Posted on 06/05/2005 11:45:26 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
"Too Late To Die Young: Nearly True Tales From a Life," by Harriet McBryde Johnson.
About two years ago, Harriet Johnson appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. If you saw her portrait, you probably haven't forgotten it.
A thin woman in a wheelchair leans forward, a purple shawl draping one shoulder. Johnson describes it this way in her new memoir: "The portrait has been described as beautifully disturbing, and most nondisabled people seem to see it that way. I'd prefer to call it disturbingly beautiful, but I'll take it the other way around if I must."
Johnson has an unnamed muscle-wasting disease, but don't dare say she "suffers" from it. She insists on being her own complicated person, a Southern lady, for instance, as well as a socialist, an atheist, a lawyer and a born storyteller with a wicked sense of humor.
She eschews pity and sentimentality. She supports the work of Not Dead Yet, a group of anti-euthanasia activists who demonstrated outside Terri Schiavo's Pinellas Park hospice earlier this year, dramatically sliding out of their wheelchairs and lying on the ground.
And though Johnson hates the hackneyed trope of triumph in the face of disability, she nevertheless has a string of interesting adventures. She runs for elected office. She travels to Cuba to discuss disability rights. She protests the Jerry Lewis telethon annually in her hometown of Charleston, S.C., and she bribes her friends to join her with promises of free food.
Her gripe with the telethon is its grim prognostications. When she was 30, her mother became ill, and Johnson had to accept for the first time that, contrary to all expectations, she might indeed outlive her parents. "While anyone may die young, it's not something you can count on," she writes. "You have to be prepared to survive." It's that angry, proud but utterly normal brand of survival that is at the heart of Johnson's memoir.
The most fascinating chapter is her encounter with the philosopher and animal rights activist Peter Singer. (It was this encounter that rated The New York Times Magazine cover.) Singer believes that in some cases it is morally acceptable for parents to kill severely disabled infants. Johnson disagrees, so much so that she fears even debating him would dignify his ideas as socially acceptable. Nevertheless, she meets him, travels to Princeton University to debate him and ends up with a great story about it.
The best memoirs don't necessarily tell every event in a person's life, but they do capture the voice and the emotional feel of the author. Yes, it's impossible for a nondisabled person to fully know what Johnson's life is like. But her writing is so vibrant, so interesting and so funny that you can't help but feel as if you're in her world, sitting beside her and hearing her story for yourself.
From me to you and the rest of the WPPFF: "Have a great day!"
Good Day
What do you know about Terri and why in the world would you judge her for anything. She's the one who is dead. Michael is the one who obviously didn't care about his wedding vows as he had 2 children with a women while his wife was being murdered by him. Sounds like a reall nice guy doesn't he?
This is a great story, but it has NOTHING to do with the Schiavo situation. Nothing.
Hi Hildy, still at it, I see. You should be celebrating Independence Day, too.
I am going back to our bbq.
8mm
I celebrate life everyday. I don't see what that has to do with what I just said.
You sound like a member of some extreme cult or a paranoid. Among normal people, having lunch with someone is not adultery, only in someone's sick mind.
In any case, Terri never did anything horrible enough to justify being dehydrated and starved to death.
The best of luck to ya, at adjusting to the truth.
Judge Greer's ruling against the Schindlers on the matter of feeding by mouth seemed the most indicative of his frame of mind. By precluding attempts, as a “last ditch” measure, to feed her by mouth, the judge showed that his object was not merely to stop what he might (erroneously) argue is an “extraordinary” means of support, but to make certain that Terri died. One might make an analogy to someone on a respirator: frequently respirators are removed from patients, but sometimes they continue to breathe on their own without support. It is as though a judge were to order not only that a respirator be removed, but that the patient's mouth and nose be sealed with duct tape, just to make sure he couldn't get any air by any means.
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=37860
A woman was murdered. The fact that the Judge refused to allow Terri to be fed even by mouth, and there was no diligent attempt at proper diagnosis or rehab, proves this was only about outside parties trying to kill a patient, not about the patient's "rights" or dignity.
Because the precedent may affect every person, not only the immediate patient. As it went, we now know it is more acceptable to kill people without their consent, or based on flimsy hearsay. HOWEVER, Judge Greer did not accept testimony that would save Terri's life.
Fellow Americans: Watch your back.
George Felos said it. He said she was a houseplant. Houseplants are incapable of sin. I do not know what handle George uses in Free Republic, though.
Everyone who said that Terri was PVS or brain dead or comatose or a vegetable or already dead or similarly, was likewise affirming that she was incapable of sin.
Well, now, there's a new and stronger motive for Michael to kill her.
Domestic violence has always been far and away the most likely cause of Terri's so-called "collapse." The Medical Examiner forcefully laid the "bulimia" theory to rest, so now there is no medical explanation left, however exotic and farfetched, for Terri's injury. All we have is one male suspect with a classic motive to hurt his wife and no alibi at all.
Gee make up your mind. Marriage vows should be obeyed now?
Terri was human, a sinner, and appears, based on available evidence, to be carrying on some form of adulterous behaviour before her collapse. So much for the whole "she was perfect" thing, eh?
So a dead person can get slammed by you for this behavior, but you support others when they do it? Kinda hypocritical, Chad Fairbanks. But that's just you...
Oh and the rest of your post? You've got projection down to a fine art!
On May 24, Gov Jeb Bush signed a bill (HB 523) that allows hearsay statements to be admitted into court. A family member, friend, or estranged spouse can decide to end the life of an incapacitated person by simply stating that the person made statements in the past that they wouldn't want to live if they were to become incapacitated. The bill became effective on July 1st.
TEJ published an excellent report on the new bill.
View the bill here.
Time to send all the Grannies to Florida. Be sure you get your verbal statements together before you start counting your inheritance money.
You nailed that irony. I would hope to be the diametric opposite of all three, and am trying to define the opposite of lawyer.
8mm
This might help..
Joke of the day:
A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a Sheriffs Deputy.
He thinks that he is smarter than the Deputy because he is sure that he has a better education.
He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the deputies expense...
Deputy says, "License and registration, please."
Lawyer says, "What for?"
Deputy says, "You didn't come to a complete stop at the stop sign ."
Lawyer says, "I slowed down, and no one was coming."
Deputy says, "You still didn't come to a complete stop. License and registration, please."
Lawyer says, "What's the difference?"
Deputy says, "The difference is, you have to come to a complete stop, that's the law. License and registration, please!"
Lawyer says, "If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll give you my license and registration and you give me the ticket,if not you let me go and no ticket."
Deputy says, "Exit your vehicle, sir."
At this point, the deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the ever-loving crap out of the lawyer and says:
"Do you want me to stop or just slow down?"
Makes it real hard to believe Jeb is pro-life now doesn't it?
Wonder when he will learn you can't say one thing and do another, the truth always comes out. For those of us who once belived, the truth hurts, but it keeps staring us in the face.
Oh my word, this is sick! I just don't understand Bush at all!
Thanks, I needed that..
8mm
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