Relief Stamp Act, the Look Listen and Live Stamp Act (for rail grade crossing safety education), Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness “Semipostal” Stamp, the Stamp Out Diabetes Act, the Stamp Out Domestic Violence Act, and the Stamp Out Prostate Cancer Act. In response, Congress signed into law the Semipostal Authorization Act on July 28, 2000, which authorized the postal authorities to sell special stamps promoting health, education, or any national interest without first seeking permission from Congress. It was not until four years later, however, that a second “semipostal” was actually approved. On June 7, 2002, the Heroes of 2001 stamp, depicting Thomas E. Franklin’s now famous photograph of three firefighters raising the U.S. flag at the World Trade Center site in New York City, was issued to generate funds for the families of relief personnel killed or disabled in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. That the second fund---raising stamp in United States history should emerge after September 11, 2001, makes sense in the context of dominant responses to the events of that day. While the Bush administration made plans for a military reaction, “ordinary” Americans were told that they could best help the nation to recover from this tragedy by doing two things: shopping and volunteering, with the donation of money a frequently cited example of the types of volunteerism in which people could engage. In his November 8, 2001, address to the nation, President Bush declared: Flags are flying everywhere—on houses, in store windows, on cars and lapels. Financial donations to the victims’ families have reached more than a billion dollars. Countless Americans gave blood in the aftermath of the attacks. New Yorkers opened their homes to evacuated neighbors. We are waiting patiently in long security lines. Children across America have organized lemonade and cookie sales for children in Afghanistan. And we can do more. Since September the 11th, many Americans, especially young Americans, are rethinking their career choices. They’re being drawn to careers of service, as police or firemen, emergency health workers, teachers, counselors, or in the military. And this is good for America. Many ask, what can I do to help in our fight? The answer is simple. All of us can become a September the 11th volunteer by making a commitment to service in our own communities. In this context, the Heroes of 2001 stamp offered an accessible and efficient vehicle through which citizens could fulfill both expectations at once: like so many recently created cogs in the machinery of philanthropic production in the United States, the stamp enabled people to do good for others at the same time that they went about their everyday practices of consumption. As we have already seen, breast cancer nonprofit organizations, in partnership with corporate marketing executives, have led the way in developing consumer-oriented philanthropic activities over the past two decades. But during this period politicians at both the state and federal levels have also participated in the cultivation of breast cancer as a popular cause. Engaging in what a 1996 New York Times article called the “battle for the breast,” politicians from across the political spectrum have responded to intensified organizing around the disease by offering highly publicized support for breast cancer initiatives, particularly those with a philanthropic component. Members of Congress became particularly interested in breast cancer, Carol Weisman argues, during the height of the abortion wars in the 1990s. The disease was viewed as a politically “safe” subject, “a good women’s issue for both antiabortion and abortion rights legislators,” that could help male legislators, in particular, win the allegiance of that most valuable, and slippery, of voters: the suburban, middle-class woman. Weisman cites the case of Senator Arlen Specter, a mostly prochoice, fiscally conservative Republican who had famously and aggressively interrogated Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and as a result found himself in trouble with women voters. In the face of his Democrat opponent Lynn Yeakel’s renowned television campaign drawing attention to his behavior at the hearings and in an attempt to win back those voters, Specter became a key advocate of breast cancer initiatives in the 1992 election. Mary Vavrus draws our attention to another key element of the historical context that helps explain political interest in the disease. Her research reveals how the so-called gender gap in voting was by this period of time the primary metaphor employed to discuss women’s electoral behavior (even though it was already known to be an unreliable tool by which to explain or predict voting choices). This pattern of voting, in which a significant percentage of women opt for one candidate and a significant percentage of men for the opposition, has been generative of a range of strategies designed to attract the votes of white, middle-class, suburban women who, accurately or not, were characterized by pollsters, politicians, and media pundits as swing voters. Vavrus also suggests that between 1992 and 1996 a key shift occurred in news discourse on women and electoral politics: in 1992 (The Year of the Woman), women were widely portrayed as wielders of political power, but in 1996 they came to be viewed as a demographic group of swing voters who were collectively designated as “soccer moms” and thus defined primarily by their filial obligations. Accompanying this shift, Vavrus notes, was an intensified ideology of consumerism in which electoral choices were increasingly reduced to “personal choices around product consumption and ‘lifestyle.’” In this context, it is not surprising that since the 1992 elections, numerous politicians—particularly those known for their conservative, antichoice, antifeminist (or some combination thereof) positions—made breast cancer a central part of their platform. And, moreover, that consumption-oriented philanthropy in the form of the breast cancer stamp became a primary tool for eliciting electoral support. In the 1996 elections, for example, conservative senators such as Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Ted Stevens of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia all vied for the “breast vote.” Another conservative Republican, Senator Lauch Faircloth, used his support of the breast cancer stamp during his reelection bid in 1998. In commercials that appeared on Lifetime television, Faircloth claimed, “For most people, a stamp is a way to send a letter. For one man, it’s a way to provide hope.” Faircloth strategists told the Weekly Standard, “We’re trying to show people, especially women, that Lauch Faircloth is not an unreasonable guy. It did a lot of good for us. Tons. It’s been one of the most successful spots in the campaign.” Breast cancer also became a key issue in the race for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. When George W. Bush made television commercials featuring Republican Party activist and breast cancer survivor Geri Ravish criticizing the record of Bush’s Republican primary opponent, John McCain, on financing breast cancer “issues,” McCain responded with publicity countering Ravish’s claims and highlighting Bush’s own failures to support spending on certain breast cancer programs. Setting aside for a moment the question of the types of breast cancer policy that these politicians advocate (it is useful to point out that none of the men mentioned above scored highly by the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s legislative criteria during that period), the enthusiasm with which conservative representatives now turn to particular forms of breast cancer activism might be suggestive of the sociopolitical norms and values that the disease has come to represent at this time. Indeed, in the process of tracing the history of political interest in breast cancer and, more specifically, the story of the breast cancer fundraising stamp, it becomes clear how support for the battle against the disease is frequently generated through appeals that link success in this undertaking to the preservation of national motherhood, normative femininity, and the spirit of “American generosity,” even as politicians of all stripes repeatedly attest to the bipartisan and apolitical “nature” of the cause. Moreover, although the breast cancer research stamp is in part a response to well-executed political organizing and an effect of the mainstream parties’ efforts to attract women voters, it can also be understood as a symptom of the renewed political interest in volunteerism and philanthropy as modes of governing. In the context of the near blanket consensus that the era of “big government” is and should be at an end and of the concomitant cutbacks in state-funded social programs (but not, crucially in other realms), initiatives based on individual or corporate giving have come to be understood in dominant discourse as a more desirable alternative. They are commonly viewed as more flexible, efficient, and personal than state-funded support, and participation in such activities is thought to build self-reliant, virtuous citizens. The promise of tools such as the breast cancer stamp is thus under-stood to go beyond the reduction of state spending to include a capacity for producing desirable citizens and new visions of U.S. society. In his analysis of the history of neoliberal political thought, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Nikolas Rose has identified the desire to “govern at a distance” as a central tenet of mainstream politics in the United States and Britain in the past quarter century. Neoliberalism has not abandoned the “will to govern,” he argues, but instead reflects the pervasive view that the failure of government to achieve its objectives in particular realms is to be overcome by inventing new strategies of governance that will succeed. Frequently, these new strategies do not depend on the creation of more or better funded state programs and socially identified citizens who understand themselves as members of a single, integrated, national society; rather, they rely on the development of an enabling state that is no longer required to answer all of society’s problems but that encourages and facilitates the active involvement of individuals, corporations, foundations, charities, schools, hospitals, community associations, and so on in resolving these problems. In this context, the story of the Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act, a measure that has enabled individual citizens to voluntarily participate in funding breast cancer research, provides a lens through which to explore contemporary political thought on the relative merits of state versus individual responsibility in providing for the common good and on the implication of the recent history of breast cancer in these debates.