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.
Read the link.
Pain, by the way, is a highly subjective thing, and not the same for every person. Some people in terminal care respond well to acupuncture. Some to hypnosis. Some to meditation. Some to cocaine. Some to that old classic Brompton Cocktail.
Like I said, it's outrageous when the whole range of options (not just morphine) isn't made available on a timely basis to a person in pain. It's there. We have to be aggressive advocates for our loved ones to get past the intransigence of obtuse doctors, or of the law.
I am very distressed when I hear of experiences like yours. May our Mom rest in peace, and may the rest of us learn more from such ghastly experiences.
Because we're not all as brilliant and all-knowing as you are.
And some of us down in the valley - hopelessly looking up at you on the peak of the Mountain of the Moral, examine our lives, and attempt to understand what we believe through the probing of the thoughts of others.
Ultimately you and I probably disagree...but you obviously understand your beliefs and define them well. Thanks for answering me.
YOU are the one who started with the insults, there is no need to start acting churlish when someone responds to them.
Thanks, Bun.
That is funny! It brings some comic relief to the serious tone of the thread. You really touched on the ironic with that one considering it is a thread started by wagglebee in the first place, and we are all pro-lifers on a pro-life forum.
The rest of your post doesn't have the same quality of fine humor, however, as you make the acts of suicide and euthanasia sound almost as if it were a difference of opinion rather than a simple stand of pro-life faith against the faithless and pro-death.
It could just be me, though, as I caught your funny punch line but haven't caught the rest of your subtle comedy. Maybe I was too serious to realize you are just pulling our legs. Right?
And you are teasing us with that fun word, "dialectical" as if we were talking Karl Marx or Groucho. We aren't, are we?
Thanks for your thoughts. She wanted to die at home instead of the hospital, and that may have been the problem when it came to getting the meds to her fast enough when the dosage needed to be changed. That seemed to be where the balance was most difficult to strike. I did read the article, thanks. It is just what hospice told us. Sadly, I guess even with the best of intentions, nothing is perfect. Thanks again.
In all fairness, there are certain points of conservatism that can be debated (i.e. is the “Fair Tax” better than a flat tax); however, pro-life vs. pro-death IS NOT one of these points, this makes no more sense in debating whether conservatives should embrace capitalism or communism.
I wonder what contradiction of synthesis comes when capitalism and communism conflict. Hillary? Huma? Hegel? Harpo?
Sounds unpleasant, not to the point that one becomes suicidal, but unpleasant nonetheless. I do see how it could be problematic for some of the menopausal harpies that still lurk in the shadows around here.
Or were you deliberately attempting to mistunderstand "dialectical process" to make some increadibly intelligent, subtle joke?
....hm....most likely, not. Because it's just not funny. You probably just don't understand what you're talking about.
aberrant, abnormal, anomalous, beat, bent, bizarre, capricious, case, character, cockeyed, crazy, curious, droll, erratic, far out, flaky, fly ball, freak, freakish, freaky, funky, funny, geeky, goony, idiosyncratic, irregular, kooky, nutty, odd, oddball, off-center, offbeat, outlandish, peculiar, quaint, queer, quirky, quizzical, screwy, singular, strange, uncommon, unconventional, unnatural, unusual, way out, weird, weirdo, whacko, whacky, whimsical, wild, yo-yo...
I can't help thinking menopausal is a good thing, in its way... :o)
My goodness! You were serious! I guess we just aren't as smart as you. I guess I don't know what I am talking about either.
Do you?
Are you trying to say that Marx wasn't an advocate of Hegel's philosophies? Because if that is the case then it is YOU who don't understand what you are talking about. I do find it rather ironic that you claim to be a conservative, yet you espouse the philosophy of a man who formulated the immoral notion of the collective over the individual.
The reality is that it is the combined philosophies of Hegel, Marx and Darwin (with a little bit of Rousseau mixed in) that is responsible for most of the wars and bloodshed of the last two centuries.
Yes ma’am, I’ll stick to harpies without any modifiers in the future!
Wow! You almost sound as if you might have been in politics at some point in your life.
It is a qualification and I qualify.
Huh, you’ve been fighting deathbots too much, that answer almost sounds Clintonian.
Well it ought to define those sort of things. It comes back to control - control your own finances and their distribution and you can do whatever you want.
I’ve got a question for you, if money wasn’t a factor would you still support euthanasia?
Money is only a factor for me in that it gives one the opportunity to 'artificially' prolong life - which is fine if someone so chooses.
I think that, as adults, we make all kinds of choices and trade-offs that trade pleasure for a shorter life, or we obstain from something for a longer life. Are you going to hover over me when I go to the ice cream shop or liquor store and prevent me from shortening my life...out of 'respect for life'?
So if it ever came to a point where one is in constant excruciating pain, and feels they have lived a full life, they ought to be able to choose to end their life. There's no shame in that. It's been done for ages and respects real human life rather than glorifying clinical life.
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