Bomb Throwing Pacifist
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
I saw it first!!!
Honor a Terri Schiavo Terri's Day by joining national pledge drive
Kevin Fobbs February 28, 2006
It began in Michigan, and it swept across the nation like a mask of death — a plague that would soon engulf America — that far too many Americans began to legitimize and even to become unyielding advocates for this culture of death. It was Dr. Jack Korvorkian and his infamous Dr. Death moniker that has come to symbolize the devaluation of human life. Unfortunately, innocent people who could not speak for themselves, like Terri Schiavo, were swept up in its wake.
You know, as much fun as we could have in pointing out that an emaciated, soft-spoken septegenarian like Dr. Kavorkian/Dr. Death and his Legion of Everblight makes a pretty poor symbol of what Fobbs' no doubt sees as a strong, virgorous young movement sweeping across the country, the best part is where he claims Terri Schiavo got "swept up in it's wake." Dude, if Terri Schiavo got swept up in anything, it sure as hell wasn't the pro-choice crowd stting around with tape over its mouth, making a circus out of the proceedings in front of her hospice.
Why do we need a celebration of the Culture of Life or a national day of remembrance? Our nation needs it because we have wandered too far from our historic Judeo Christian roots. Therefore, we are seeking at least 1 million pledge signers from all 50 states — as well as from international supporters — who would certainly agree.
While I know for a fact there are plenty of morons in this world (I have, after all, worked retail), you're gonna have a hell of a hard time getting 1 million from each of the 50 states. After all, even allowing for the fact that 95% of the population of North Dakota is imbecility-certifiable according to the DSM-IV classification, that still leaves you with only about 600,000-plus idiots to sign your petition. And while centers of idiociy with higher population densities might be able to pick up the slack (I'm sure Idaho has a few hundred thousand to spare), that still won't change the fact that you can't get 1,000,000 signers from some states and have all those votes be genuine. (Yes, I know he probably means 1 million signers total, and no, I don't care. It's funnier that way, cobagz).
In many ways this effort was born ten years earlier out of the comments delivered by Pope John Paul II on April 22, 1996. The topic of the speech was "Reaffirm The Culture Of Life." He addressed the international audience attending his speech in Rome by stating, "The rejection of life, confirmed and ratified by legal abortion as a culture of death, is gaining ground in today's society with the intention of legalizing euthanasia also."
Some may feel the pope's comments were too political.
While others might have concluded that he was simply a dribbling, dottering, semi-senile old fool in charge of a woefully irrelevant and morally bankrupt organization that hasn't had anything useful to contribute to human discourse since 1517.
Others may feel that the nation should not have to be bound by comments delivered by a religious leader half a world away.
Especially if the leader in question has not been elected by a popular majority of all adult citizens in full compliance with the rules and regulations governing the republic as laid out and ratified by the populace via the constitution. As a side note, I do however find it extremely distrubing that Fobbs maintains that people who feel that American should not be ruled or guided by the Pope to be just generalized "others" as if they were part of a radical fringe of the American left hellbent on keeping the Pope out of the White House.
Concurently, I also find it strange that the same people who bitch about how the U.N. imposing its will on the U.S. is a great threat to American sovereignty at the same time appear more than willing to do whatever a practically unelected, openly unapologetic autocrat has to say about the world and good governance. But I digress. The Pope is just one man, he's (usually) a religious fundamentalist, and white, unlike all those scarey, no-doubt communistic brown people over at the U.N.
After all, what real-life relevance could his words have on today's complicated societal mores?I agree. Life is much better when you just have to obey the relevant authority figures and can leave all that intellectual heavy lifting to the Pope.
America did move on. Countless Americans ignored those telling words, and our nation was left with indecision, complacency, traditional values rejected and a growing clash between two cultures — one for life and the other for death — and one innocent victim, Terri Schiavo, a devout Catholic who would soon become victim to Pope John Paul II's predictions.
But America should not just move on. The Culture of Life must be welcomed and desired "as being the fundamental and primary value for every individual, must be reaffirmed, assimilated and recovered today from a culture which otherwise risks closing in on itself, or reducing life to a consumer product for an affluent society," added Pope John Paul II.
Aha! So was John Paull II's predictions that ended up victimizing Terri Schiavo and eventually taking her out. The fiend! Deep down that bastard knew all along, even as early as 1996. He KNEW, DAMN IT!! Who would have thought that mere words would have such a devastating effect on the brain of poor Terri Schiavo?
As for the whole screed against the turning of life into a consumer product...well...it doesn't make very much sense. No-one gained financially from the death of Terri Schiavo (barring of course Mark Fuhrman and the others who decided to write books about the affair). And besides, if you want to complain about life being boiled down into a consumer product, the desire for someone to terminate their own life due to the pain and suffering of their existance due to a crippling medical condition is a pretty piss-poor. If anything, wars in which a certain level of casualties are deemed "acceptable" in exchange for furthering a nation or corporation's geopolitical ambitions is a much better comparison, don't you think?
Ok, ok. If you absolutely MUST have a pro-life comparison between the Pope's speech and the Terri Schiavo situation, there is always the Sun Hudson case in which a Texas law passed by then-governor Bush allowed a hospital to remove a 6-month old boy's feeding tube over his mother's objections because she couldn't afford to pay. Now that's the commercialization of life. Can't afford the bills for the equipment that keeps your kid alive? Tough beans lady. Feeding tube goes.
On May 12, 2006, we will hold an official ceremony that is so crucial for our nation. We want to recover our values for the essence of the Culture of Life. May 12th — just two days before Mother's Day — will be a day for reaffirming our values and those who believe in the sanctity of life. It is about building awareness, engaging in reflection, and identifying and supporting those families who have disabled, severely handicapped, or brain injured family members, which may number in the tens of thousands across America. A good number of these families need the support that the Terri Schiavo Schindler Foundation seeks to provide.
Coincidentally, May 12th is also my birthday. Damn. Now I know what it feels like to be one of those people born on 9/11.
Second of all, according to the National Organization on Disability, there are nearly 33 million people in America who currently have a serious disability, including severe mental retardation. So yes, Mr. Fobbs. After spending about 30 seconds with Google I was able to ascertain that the number of families who have disabled, severly handicapped, or brain injured family members may well be in the tens of thousands. Try it some time; it's really not that hard. The rest of us in the reality-based community have been doing it for years.
Thirdly, is this day of rememberance and commemoration going to be focused on anything in particular? You know, like passing laws to help improve disability access, anti-discrimination laws, and family protection should the family not be able to pay to keep a person alive? Or will it be just a right-wing advocacy group designed to draw attention on a few choice, isolated cases where it is politically expedient for GOP candidates to energize their base? Wait, don't answer that.
The Foundation's president, Bob Schindler, is a warm, reflective man. On my show, he shared his fond memories of Terri as a proud father would. Bob described the young pre-teen Terri who was his daughter and the favorite things she loved to do. She was a kind, gentle young girl who loved animals and whose innocence and faith touched the hearts and spirits of millions of Americans. The moments of her life, which may have seemed countless at her birth, ended abruptly.
About as abruptly as someone who collapses from a massive celebral hemmoghrage due to a potassium imbalance in 1990 and then doesn't die until 2005, and then only after a seven year legal battle between her husband and her father. Talk about someone being stolen away like a thief in the night.
The first [thing to do to honor the culture of life] is quite simple: take a few minutes for yourself. Your loved ones deserve clarity about what your true intentions might be. So pledge to help yourself and fill out a 'Living Will,' or as the Schindlers would like to say, "A Will To Live." (http://www.terrisfight.org).
Especially if you live in a battleground state. And then please have the courtesy to fall into a coma within 6 months of an election in order to make the issue as relevant as possible. And make sure to piss off your legal guardian/next of kin before you do so to allow for plenty of room for Fox News to come up with a decent character assassination memo. Unless of course you want to die. In which case, don't make a living will, but make your views on the matter as obfuscated and unclear as possiblein order to muddy the waters. That will totally energize the base.
You see, in order for a Hollywood-type like Susan Sarandon or Sean Penn to get involved in a cause, there has to be some real drama. You remember the film they were in several years ago, "Dead Man Walking." Hollywood called it a good film that was full of passion and drama. There sat this human killing machine on Death Row, and yet somehow it evoked the passion-filled emotions of the left to call upon the sainted liberal angels of America to save others like him from the hangman's noose, from "ole Sparky's" electric chair accommodation or even death by firing squad.
Why? Because preserving the life of the guilty has become more chic than preserving the life of an innocent. Our nation has believed the lie — it has embraced the Culture of Death. We have to be, instead, the heroes for those who are innocent and who are defenseless.
You really have to amire the twisted logic of someone who not only says- but actually appears to believe- that opposing the death penalty is tantamount to rejecting the culture of life. But hey, on the long road of polemics and political pundits, it's the truely wacky ones that make life fun. After all, where would people like Leftrants and I be if we didn't have the whole "Nobel Peace Prize for Bush" gang to laugh about at all hours? (Which, coincidentally, went to Jimmy Carter, btw. pWN3d!!)
