The Susan G. Komen breast cancer fund reversed its Planned Parenthood action and the right wing anti-choice politician it hired has resigned. But the real lesson of this incident is broader than one decision or one person.

Our society is permeated with a culture of corporate greed, aggression, and power that reaches from the boardrooms of New York to the meeting rooms of Washington.

The Susan G. Komen foundation has raised millions to support vitally important work, but it has also reinforced some of the worst tendencies in our society. It has leveraged big-company resources so that it could dominate its "marketplace," usually by serving as a marketing arm for a client list that includes some very poorly-behaved corporate citizens. Then it has used its market dominance to bully other organizations, push its own political agenda, and try to reshape the course of U.S. cancer research in dangerous ways.

Just like its most prominent sponsor, the Susan G. Komen foundation has become too big to fail.

The Players

Karen Handel had some bitter words for her critics as she stepped down from her post as Komen's vice president for public policy. "I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it," Handel wrote.

But there was no "strategy," which Handel and others have defined as denying funding to any group that is under federal investigation. As we noted, and others reported as well, a number of other Komen grant recipients were under real federal investigation and were left untouched, while Planned Parenthood was to be cut for being the subject of a trumped-up, one-person investigation conducted by a right-wing member of Congress.

Nancy Brinker, Komen's founder and CEO, served in a number of positions under George W. Bush, while Handel was a Sarah Palin-endorsed gubernatorial candidate. Political affiliations shouldn't disqualify anyone from serving in a charitable role, of course. Like many people, I've often enjoyed working with ideological opponents on charitable issues of common interest. That kind of cause-based allegiance can help bind our society together.

But Brinker brings her ideology into her Komen work, and has done it so effectively that she's transformed the world of charitable giving ... for the worse. There isn't just the matter of her personal compensation, which the foundation reported as $531,924 as of 2010. Or the fact that she's the only employee who flies first class at the charity's expense, according to the fund's IRS financial filing. (See Komen's form 8453-EO for 2010.)

There's an argument to be made that highly effective fundraisers and executives should receive good, if not excessive, salaries and perks. We won't have that argument here. And for all we know, Ms. Brinker may donate her entire salary to charity. She did choose this career over corporate life, after all, which seems like an altruistic move.

Nor will we argue that Nancy Brinker hasn't been effective at her job. But how has she been effective?

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