Posted on 06/12/2005 4:49:20 AM PDT by Cincinnatus
Lucianne Goldberg took a substantial amount of criticism when she shut down the Terri Schiavo threads at Lucianne.com during the height of the coverage. The death last week of her husband Sidney allows a bit more light to be shed on that decision. What follows is an email I received from a member of the L.com staff, in response to a tribute I had written on my blog, Cheer up! Life Isn’t Everything which had also been linked from a Free Republic condolence thread:
Sidney's hospitalization began the same week the Terry Schiavo situation hit the national media. Imagine having your spouse in the hospital and you are facing very difficult end-of-life decisions, while at the same time a 24/7 debate is going on across the country. Lucianne spent a good deal of her time shutting off TVs in the hospital to protect the patients, but there was no avoiding it for her. After a day at the hospital, she would return home in the evening to find her entire website had been taken over with the highly charged, extremely emotional, repetitive, and at times down right nasty debate. It was more than she was willing or able to tolerate, and she instructed us (LCom Staff) to shut it down. She took a great deal of abuse from posters for her decision, and many turned on her and left. I'm sure they had no idea what she was facing in her personal life, and I don't blame them for that. But, there is a lesson in this episode for everyone. Maybe when we don't understand a decision, it would be best to recognize that there may be more to the story and trust that it will eventually make sense to us. I hope this brings understanding.
My comment has nothing to do with her loss, only the attitude of her site
>>Come on you all, she just lost her husband
Are you suggesting she would have done anything differently if she hadn't? If so, what? And has she said this or is it just your opinion that she was not acting rationally? If so, what exactly do you think she did irrationally---paying attention to her website while her husband was dying, shutting off TV's in the hospital to protect patients, shutting down discussion of Schiavo, or something else? I'm not being argumentative here, just looking for clarity.
That caught my eye as well. I've not been to her site, so have no (pertinent) comments. However, if I were running a site where I invited public comments, I'd have a really hard time censoring the threads. I'd make a separate room for them, or post an annoying announcement on them...but not delete them.
This business of running around the hospital turning off TV....note to Lucianne..."People die everyday. A lot of people in a hospital die. It's about half of what hospitals are for. Who the hell are you to run around censoring what people watch on TV in a place that is not your home? And quite possibly doing this "for the patients" when maybe the patients couldn't defend themselves? Maybe we could just chalk it up to unbearable grief?" What arrogance!
When my 47 year old father was trying to recover from heart surgery and fighting for his life, we made a decision not to tell him that one of his even younger good friends had died on the operating table from similar surgery at about the same time. Likewise, when he was extremely depressed we didn't want to tell him that one of his political heroes had committed suicide. As compelling as the Schiavo case was (is) for many of us (see, for example, Ye Shall Be As Gods ), to me it is perfectly understandable that if a loved one is terminally ill, major debates on life and death issues may not be what you need to hear at such a time.
The purpose of the posting is merely to show that sometimes there is more to the story. If people wish to continue to despise Lucianne, I'm sure she can take it. For me, she is my friend, and I never needed an explanation.
Everyone handles grief in their own way.
Lucianne may well have been lending her support to the Schiavo cause by not allowing the nastiness on her board.
SOME of the people who fancy themselves supporters of the cause actually did (and are doing) more harm than good. Nastiness never persuaded anyone to a cause, and there are SOME who are downright ugly and irrational (blaming people who fought for TS for TS's fate) to the point they're driving fence sitters away from the cause.
Oh Gosh,
I was just trying to sidestep the issue, not wanting to criticize her or her site at this time.
Attitude on her site? Understatement.
A few years ago when FR went down I naively went over to Lucianne.com and asked them if they had any idea what the problem was at FR and when they'd be coming back up.
The blistering reply I received was hilariously rude.
Needless to say, I never returned.
You know. The Tea heiress.
To the rapist, sex is always consenual.
To the feeding tube-puller, it's a painless process.
Why didn't she simply inform posters upfront that she was going through a personal experience with the issue and couldn't endure the debate on her site? Lord knows they aren't shy there about posting information about themselves, their birthdays, family graduations, marriages, etc. - plus everything you didn't want to know about their pets. I am sure posters would have been understanding.
Case in point.
That is true here. And this story encourages me to write on a subject I have avoided for eleven years. I was the one who had to make the medical care decisions for my comatose mother, long ago. It is not a single decision, but many separate decisions. And it requires help, fortitude and prayer.
I do not wish the fate of that decision on anyone. But with the huge advances of the capacity of medicine to keep the body alive regardless of all else, more and more people will face those same decisions for members of their own families.
Congressman Billybob
The blistering reply I received was hilariously rude.
I hope they asked first before posting this very private information on public forums.
How about it was a deeply personal matter that she wanted to keep in the family? I correspond with her frequently and had no idea Sid was even ill, though there were a few clues. Even now, I am posting this story without her prior knowledge or permission, and am beginning to regret having done so, because the last thing I wanted to do is cause her more hurt when she is already facing the worst hurt of her life.
Ditto,
Some people just don't know what 'inappropriate timing' means,
You may want to ask JR to terminate, as she's bound to see this sooner or later.
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