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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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March 30, 2005
Terri Schiavo's So-Called "Supporters"
The Terri Schiavo case has become a cultural Rorschach test, with enough conflicts and ambiguities that different people see different things in it. Therefore, I won't necessarily 100% describe my own reactions as totally and unequivocally "rational" and based absolutely only on the facts in front of me. I approach that as nearly as I can, but all have fallen short of the glory of God.
That said, some of the supposed "supporters" of Terri Schiavo really positively UNimpress me. Rather than generalizing, here are a couple from Easter Sunday that particularly caused me to want lay my oak walking staff upside their heads:
Am I supposed to believe that this little drama queen display for the cameras was about anything other than getting attention and some cheap moral glory for the subject, one Mary Porta?
This display reminds me of my late ex-bootlegging grandfather Brown Barger. He was polite, and generally more discrete than me in holding his tongue. He got along fine with nearly everyone, including the local Holy Roller types. Nonetheless, he was particularly unimpressed with all the speaking in tongues, and rolling and weeping in the aisles stuff. Within the family, he expressed the opinion that such displays were much more likely some demonic possession than anything to do with God. That, or they're just looking for cheap attention.
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Perhaps I can come up with a caption for this picture of Rev Jerry Lane of Chattanooga, TN. "I am the final arbiter of morality in even the most difficult cases. Vengence is Mine, sayeth Jerry Lane."
I'd like to lay my oak staff to his head Charlton Heston style, and say, "Let my people go."
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Also, I was far less than impressed last week with Greta Van Susteren. She's usually one of the less overtly partisan hacks at Fox News, but she's lost several pegs of respectability with her Schiavo material.
Specifically, she spent most of a show interviewing people who claimed to have known Terri Schiavo back when she was alive. She dug up some old co-worker to claim she wasn't happy in her marriage, and had talked about leaving her husband. She came up with a couple more slightly cheesier than that.
Now, besides the question of whether you can believe anything these random people say, or the context of it, why is this national news for America's #1 fair and balanced news source, especially these years later? This nonsense seems to be nothing but a cheap shot at a man who has been making difficult decisions, and who has lost his wife. Not just lost her clean in some car wreck, but in a horribly torturous and drawn out manner.
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Likewise, screw Ann Coulter. I'm usually sympathetic to her, but her numerous references to Michael Schiavo as an "adulterer" have me ready to smite her. Is it her considered opinion that it was morally incumbent on Michael Schiavo to remain utterly alone all these years? Terri Schiavo's breathing corpse is nothing to tell your troubles to at the end of the day. Was Michael Schiavo supposed to remain alone and celibate for 15 years?
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Likewise, the Schindler family and their representatives don't deserve much higher commendations. They got some shyster to come up claiming he heard Terri trying to repeat after him, "I want to live." This account is what is technically known as a BIG FAT FRICKIN LIE. The corpses shell laid up in that bed has shown no form of language ability after many thousands of hours of prodding and leading.
Her mother, Mary Schindler, is generally supposed to be about the top sympathy getter in this mess. She loves this and obviously milks it for every bit of attention and sympathy she can generate.
I was particularly unimpressed to hear her at microphones in front of the hospice on Tuesday the 29th calling out publicly Michael and his new companion by name. Someone less sympathetic than me might call her an uncaring, manipulative, grandstanding bitch. If she were really motivated by Terri's welfare, she'd recognize that Elvis has long since left the building, and let her go to her rest. Shoving the husbands new companion up his ass publicly like this only adds insensitivity to the self-indulgence of keeping Terri's corpse breathing.
Then there's Jesse Jackson, who is surely not just looking for another martyr into who's blood he can dip his figurative shirt.
There are some questions on the margin about Terri Schiavo's consciousness. Does she have any feelings of pain or pleasure, does she have at least some passing bit of consciousness of her surroundings? At best, she'd have a sub-animal consciousness. She certainly doesn't have the mental capacities of even a chicken, which are pretty dumb animals.
Not being a neurologist, nor ever having seen her in person, I couldn't level any kind of "clinical diagnosis." However, as just a sensible human being, I can make out a pretty good idea from these two photographs.
This shows Terri Schiavo years ago, back when she had a human consciousness. She sure was pretty, and looked like an active and vital young woman. It's too bad she died in 1990.
This lays breathing for perhaps a few more hours or days at a hospice in Florida. This corpse's shell isn't Terri Schiavo. She left the building in 1990.
Personally, I regard this 15 years in a hospital bed as cruel and unusual punishment. I know of absolutely NO ONE who would choose this for themselves.
Dear Schiavo "supporters:" Thanks a lot for grotesquely dragging out her death these many years. You're really helping out.
posted by Al at 3/30/2005 12:28:00 PM
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