Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Competing Realities

Responding to Kevin Drum’s post of the other night and mine which followed, Michael over at Reading A1 has posted an interesting piece extolling the virtues of partisan media and reminding us that this idea of a “objective media” is fairly new:

… to Kevin and Digby I say, stop worrying. A little historical perspective works wonders here. The simple truth is that, for most of its proper existence—from the beginnings of mass-distribution journalism in the mid-nineteenth century to roughly the start of World War II—the American press has been explicitly partisan. Newspapers were often the overt organs of political machines; when they weren’t, they differentiated themselves for their audiences based on ideology and partisan identification. Competition was fierce, and was very often a competition over what facts were actually facts, and over what sorts of things ought to be reported. (Strangely enough, this situation was understood by no one during the period as some sort of “postmodern” hell. Nor was it considered a challenge to the very possibility of democratic self-government.) The neutral, “objective” press that we now think of as a natural property of democratic civil society is, broadly speaking, an invention of the corporate, managerial capitalism of the twentieth century, and tracks its growth.

As I’ve written previously, the elevation of the “objective” press to almost an institution of state, a semi-official fourth branch in the American constitutional system, is a phenomenon of the post-World War II period. Like so much of what we regard now as the natural order of political things, in other words, the constitutional place of our so-called mainstream press is an artifact of the Cold War. In its pose of objectivity, the corporate press had a central role to play during that struggle: both in the maintenance of the internal consensus necessary to confront the Soviet Union over a long period, and as a support for, and embodiment of, the claim of Western liberal democracy (over against Communism) to represent a universal, historically unconditioned solution to the question of political and social freedom.

I think this is largely true but I would take issue with a couple of things. I’m no expert, but my understanding is that the partisan press began to die out around the turn of the last century with the commercialization of the press and the big media barons (along with the general revulsion amongst the population at the corruption of the parties.) And I think that journalism reacted strongly to the new field of public relations in the 20’s and 30’s by developing this professional code of objectivity quite a while before the cold war. However, there is no doubt that there was a general disgust at the propaganda of both the fascist movement in Europe and the Soviet regime that propelled this new fetish for objectivity in the American press into the cold war consensus. And certainly our current lame definition of objectivity as “he said/she said” is thoroughly modern.

It appears to me that some of the conditions that created the concept of “Objective Journalism” in the first place have strongly re-emerged. The right is not running a partisan press. It is running a corrupt partisan propaganda machine based on the techniques of public relations and paid for by big money interests. That’s why I was a bit rueful in my piece the other day. I don’t particularly want to be part of a propaganda machine. I have no problem being a fiery partisan and working hard to persuade people to my side. But outright lying for the cause turns my stomach. And that’s what the other side does.

But at this point I am resigned to the idea that we are going to have a partisan media battle for the forseeeable future so I’m not fighting it. It may, as Michael suggests, turn out to be a good thing in the long run, revitalizing our political system and getting people engaged. In the meantime, however, I would very much like the allegedly non-aligned media to come out from behind their absurd notion that they are objective because “both sides complain so they must be doing something right” and simply report when people are not presenting the facts accurately. That’s all I want. When you have the government, business and the radical right consistently cooking the truth you really need somebody, somewhere who can be an honest broker of the facts. The mainstream press is the logical institution to do that, but they seem to have lost their ability to sort through the right’s sophisticated propaganda.

Perhaps if they just concentrated on the simple reporting of the who, what, when where and get that right, we partisans could fill in the “why.” Without that, I doubt very seriously that our modern society can rationally cope with what is shaping up not as competing political visions but competing realities. If that continues I think we are paving the way for demagoguery to become the default mode of political persuasion.

Update: Booyah. Read this superb post by Avedon Carol on this subject. I think she needs to be put on the rolodex for one of these media panels, stat.

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The Big Baby

Tom Delay breaks down and has a good old fashioned cry:

One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America,” Mr. DeLay told a conference organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. A recording of the event was provided by the advocacy organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others,” Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. DeLay complained that “the other side” had figured out how “to defeat the conservative movement,” by waging personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national news media to report the story. He charged that “the whole syndicate” was “a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in.”

Oh, boo fucking hoo. He’s crawled into bed with a severely disabled woman for the sole purpose of soaking up some of the sympathy people naturally feel toward her. In fact, her whole purpose in this is to show how the liberals are trying to destroy Tom Delay.

These radical Republicans are the tough guys who are the only ones with the guts to protect our country from the bad guys? People like this whining little baby of a man who is openly using a braindead woman as cover for his massive corruption and misdeeds? Gawd help us.

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Judgment Day

What must underlie petitioners’ entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

From Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in Bush v Gore

That paragraph was often cited in the wake of Bush v Gore as criticism of the Supreme Court for ruling as it did. It was, but if you read it carefully you see that he was also saying that the petitioners were perpetuating the belief that the Florida state judges could not be impartial. (This despite the fact that the Florida courts had ruled in favor of Bush in the procedings a number of times.) This bothered Stevens because it undermined the nation’s faith in the justice system everywhere, particularly the belief that judges would uphold the rule of law as impartially as possible.

Here’s William Schneider on CNN:

PHILLIPS: All right. Bill, you’ve come out, you’ve told me, look, this is all political. Everything that we’re observing here is political. You brought up a very interesting point, and that is the continuation of these grievances against judges. How does that play into this?

SCHNEIDER: Well, we saw signs last night in Florida among the people who were supporting the congressional action. They said stop renegade judges. They said starve the judicial system. This case, which was a case of a state court ordering that the federal — the feeding tube be removed, this is the latest in a long series of grievances that go back more than 30 years, to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 allowing abortion rights, giving them constitutional protection.

Religious conservatives and other conservatives have protested judicial activism for all these decades on what issues? Abortion, school prayer, sex education, pornography, same-sex marriage, the mandated teaching of evolution, and now, of course, the issue of end of life decisions and assisted suicide. Again and again and again, they see the judiciary as power-grabbing activists, and most importantly, violating their own personal religious liberties. And this is the latest in that — in those grievances that have been brewing for decades.

Nice frame old Bill gives the Republicans there.

Clearly, this entire line of argument is just trash. There could have been no more of an “activist” judicial act than the Supreme Court intervening in a presidential election. There can be nothing more activist than members of congress violating the separation of powers as they did this past week-end. Courts are called activist when they hand down decisions that the wingnuts don’t like. States rights are a principle that the wingnuts hold dear when they don’t hold federal power. Now they are holding midnight sessions of congress to overturn 19 state judges and interfere in people’s most personal decisions. Please.

Sam Rosenfeld explains:

…the liberal critique of how Republicans have handled this issue has less to do with “federalism” than it does with the separation of powers and the rule of law. The sustained ideological assault against an independent judiciary — components of which include this weekend’s shenanigans and the current congressional majority’s zealous efforts to strip the courts of jurisdiction over any number of partisan agenda items — is itself only one facet of a pervasive tendency of modern Republicans to disregard wholesale the integrity of codified processes and the autonomy of institutions, to change the rules and to politicize all conflict in the service of totally unprincipled and narrow political objectives.

[…]

As far as I can tell, conservative advocates in this fight haven’t even bothered to engage these kinds of questions — they just don’t care. An individual woman in Florida must be “saved” by any means necessary and that’s all there is to say about the matter. Thus legislation is passed that doesn’t even bother to offer a forward-looking rule change in the process by which these kinds of decisions can be adjudicated in the future. (Instead, the action should be considered non-binding and narrowly targeted at the specific case in question — sound familiar?)

We’re a law-based society. Rules matter. Precedents matter. Separation of powers and institutional autonomy matter. To the Republicans in power and the conservative intelligentsia lending legitimacy to their governance, apparently, such things don’t matter at all. Congressional Republicans capped a week during which they definitively demonstrated that small-government fiscal conservatism as a guiding legislative principle is completely dead by whipping up this grotesque circus of ill-informed hysteria and rampant trampling of rules and procedural limits. There’s nothing “hypocritical” in pointing out the apparently direct relationship between the ideological bankruptcy of Republican governance and their inability to recognize any limits on their actions.

I wonder if judges throughout the country realize that they must now be whores for the right wing or they will be slandered for being unpardonably biased any time they rule against the interests of radical Republicans? Do they know that any judgment that differs from Randall Terry’s or Tom DeLay’s is no longer attributable to a difference in legal opinion but is instead considered a reflection of their dishonesty and corruption? Perhaps many of them don’t mind being a rubber stamp for Grover Norquist and Jerry Falwell. It certainly makes the job easier.

I would imagine that some judges, however, might just think that they represent one of the branches of government and have a duty to uphold the rule of law even when Steve Forbes doesn’t like the result. (It isn’t just the religious freaks who want their way with this.) You would certainly think that conservatives would think it’s a good idea for the nation to have some faith in the judicial system and not assume that every judge who rules in ways that certain people don’t agree with is a hack for a political agenda. Sometime soon Republican legal scholors and judges may come to rue the day they let a radical vocal minority have this kind of power over their party. They gave away their own in the process.

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Check Their Affiliations

I’ve been thinking that I’m going to have to ask whether a doctor is a Republican or a Democrat before I trust my health to him or her from now on. Doctors who vote for Republicans obviously have no fealty to science or reason or they wouldn’t vote for them. Some, like Bill Frist blatantly violate medical ethics for political reasons:

Congressional intervention in Michael and Terri Schiavo’s personal medical tragedy is unprecedented and dangerous. But Frist’s comments are especially shocking. As a surprised and concerned Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University, noted of Doctor Frist’s statements, “It is extremely unusual — and by a non-neurologist, I might add. There should be no confusion about the medical data, and that’s what was so surprising to me about Dr. Frist disagreeing about her medical status.”

This is not Frist’s first abuse of his medical background for partisan political leverage. In December, the Senator tried to defend a federally-funded abstinence program which claimed that HIV/AIDS could be contracted through tears and sweat. Pressed by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, Frist was forced to recant. “It would be very hard,” he said.

Dr Dave Weldon (R-Florida) said last night (video from Crooks and Liars):

“By my medical definition, she was not in a persistenct vegitative state based on my review of the videos, my tlaking to the family and my discussing the case with one of the neurologists who examined her.”

This may explain why the Republican party is so anxious to eliminate medical malpractice laws. Republican doctors seem to flout science and medical ethics quite regularly. Caveat Emptor.

This is where we are today. Republican doctors are willing to say and do anything to protect their political power, including enabling pre-modern, unscientific superstition in medical matters. Tomorrow, we will see this:

washingtonpost.com
Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens

Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America’s political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.

The proposals typically stop short of overturning evolution or introducing biblical accounts. Instead, they are calculated pleas to teach what advocates consider gaps in long-accepted Darwinian theory, with many relying on the idea of intelligent design, which posits the central role of a creator.

The growing trend has alarmed scientists and educators who consider it a masked effort to replace science with theology. But 80 years after the Scopes “monkey” trial — in which a Tennessee man was prosecuted for violating state law by teaching evolution — it is the anti-evolutionary scientists and Christian activists who say they are the ones being persecuted, by a liberal establishment.

[…]

Some evolution opponents are trying to use Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, saying it creates an opening for states to set new teaching standards. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a Christian who draws on Discovery Institute material, drafted language accompanying the law that said students should be exposed to “the full range of scientific views that exist.”

“Anyone who expresses anything other than the dominant worldview is shunned and booted from the academy,” Santorum said in an interview. “My reading of the science is there’s a legitimate debate. My feeling is let the debate be had.”

Although the new strategy speaks of “teaching the controversy” over evolution, opponents insist the controversy is not scientific, but political. They paint the approach as a disarming subterfuge designed to undermine solid evidence that all living things share a common ancestry.

[…]

The efforts are not limited to schools. From offices overlooking Puget Sound, Meyer is waging a careful campaign to change the way Americans think about the natural world. The Discovery Institute devotes about 85 percent of its budget to funding scientists, with other money going to public action campaigns.

Discovery Institute raised money for “Unlocking the Mystery of Life,” a DVD produced by Illustra Media and shown on PBS stations in major markets. The institute has sponsored opinion polls and underwrites research for books sold in secular and Christian bookstores. Its newest project is to establish a science laboratory.

Meyer said the institute accepts money from such wealthy conservatives as Howard Ahmanson Jr., who once said his goal is “the total integration of biblical law into our lives,” and the Maclellan Foundation, which commits itself to “the infallibility of the Scripture.”

“We’ll take money from anyone who wants to give it to us,” Meyer said. “Everyone has motives. Let’s acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part.”

Meyer said he and Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman devised the compromise strategy in March 2002 when they realized a dispute over intelligent design was complicating efforts to challenge evolution in the classroom. They settled on the current approach that stresses open debate and evolution’s ostensible weakness, but does not require students to study design.

The idea was to sow doubt about Darwin and buy time for the 40-plus scientists affiliated with the institute to perfect the theory, Meyer said. Also, by deferring a debate about whether God was the intelligent designer, the strategy avoids the defeats suffered by creationists who tried to oust evolution from the classroom and ran afoul of the Constitution.

“Our goal is to not remove evolution. Good lord, it’s incredible how much this is misunderstood,” said William Harris, a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City medical school. “Kids need to understand it, but they need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the data, how much of it is a guess, how much of it is extrapolation.”

Schiavo, abortion, “the culture of life” and this teaching of creationism is all of a piece. And Republican scientists, doctors and intellectuals are enabling this for reasons that are very difficult to understand in any way but a lust for personal gain.

I will not be patronizing any Republicans who need to rely on science to do their job. Clearly, they are aligning themselves with the forces of superstition over reason and can no longer be trusted. Why would you ever put your life into the hands of someone who would sell out their professional ethics and their intellectual integrity for the sole purpose of appeasing a bunch of religious zealots?

Update: Sam Rosenfeld on TAPPED links to Amy Sullivan’s terrific piece on this subject. Read both links. Republican doctors are dangerous to your health.

Dr Weldon’s name corrected.
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Bold Leadership

Unconfirmed Sources reports that The President will name convicted murder Charles Manson to head the government’s Office for Victims of Crime. The appointment, yet another in a string of bold personal choices by the President, should have Manson installed in his new office in time for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, April 10-16, 2005.

Party_like_its_2004 on bartcop forum got the response from the Democrats:

Joe Biden: I was overjoyed when I heard the news. Chuck is a solid choice for the position. I’ve known Chas for years and I don’t know anyone who has a longer or more distinguished career in the criminal area. And talk about management skills – WOW! The terrorist have got to know that we’ve got some terrifying people working for us too and Charles Manson is the man for the job.

Joe Lieberman: Bottom line, I like it when the President kisses me. It makes me all tingly inside.

Hillary Clinton: Crime is certainly an area where we need to roll up our sleeves and do what the American people want us to do. I stand by the President and share his concern about crime in America. I don’t always agree with his choices, but I also don’t always say WHAT I disagree with when I disagree with the choices that I am disagreeing with. At the same time, I STRONGLY stand with the President in his RIGHT to make the choices that he makes. Even so, I would like to inject a note of criticism in this particular choice which I am not going to explain further at this time.

John Kerry: President Bush has made an excellent choice for this position which I strongly disagree with. Its wrong for America.

Harry Reid: Look, I’ve got work to do, so please, just shut up.

Howard Dean: Shut your damn pie-holes. None of you is going to be President – got it? AEEEHAAAAAA!!

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War Porn

Following up the dog story below, here’s another one about our new cineaste army in Iraq:

When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents’ house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it’s drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

“Don’t need your forgiveness,” the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — “Die, don’t need your resistance. Die, don’t need your prayers” — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

“It’s like a trophy, something to keep,” McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. “I was there. I did this.”

I don’t blame these dumb kids. They are taught to have these attitudes. Maybe it’s a natural consequence of being in a war zone. But war supporters really need to stop pretending that it isn’t the usual exercise in cruelty and brutality because it is. You can dress up this “liberation” to make Americans feel good about their goodness all you want, but it’s just another violent, dehumanizing war of domination. Certainly, that soldier thinks it is. And he’s proud of it.

Via Gonzography.

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There Is Opposition

Majikthise calls for a Schiavo blogswarm. Click over there for the info.

I’m inclined to agree. Peggy Noonan and her macabre cronies are saying that there is no opposition to this travesty. We should probably cure the media of that notion.

I’m sure they’ll be surprised that Peggy doesn’t speak for the whole country. They always are.

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Taming The Beast Within

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
– Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England

Hi my name is M. D. formaly of A TRP 1-10 CAV 4ID and while in Iraq we had a sport of killing dogs whenever the Iraqis werent shooting us. So when I shot this one at about 50 yards with my M4 and it ran yelping to lower ground, we had to finish it so my friends and I went to it and started shooting it. I ve never seen a dog take as many shots to the head at least 4 as this one did and then after we thought it was dead we dug a hole and when I picked it up with the shovel it came back to life, so we shot it a couple more times….its pretty funny.”

Click here to see the sickening footage.

But why shouldn’t a simple soldier like this do such things? Our government is, after all, officially condoning torture for humans. Law professors are arguing for cruel and unusual punishment because of the emotional satisfaction it will give family members of the victims. Surely our society cannot then say that torturing a stray dog is wrong. How could it be?

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Here’s Your Baseball Scandal

WTF?:

Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team’s championship season.

But what was the very same Gulfstream–owned by one of the Red Sox’s partners, but presumably without the team’s logo on its fuselage–doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?

Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.

Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. The public prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spataro, who is investigating Omar’s apparent kidnapping, expects to file charges within a few days, according to an Italian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Spataro made headlines last month when, attempting to identify the plane that transported Omar from Italy to Egypt, he served a warrant on the Italian commander of the air base at Aviano, Italy, which is home to the U.S. Air Force’s 31st Fighter Wing.

Spataro declines to say whether the Gulfstream that landed in Cairo, which bore the tail number N85VM, departed from Aviano around the time of Omar’s disappearance.

But Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by the Tribune show that Gulfstream N85VM has been many places around the world that the Red Sox have almost certainly never gone.

Between June 2002 and January of this year, the Gulfstream made 51 visits to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of the U.S. naval base where more than 500 terrorism suspects are behind bars.

During the same period, the plane recorded 82 visits to Washington’s Dulles International Airport as well as landings at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., outside the capital and the U.S. air bases at Ramstein and Rhein-Main in Germany.

The plane’s flight log also shows visits to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic.

In case you are wondering, this isn’t the same plane that was offered to John Kerry’s legal team on election night. This plane is owned by another Red Sox partner named Philip H. Morse. Morse, the wealthy former owner of a catheter company, is listed as the sole officer and director of a company called Assembly Point which Dun and Bradstreet describes as a “religious organization” that is somehow involved with “churches, temples and shrines.”

Now this seems like it would be a good topic on which the congress could hold fruitful “baseball” hearings. They could call Curt “Bush shill” Schilling in just for fun and harrass him about whether he knows anything about his pals in the Bush administration using one of the Red Sox owners’ private planes to transport suspects to countries where they can be tortured with impunity. And if he refuses to appear maybe the committee could charter the plane to take him to one of those countries that have been so helpful to us to see if he changes his mind.

This is another of those juicy stories that just eludes the mainstream media. I know they write a story or two here and there. But, it never gets the kind of attention that these right wing soap operas get.

Let’s look at the nut here. The US government appears to be using one of the world series winning Boston Red Sox’s jet to kidnap and transport suspected terrorists all over the world to be tortured.

This isn’t a big story. Scott Peterson, however, is. Problem #7,556 with the corporate media.

Hat tip to samela

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The Days Of Our Lives

Tom DeLay of Texas says:

“Mrs. Schiavo’s life is not slipping away – it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism,” DeLay said. “Mr. Schiavo’s attorney’s characterization of the premeditated starvation and dehydration of a helpless woman as ‘her dying process’ is as disturbing as it is unacceptable. What is happening to her is not compassion – it is homicide. She doesn’t need to die, and as long as Terri Schiavo can breathe and her supporters can pray, we will not rest.”

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient’s family’s wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother’s wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo’s care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo’s because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don’t read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is “stepping in to save Terry Schiavo” mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the “family”, the congress and the church against this woman’s husband and the judicial system that upheld Terry Schiavo’s right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.

This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual’s right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn’t the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.

One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen’s personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American’s liberty?

Via Julia we find real life:

The Friday lunch crowd at Jimmy’s Eastside Diner was starting to dwindle. Jerita Collins, a waitress everyone calls Shorty, was carrying several plates when she noticed the television behind the counter airing a Washington, D.C., news conference featuring House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

”It is now 1 o’clock on the East Coast, the time preordained by a Florida state judge to allow for denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo,” the Texas Republican declared. “That act of barbarism can be and must be prevented.”

Across the bottom of the screen CNN noted a judge temporarily stopped Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube from being removed because Congress had issued subpoenas for the brain-damaged woman to appear in Washington.

As DeLay spoke, Shorty stared at the TV and shook her head. ”This is wrong,” she said. “This is incredibly wrong. How can they interfere like this?”

Shorty, 57, a waitress at the Biscayne Boulevard diner for 35 years, should know.

”Two years ago,” she said, “I had to make the same decision for my son. It was the hardest thing I ever did. You don’t plan on your children dying before you do. You don’t even want to think about it.

”But if you love your child,” she continued, tears welling up in her eyes, “sometimes you have to let them go.”

Shorty’s son, Jerry, was 36 when he died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer. He wasn’t married. He had one child who was a minor, so the decisions fell to her.

”Toward the end, he didn’t want to be kept alive,” she said. “But I wanted him to live. I didn’t want him to go. The hospital, they had to tie his hands down so that he couldn’t pull his own tubes out.

‘After a while, I realized he was ready. I told him how much I loved him and I didn’t want him to continue to suffer because of me. He couldn’t talk anymore, so he wrote me a note. It said, `Forgive me.’ And I looked at it and I said, ‘For what? For dying?’ And he shook his head yes.”

He died a few days later, on Dec. 29, from a heart attack. By then, Shorty had signed directives for her son’s care, including instructions not to resuscitate him if his heart stopped.

On the TV, another politician talked about saving Schiavo.

”These politicians,” Shorty hissed, her hands trembling with emotion. “They’re just playing a game. It’s not about her anymore, it’s about them getting what they want. It’s about them wanting to look good in front of the people who are pro-life. I’m against abortion, too, but I believe each person has their own right to decide. You know in your heart what is right for you and you have to live with any decision you make.”

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