the appearance of righteousness

It should be no more than local Florida news, but thanks to the unholy trinity of the religious right, talk radio, and cable news the Terri Schiavo story has been elevated into a national soap opera with a sectarian and political agendum totally managed by the Republicans.

Schiavo is the brain-damaged woman who's been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years caught in a bitter family fight made into a cause celebre by the religious right and the GOP. Her husband, Michael has fought her parents in an attempt to remove a feeding tube and give her body a chance to join her brain in death. Schiavo says that was her wish, though there's no living will to prove it. 

Republicans are salivating at another "culture war" wedge against Democrats. It's politics by piety with soundbites designed to please abortion-rights opponents who want to sustain Schiavo's non-life.

Talk radio couldn't get enough of it, Friday.  Designated GOP liar Sean Hannity painted Michael Schiavo as opportunistic and greedy even though he's turned down offers of millions of dollars to relinquish his wife's guardianship. Hannity, John Carlson and many others gave air to unsubstantiated speculations that Schiavo caused her brain damage through acts of domestic violence. He wants her dead, goes this theory, so she won't wake up one day and implicate him. 

Conservative Congressional busybodies like Little Rickie Santorum and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner; cynical operatives (cyn-ops) like Senate and House Majority Leaders Bill Frist and Tom Delay butted into this family dispute, Friday, striving to shove the feeding tube back down Schiavo's throat and give the fundamentalist GOP base the appearance that the party really cares about their issues. 

This media farce is in lieu of fulfilling any of their thornier promises to the religious right--like passing the anti-gay marriage amendment.

Their last ditch efforts lost Friday, when the Florida judge ignored Congress and ordered the feeding tube pulled. Delay, a sanctimonious meanie with the morals of a reptile, promised to work through the weekend to "bring a Congressional solution."

Cable news and talk radio cheered at the prospect of a weekend of the breathless 24/7 coverage the news business used to save for really important events like say, The Second Coming.

The hypocrisy of this unprecedented overreach of Congressional power is stunning. Conservatives champion "states' rights," when it suits them. They used it in the '50's and '60's as pretext for opposing the civil rights movement to end the American apartheid in the South. The right uses states' rights arguments to oppose Roe v. Wade or uphold the death penalty. Supreme court conservatives forsook those alleged principles by meddling in 2000 in Florida's local electioneering with Bush v. Gore..

Now that they're in power, they have no compunction about using heavy federal hand against locally passed medical marijuana laws; Oregon's assisted suicide law; and are dying to put the federal foot on the neck of "community standards" in obscenity laws to standardize what's wholesome in San Francisco with what's acceptable in say, Salt Lake City.   
 
Such flagrant demagoguery from the right is commonplace these days. But the spectacle of Congress passing a law for one citizen in a single situation and sending U.S. Marshals to enforce it is chilling.   

Comments

[Scott]

This is one of the sickest moments in US history. We have republicans who CLAIM to be interested in State's rights attacking those same rights for political gain.

And where were all these concerned GOP leaders, three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago when this case was going through the courts?

The memo that circulated around DC this week urging republicans to get on the bandwagon so they could stir up the base shows us what this is really about...politics.

Just like SeanBoy Hannity dumped Chandra Levy as a cause celeb' when it appeared he could no longer use her death to attack a Democratic Congressman, the right will dump Terri's family when they are no longer politically useful.

This makes me sick to my stomach and I am damned ashamed to be an American tonight!

[Lazy Murrow]

Dateline 2007: A Republican official is caught raping a baby out in public. Sean Hannity ignores the rapist but notes that the baby's father was an adulterer. Michael Medved claims that the baby can't speak for itself, and therefore a Republican Congress is our last recourse to determine the truth. Michael Savage blames liberals for this heinous act of rape, as does Laura Ingraham, who also blames Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the rest of the loyal media provides cover by pretending there's a "balance" to this story: "A Republican official was caught raping a baby out in public today. But some say that this is wrong. We'll hear from them later, at the end of the hour, but in the meantime here's Tom DeLay to give us a lesson in ethics."

Not taking any chances, Bill O'Reilly settles out of court. Rush Limbaugh flushes his stash down the toilet. Ollie North pleads the fifth.

And after a commercial break, talk radio continues on and on, same as it ever was. Next up, why liberals don't care about personal responsibility. Those bastards.

[Fremont]

Bastards, indeed! Terrific analogy, L.M.! And what happened to the raped baby in this era of "No child left behind"? Trickled down through the holes in the safety net with his SS personal account or dumped into oblivion like a Chandra Levy political football, yes Scott?! I, too, am outraged at this shameful usurpation of Constitutional privacy rights by those exploiting Terri Schiavo. The "sanctity of marriage" mantra chanted by the religious right to deny gay marriage is now blaringly silent in an attempt to obviate the rights inherent in the marital union of the Schiavos! Thanks for bringing this up, Michael....it's hard to swallow without vomiting. The bastards are trying to stick it to us with feeding tubes!