The Clipboard: Schiavo case puts nation's sanity on life support

From an article¹:

Where is the outrage, the collective cri de coeur, for other issues Americans need to be riled up about?

There are families out there with loved ones facing just as severe medical crises. Because of health insurance hurdles or money woes, they are suffering, too. But they are doing so in the shadows, ignored by the lawmakers and public.

There were no huge protests the other day when the Republican Congress pushed to slash Medicaid, which helps the poor, by $20 billion over the next few years. Sheer craziness.

No one screams about people on death row -- some of them wrongly convicted -- who will be executed. Shouldn't there be some clamor about the Bush contradiction? The president now believes in the sanctity of life for Schiavo, but as the governor of Texas he allowed numerous people to be executed, with GOP supporters cheering him on.

Hypocrisy alert: People who now want to put the plug back in Schiavo have been too willing to pull the plug on many others.

And where is the public hand-wringing over the more than two dozen Iraq and Afghanistan war detainees who have died in U.S. custody, the victims of homicide or suspected homicide?

Military officials say they have evidence to support charges against U.S. soldiers in a number of incidents, but the military has decided not to prosecute several of the cases.

You hardly hear a public peep about that.

The same deafening shrug is heard when it comes to the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who have been slaughtered in the U.S. war in Iraq, which was supposed to bring democracy, peace and happiness.

So much national attention is heaped on Schiavo, a passion play of knee-jerk emotions, political opportunism and Bible thumping for a tragically ill woman who will soon die.

So little attention goes to other stories -- such as the thousands of Americans who will succumb this year because they lack basic health insurance.

Something is really wrong with this picture. (link)

I can't really think of anything to add to that.

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Complete text of the article, Schiavo case puts nation's sanity on life support, by Robert L. Jamieson

All of it is madness, this circus of unchecked emotions surrounding whether Terri Schiavo should have a feeding tube reinserted to keep her alive.

The saga has garnered non-stop play on the front pages of newspapers and on the evening news.

It has gotten President Bush rightfully in hot water with Native American groups. They said the president ho-hummed the tragic deaths of nine people gunned down by a suicidal kid on an impoverished Minnesota Indian reservation.

Bush, however, did take time out to address the Schiavo issue as if it were a crisis of national security.

The case is driving Americans to the brink of stupidity.

A Washington state woman called a Philadelphia-area relative of the Schiavo clan numerous times last week. She blasted members of the family for allowing Schiavo, without her feeding tube, to suffer "an agonizing starvation death."

"She did call here, ranting," a member of the Schiavo family told me when I called to verify the story. "She left a threatening phone message. We're thinking about contacting the police. Please tell her to stop."

Even politics has been turned upside down.

Conservatives who normally argue for state's rights -- pushing for government to stay out of private life, less government, not more -- sought federal intervention to have Schiavo's feeding tube put back in against what Schiavo's husband claims are the sick woman's wishes.

Meanwhile, liberals, who've historically begged for federal involvement when state courts have dragged their feet on matters such as civil rights, now want big government to mind its own business.

The spectacle makes for great theater because it brings up emotional issues of life and death. But given how the story has played out -- without reasoned, informed debate in most instances -- the whole matter has become a cantankerous theater of the absurd.

The truth is what happens to Schiavo is nobody's business but her family's.

It's not the business of political forces playing political football as they exploit the issue.

It's not the business of revved-up Americans who have become inspired to threaten the lives of judges and lawyers in the case, harass the Schiavo family or get arrested, as one 10-year-old kid did, for the cause.

My biggest beef with such a scattered expenditure of national energy is this: Where is the outrage, the collective cri de coeur, for other issues Americans need to be riled up about?

There are families out there with loved ones facing just as severe medical crises. Because of health insurance hurdles or money woes, they are suffering, too. But they are doing so in the shadows, ignored by the lawmakers and public.

There were no huge protests the other day when the Republican Congress pushed to slash Medicaid, which helps the poor, by $20 billion over the next few years. Sheer craziness.

No one screams about people on death row -- some of them wrongly convicted -- who will be executed. Shouldn't there be some clamor about the Bush contradiction? The president now believes in the sanctity of life for Schiavo, but as the governor of Texas he allowed numerous people to be executed, with GOP supporters cheering him on.

Hypocrisy alert: People who now want to put the plug back in Schiavo have been too willing to pull the plug on many others.

And where is the public hand-wringing over the more than two dozen Iraq and Afghanistan war detainees who have died in U.S. custody, the victims of homicide or suspected homicide?

Military officials say they have evidence to support charges against U.S. soldiers in a number of incidents, but the military has decided not to prosecute several of the cases.

You hardly hear a public peep about that.

The same deafening shrug is heard when it comes to the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who have been slaughtered in the U.S. war in Iraq, which was supposed to bring democracy, peace and happiness.

So much national attention is heaped on Schiavo, a passion play of knee-jerk emotions, political opportunism and Bible thumping for a tragically ill woman who will soon die.

So little attention goes to other stories -- such as the thousands of Americans who will succumb this year because they lack basic health insurance.

Something is really wrong with this picture.

reference=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/217784_robert28.html?source=rss