Posted on 06/19/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Just when it seemed that every liberal commentator on the Terri Schiavo case was starting to sound like Barney Frank, the great Joan Didion published a long and remarkable article on the case in the quite far left New York Review of Books of June 9. Frank, of course, took the occasion of last week's Schiavo autopsy results as yet another opportunity to denounce Republicans as "this fanatical party willing to impose its own views on people."
For those of you still somehow unaware, "imposing their views" is a semiofficial Democratic meme or code phrase meaning "religious people who vote their moral views and disagree with us." Didion, on the other hand, cut through all the rhetoric about imposing views and said the struggle to spare Schiavo's life was "essentially a civil rights intervention." This is a phrase of great clarity, particularly since Democrats have a long track record of protecting civil rights and Republicans don't. Behind the grotesque media circus, the two parties were essentially switching roles. In the first round of public opinion--the polls--the GOP took a beating. But in the long run, the American people tend to rally behind civil rights, and the party that fights to uphold them is likely to prevail.
On the "rational" or "secular" side of the dispute, Didion wrote, there was "very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as 'fundamentalists' or 'evangelicals,' who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it." Amen. There was also little admission that this was a "merciful euthanasia" controversy posing as a "right to die" case. Many of us understood, as the autopsy has now shown, that Schiavo was severely damaged, but a national psychodrama built around the alleged need to end a life without clear consent is likely to induce anxieties in all but the most dedicated right-to-die adherents.
"The ethical argument" Didion did not conclude that ending Schiavo's life was a wrongful act, but she seemed to be leaning that way. She wrote: "What might have seemed a central argument in this case--the ethical argument, the argument about whether, when it comes to life and death, any of us can justifiably claim the ability or the right to judge the value of any other being's life--remained largely unexpressed, mentioned, when at all, only to be dismissed."
That issue was slurred and muffled by the media and by shrewd, though completely misleading, right-to-die arguments that distracted us from the core issue of consent. George Felos, the attorney of Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, told Larry King, "Quality of life is one of those tricky things because it's a very personal and individual decision. I don't think any of us have the right to make a judgment about quality of life for another."
Here Felos piously got away with adopting a deadly argument against his own position by presenting it as somehow bolstering his case. This can happen only when the media are totally incurious or already committed to your side. Michael Schiavo made a somewhat similar eye-popping argument to King: "I think that every person in this country should be scared. The government is going to trample all over your private and personal matters. It's outrageous that these people that we elect are not letting you have your civil liberties to choose what you want when you die." Americans were indeed scared that they might one day be in Terri Schiavo's predicament.
But Michael was speaking as though Terri Schiavo's wishes in the matter were clear and Republicans were determined to trample them anyway. Yet her wishes, as Didion says, were "essentially unconfirmable" and based on bits of hearsay reported by people whose interests were not obviously her own--Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives.
One hearsay comment--"no tubes for me" --came while Terri Schiavo was watching television. "Imagine it," Didion wrote. "You are in your early 20s. You are watching a movie, say on Lifetime, in which someone has a feeding tube. You pick up the empty chip bowl. 'No tubes for me,' you say as you get up to fill it. What are the chances you have given this even a passing thought?" According to studies cited last year in the Hastings Center Report, Didion reminds us, almost a third of written directives, after periods as short as two years, no longer reflect the wishes of those who made them. And here nothing was written down at all.
The autopsy confirms the extraordinary damage to Schiavo and discredits those who tried to depict the husband as a wife-beater. But the autopsy has nothing to say about the core moral issue: Do people with profound disabilities no longer have a right to live? That issue is still on the table.
BTTT...
1992 was during MS's caring phase, when he swore to do all it takes for Terri, er, until he got the loot and the new screwbuddy, that is.
Are you serious??
If you actually believe what you wrote in post 137, I feel sorry for you. MS broke many promises, notably his marriage vow.
Yes I am...and he has given her parents the location.
Hasn't this been reported yet?
Not a tribute to her, a tribute to him.
What an egotistical, self-serving, cold-hearted, low-rent creep he is.
Really, I am aghast. Not a snippet of poetry, or a lilting homily, nor a reference to her beauty or value as human, nor a phrase from the Bible, but "I I I" from Michael Schiavo. It's really amazing...
It's really none of your buisness though is it.
Out of all the civil lawsuits they filed (where Michael spent the bulk of the money defending), I don't believe the Schindlers won any. All they did was add five years to Terri's ordeal, while shamelessly exposing their daughter's intimate hospital life to the public via interviews and videos of her contorted face and lifeless body.
Michael's critics always fail to acknowledge that he offered in 1998, in writing, to donate all the remaining money in Terri's trust fund to charity if Terri's parents would honor her wish and allow her to die. They refused.
Judge Greer's comment two years later about a "conflict of interest for both sides" is slightly misplaced. In my opinion.
Build a monument to her if you wish.
Or perhaps a shrine?
He's pedaling a book proposal, isn't he?
Course I wouldn't expect a low-rent type like Schiavo to put something classy, or poetic, or lofty on her headstone.
Not the leisure suit guy, who melted down her wedding ring to make a ring for himself...
Please show me where I have EVER said this was a federal issue. I have always said the opposite.
She's not my relative. But I assure you if she were, I'd make sure she was the subject of her headstone inscription. I wouldn't make it about ME. Schiavo's ego could fill a universe...
Such a saint, you believe every spin his death lawyer puts out. Riddle me this, wouldn't such an extraordinarily devoted husband, giving up tons of cash to simply fulfill a marital promise, perhaps remain married to his wife in every sense until she was gone? His love was so deep he couldn't wait to find a new common-law wife and start a new family. Actions speak louder than words, my friend. you cannot claim this status of sainthood for the guy yet disallow his lack of faithfulness.
It sure does, who'd a thunk conservatives on FR would support a State ordering the death of one of their citizens by dehydration when that citizen was neither accused nor found guilty of anything. Amazing, huh?
As if he'd open himself up to public derision in so naked a manner. He's pedaling a book proposal, so he's ready to cash in now.
And you were wrong, the 14th Amendment makes death sentences subject to judicial review at the federal level. Period.
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