Cross-posted at DailyKos. Recommends welcomed.
“Wry and pithy,” I call him. Seattle’s Howard Martin sends out daily briefs on news, usually about Howard Dean’s deeds. But this morning, Howard writes:
This
commentary in The New Yorker points out how “
a set of video snippets, provided by the Schindler family and broadcast incessantly by the three cable news networks–CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC–which are themselves entangled in a desperate struggle for dominance,” have helped to shape the national conversation on the Schiavo case.
“Florida’s made-for-TV passion play” has been created, in part, by these media companies, just as they have helped the paint the pictures that frame our political discourse.
Do the words “broadcast incessantly” remind you of anything? I don’t know if this observation is obvious to everyone else or not, but since I don’t have cable at home, I needed this reminder. …
: : : More Below : : :
From The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, and written by Hendrik Hertzberg:
Terri Schiavo’s life, as distinct from the life of her unsentient organs, ended fifteen years ago. But that did not prevent her from becoming the star of an unusually morbid kind of reality TV show. …
The first factor, writes Hertzberg, was the bitter battle between Michael Schiavo and Terri’s parents.
The second factor was “a set of video snippets, provided by the Schindler family and broadcast incessantly by the three cable news networks–CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC–which are themselves entangled in a desperate struggle for dominance. …”
Sometimes the snippets are identified by the year of their taping (2001 and 2002); sometimes they are not. Sometimes they are accompanied by inflammatory captions (fighting for her life); sometimes the captions are merely dramatic (schiavo saga). They show Terri’s blinking eyes seeming to follow a balloon waved in front of her; or her mouth agape in a rictus that could be interpreted as a smile; or her face turned toward her mother’s, with her head thrown back, Pietà-like. …
The video snippets, reports Hertzberg, are “profoundly misleading” according to neurologists.
A few seconds of maximum suggestiveness culled from many hours of tape, they are more in the nature of special effects than of a documentary record. Without them, there would have been no show–and, most likely, no televised vigils outside her hospice, no cries of “murder” from Tom DeLay, the egregious House Majority Leader; no midnight special sessions of the House and Senate; no calling Dr. Frist for a snap video diagnosis; no visuals of President Bush returning from Texas to land on the White House south lawn, striding dramatically across the grass as if it were the deck of an aircraft carrier. …
What a line that is: “[T]hey are more in the nature of special effects than of a documentary record.”
The New Yorker’s Hertzberg also discusses the court records, saying that reading the documents “is to be impressed by the thoroughness and conscientiousness with which the courts, especially the Florida courts, approached her case.”
On legal, substantive, and constitutional grounds, they seemed to have reason and justice on their side. Yet it was a cold sort of reason and justice. On a human level, it was hard to see what concrete harm there could be in indulging her family’s desire to keep her body alive, its care presumably underwritten by the hospice and the family’s supporters. …
The New Yorker notes that, as this past week went on, “the fervor of Terri’s Christianist ‘supporters’ was motivated by dogmas unrelated to her or her rights.” And Hertzberg dares to state the obvious:
Terri Schiavo has become a metaphor in the religio-cultural struggle over abortion. This–along with the advantages of demonizing the judiciary in preparation for the coming battle over Supreme Court nominees–explains the eagerness of Republican politicians to embrace her parents’ cause. Her lack of awareness actually increased her metaphoric usefulness. Like a sixty-four-cell blastocyst, she was without consciousness. Unlike the blastocyst, she was without potential. If letting her body die is murder, goes the logic, then thwarting the development of the blastocyst can surely be nothing less.
Last weekend, as Good Friday gave way to Holy Saturday and Holy Saturday to Easter Sunday, Florida’s made-for-TV passion play neared its climax. The death of Terri Schiavo’s body will only enhance her symbolic value, elevating her to her destined place as another martyr in this dismal age of martyrs.
If you think you can read one more article about Terri Schiavo, make Hertzberg‘s the one.
I swore I wouldn’t but I did. Write a diary about Schiavo.
Howard’s distillation of the New Yorker piece and the piece itself were too good to pass up.
speaking for my friends and family who are
aghast at the frothing-at-the-mouth Florida
torturers, especially that Mahoney reptile.
Struggle for “dominance.” That’s the key –
it was not a struggle for the life of a daughter
already passed away, it was the struggle to
dominate her husband.
Excellent diary!
I’ve been away and might have missed
the articles otherwise.
This case, more than any other, has really had me thinking about my personal stance on euthanasia. I have come to the concrete conclusion that it should be legal. When animals that we love and care for are too sick to continue, we ease their suffering and put them to sleep. This isn’t the best example, I know, but why can’t humans do this? If I make a living will that says that I have no desire to live in a certain fashion, if something happens to me, and that my family has my permission to take me off of life support and have an injection administered to me that will allow me to drift away peacefully, whose business is that but mine and my family’s? I see nothing wrong with it. I do, however, see something very wrong with removing the only form of sustenance that Terri had – her feeding tube – and essentially letting her starve to death. I don’t care what anyone says – she can’t feel anything, she isn’t aware of what’s happening to her – cruelty is what it is, and she is starving to death. Slowly but surely.
There is, IMO, nothing wrong with a peaceful, humane death of one’s own choosing. Terri should have been allowed this right.
I don’t know that it’s cruel to remove her feeding tube. But I am always skeptical about the assurances of scientists and doctors. After all, how long have we heard that circumcision is okay on baby boys because they don’t feel pain like they will as they mature. And then there’s the whole realm of animal experimentation; my contemplation of the suffering of those millions of animals and the scientists’ insistence that they don’t suffer and are treated humanely.
I too believe in euthanasia for humans. I also believe that humans should be allowed to commit suicide if it is their choice, and advocate that the stigma assocaited with suicide be dismissed.
Right, Susan – I don’t know how much faith I have in the doctors who are all telling us something different about this case. It just sounds so awful, removing her feeding tube. Maybe it’s the automatic knee-jerk reaction I’m feeling. But, hell, we’re getting so many different stories that it’s hard to know how this truly affects her. Does she feel it? Is she in discomfort or pain? I can only hope she’s not.
I agree with the last part of your comment, on suicide. I am a total libertarian in that whole aspect – as long as they’re not hurting anyone else, people should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want to in the privacy of their own homes, and that includes committing suicide, if that’s what they choose.
You said what I was trying to say in endgame diary, but you said it better.
Yes I agree totally, I have just been discussing this with my daughter regarding my own death; I am thinking of making her the responsible person to make these decisions, and I have said while I don’t want to be kept alive artifically, I do not want to be starved to death.
As one previously PVS patient who is now speaking, talking and walking said on Larry King the other day, “If I treated my dog in this manner, I could be arrested, but yet”……..
Anyone remember the Karen Quinlan case years ago, parents wanted to remove respirator because it was causing her comatose daughter so much visible pain. She was completely comotose and drawn into fetal position. Well for many years the courts (and this was splashed all over the media just like this case is)would not let the respirator be withdrawn, when they finally did she she lived about 10 more years. There was such an outcry then against the parents for “wanting her to die”? The parents did not ask for feeding tube to be removed however.
Interesting contrast isn’t it.
I think we need to bring the euthanasia subject up again.
Missed you on these boards over the weekend MM.
Good to ‘see’ your smiling face this morning. I had a busy weekend with family and friends, and am now enjoying a ‘normal’ morning – at work, doing nothing, having coffee. 😉
I just read that story about the Quinlan case in my Sunday paper yesterday. It was an interesting reminder.
All I can do is continue to pray for Terri and her family, and hope that they are able to find the peace they deserve.
But MM you missed a big time here over the weekend, see Galiel diary.
Sure wished you had been online at the time, I would have loved to hear your take on it.
This same discussion(reg. Terri) is going on at Endgame’I wish we could combine the discussion.
I missed all the hubbub, apparently – but I know what it’s like to be in Booman’s position. I respect his decisions and know he’s doing what he feels is right to protect his community. Seems I always miss all the weekend action. 😉
If you have not done so yet go the Schindler family website and you can see Videos of Terri with sound, so you can see that she is reponding to voices and requests.
Another point lost in all the material is that Terri has very limited vision, 18″ range.