I haven't been in an any type of hurry to weigh in on the Terri Schiavo ordeal, but now that it's over (she died around 9am today - here's a link to the NY Times story), I suppose I have a few things to say.
The fact that this became such a huge issue in the media is just a testament to the fact that there's very little going on right now for them to sink their teeth into. The main competition has been the Michael Jackson trial/soap opera. What's that you say? A discussion about the President's plan to eliminate Social Security? A debate about what kind of nation we want to be - a social welfare state or a social Darwinist state? No, no, no. Why would we want to concentrate on something that's actually important to more than four or five people? Come on, now. Be realistic.
Anyway - the war is old news, there are no elections coming up, and thus the media have to turn small stories into a huge orgy of sensationalized crap. The Terri Schiavo case is nothing more and nothing less than a dramatized version of the same types of decisions that are made every day by thousands of families. It is an extraordinary difficult decision to make for most families, but the question has to be asked - in what kind of condition would the person have considered themselves still living and not merely alive? I think most of us, if asked whether we would choose to remain alive in Schiavo's state...............
So I started this post at 5:31pm, March 31. But since that time, I have checked Wendy's site, and she pretty much says what I was going to say, in much the same spirit, in a likely more concise way than I would have. So I'm going just going to refer you to her site. Sorry for cheating.
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