Terri Schiavo dies
It's actually hard to feel good about this, but we can all take solace in knowing that any suffering she could feel was not prolonged any further. The behavior on the part of Fox was truly shameful, and I seriously hope that Michael will sue Fox and Randall Terry for libel. Fox has ruined his life in the search for better ratings and to sweep Tom DeLay's legal problems under the rug. It's a new high water mark in character assassination of a private citizen. Reckless disregard for the facts, thy name is FOX.
2 Comments:
It's actually hard to feel good about this, but we can all take solace in...
Seems like you were feeling good about it earlier, when you were trying to distort it into an us versus them story. In your haste to demonize Republicans over this one, you forgot a fair number of Democrats who also supported her "right to life". (I'm not one of either.)
Consider it this way, the Dem's are split roughly 50-50 on this issue (rough guess). So you (and DailyKos etc) come on with harsh words for the Republicans for supporting Terri's "right to life", even though they are split 50-50 as well.
What happens? You antagonize all Republicans (and some moderates who have thrown in with them) because you have lumped them together and insulted them. However, you also lump in the roughly 50% of your own base, because you have denigrated them by proxy for thinking differently than you do.
There is a reason that the old Democratic Party accepted a pluralism of viewpoints. Have you noticed that the neoliberal party has become increasing more intolerant of anything other than the current "group think"?
Also, have you noticed that your party size is steadily diminishing. Do you think there may be a correlation between the two? It is definitely why a Clinton democrat like myself has left.
This is going to be long - you brought up a lot of points here.
First, although I devote the majority of my time on this blog to going after mainstream Republicans, I wasn't doing it here. Most of them agree with me. Evangelicals too. Check out the crosstabs here. I targeted my posts to the kind of Fox News drones who believe everything Brit Hume tells them.
And yes, I still believe that the hunger strike blogger was a cry for attention. And I believe that there is no kind of cowardice like having your kids get arrested while you go free. And maybe a registered sex offender isn't your best advocate. All of the above (and media whores like Tom DeLay and Randall Terry) are worthy of ridicule. Note that I never ridiculed Terri's family. I believed their opinions to be genuine, and they have my sympathy. My venom was reserved for the people who exploited them.
You are correct that this wasn't an issue that showed a huge difference in response based on party orientation. And it stopped there. 50 percent is a very rough guess. It's actually 70 percent when Democrats and moderates were lumped together. Remember that our current president considers 2 percent a mandate.
You have to go to bright red Indiana to find something close to an even split, and that was 48-38 in favor of pulling the tube.
I'm aware that a lot of bloggers have identified the questions asked there as push polling because a question characterized her care as life support.
I almost never look to Fox for fairness, but I really think that this was a fair way to word an "informed question."
Terri Schiavo has been in a so-called 'persistent vegetative state' since 1990. Terri's husband says his wife would rather die than be kept alive artificially and wants her feeding tube removed. Terri's parents believe she could still recover and want the feeding tube to remain. If you were Terri's guardian, what would you do? Would you remove the feeding tube or would you keep the feeding tube inserted?
Guess what: 59-24 in favor of removing the tube.
There are a lot more polls on this over at Polling Report. All are fairly small samples, but they all show that majorities of both parties wanted government to stay out of it. And the legislative and executive branches do a whole lot worse than the courts.
And in response to your red herring about the Democrats losing members. It's not beliefs or morals, it's demographics. Young voters are always more liberal and the pendulum swings to the right in middle age. It swings back when people retire and worry about Dubya getting his grubby hands on their Social Security and Bill Frist making decisions about Medicare.
It's going to be a few tough years for us true believers; most of the boomers are middle-aged. But I can take solace in knowing that once this particular pig is through the python, you people are screwed.
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