Posted on 03/26/2008 5:09:13 PM PDT by wagglebee
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, longtime hosts of the chatty television program "The View," praised Jack Kevorkian in a recent episode. Following news that Kevorkian has planned a Congressional bid, they praised him for killing more than 130 people in assisted suicides and murdering a disabled patient.
Kevorkian, a convicted murderer and assisted suicide crusader, made his candidacy for a Detroit-area Congressional seat official on Monday.
Justin McCarthy, a news analyst at Media Research Center, noted the comments from "The View" hosts in a recent post on MRC's blog Newsbusters.
Goldberg said she’s a "big fan" of Kevorkian "because he believed that he could help people who were in, in a place where no one was helping them."
"Euthanasia, like race, is one of those things nobody wants to talk about. It makes people very uncomfortable. I think euthanasia is, is an important thing and it should be there for people to make that decision if they chose to," she said.
Goldberg did not mention her belief about involuntary euthanasia, where patients are frequently killed by family members or medical staff without their knowledge or consent.
Joy Behar wondered: "Why is he a bad guy? I don't understand it...it’s over my head somewhere."
She went further than Goldberg in defending Kevorkian's killing a disabled patient.
Kevorkian has admitted to killing more than 130 people, including the televised death of Thomas Youk, netting him a 25-year prison sentence.
"He helped a guy who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, take himself out of this world because the guy was in excruciating terror," Behar said in defending the murder that landed Kevorkian in jail for several years before his parole.
"The thing about Kevorkian is that I don't consider him a bad guy," she concluded.
During the show, Sherri Shepherd cracked a few crass jokes -- most notably about how Kevorkian could help presidential candidate John McCain with "an exit strategy."
As is typically the case, pro-life host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was the only one to speak up for the moral or ethical position on the bioethics question.
"The lines get blurry if you're dealing with someone who’s life is almost in control, in someone else’s hands," she said. "You know, there are a lot of things. There are a lot of gray areas in that whole conversation."
Hasslebeck said she was worried about people who have control of the finances of a patient wanting to end their lives in order to inherit their possessions.
ACTION: Send your complaints to The View by going to this web site.
Both of those options are undesirable. I am convinced that if excellent palliative care is provided (referenced here at #80 and here at #81), nobody would feel they had to make the in human choice between either self-torture (painful futile medical impositions) or self-murder.
PLACE MARKED.
I entered the View’s sweepstakes and I didn’t win. I didn’t watch it then and I don’t watch it now. Whoopee’s more civil than Rosie but she’s still wickedly far left.
Sorry to be late to respond to P.B... but I think your response Mrs. D is excellent... I have nothing to add.
It is really sad to me to see that something so simple to comprehend... murder vs. suicide vs. natural demise... has to be debated in such lofty scientific and philosophical analysis as I see here.
It seems so easy to understand to me...
I have seen several family members through very painful end of life including hospice end of life situations and everyone understood right from wrong.
My Grandfather in pain from cancer and on his dying bed wanted to live... just a day more. He was in the most horrible pain and yet he wanted to LIVE!
I loved him more than my own life... he did so much for me, but I would NEVER have assisted in his death. To do so would have been an insult to all he had taught me.
Both he and my Grandmother were fearful of those who would have them ‘dispensed’ with. They expressed that fear often as they grew older.
Thank you for posting these good insights.
Sometimes our elders, who taught us all we know about courage and dignity, need help, themselves, in their hour of need, to “remember themselves,” so to speak.
My own father, who went unexpectedly and totally blind at age 70 because of a series of unsuccessful eye operations, became very morose and began thinking he was useless and just a damned burden to my mother and me. He talked vaguely about taking a whole bottle of his meds at once, or “walking out into traffic so you can collect the life insurance.”
Feeling shaken inside, I spoke to him rather sharply and sternly (as I had never done before and have never done since) that he had always been an example of strength in our family, and we still needed him to be a living example, to the younger ones, of how to man up and face life’s adversities.
He plucked up his courage and from then on in, he came through with flying colors.
We need to tell each other, “Your life is valuable! Just your being here makes a world of difference to me, to yourself, to the people around, and I daresay to God. He will call you soon enough.” As the Irish say of death, “It’ll wait.”
Bless you and yours.
Thank you Mrs. D... Bless you and your family as well.
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