It's a sad, sad, sad, sad world
Anyone out there euphorically happy? Anyone who walks out the door every day thinking that the world looks like a bright and happy place? Anyone in love with life? If so, I'm glad to hear it, because capital-L Life is looking pretty dark to me these days, a feeling that's been backed up by that final word on all matters: television. Even that Spring Break Shark Attack that I turned on last night in the hope that it would be the high-camp fun seemingly promised by the commercials only gave me some disturbing ruphies/date-rape scenario before I turned it off.
I would have just changed the channel instead of turning it off, but I was afraid to be confronted with one of the two incredibly depressing news stories flooding the airwaves these days: Terri Schiavo and Jessica Lunsford. Every TV channel in the country is rotating impossibly heartbreaking pictures of these two. It's one of those days where I was happy to come into work so that I could escape it for a while.
The Schiavo case is incredibly tough. I would say that my brain goes along with those in favor of euthanasia, but it inevitably comes to me that it's not her decision to make. We're not talking about someone who is fully lucid and able to make the decision herself to die. So my heart breaks when I see Schiavo in her wheelchair, but then I listen to her husband and imagine their future if she's kept alive: years of her in a vegetative state, unable to communicate or comprehend, and him having to watch her go through it.
But even worse are those slideshows of smiling Jessica Lunsford photographs narrarated by recountings of the horror of her last hours of life. And while my feelings on the death penalty change all the time, and if there's anyone in the world who deserves it, it's that man, there's something upsetting about seeing Jessica's father focus so much on the death penalty. I can certainly understand the feeling, and if that was a child of mine, I can't imagine that I wouldn't feel the same way, but it just adds an extra touch of gloom to an already mind-numbingly dark story.
I hope I haven't brought you down, Monday morning readers. I think my grey-colored glasses have been made darker by the fact that I'm 2/3 of the way through a book about shell-shocked WWI soldiers in a Scottish mental hospital, a book I had tried to get through in 2001, but had to put down in favor of Harry Potter after September 11th made it too difficult a read. It's a fantastic book (Regeneration), and I'm determined to finish it, but it's not exactly a real pick-me-up.
If you're feeling a little down after reading this post, maybe someone will put a link in the comments to a movie of a fat kid dancing. My God, how we love internet movies of fat kids dancing.
8 comments:
Yeah, the Terry Shiavo case is pretty tough, but it's also none of mine or anyone else's damn business - except her, the husband, her family, the doctors involved, and the numerous courts who said it was okay for him to fulfill her wishes (according to him and other witnesses). And so, because of that, I'm not concerned about whether her husband is doing the right or wrong thing here, because that's between him and her and I guess God or something. What I'm really concerned with is that Congress and the President has decided to stick their noses into the case - which none of them have any business with (or expert knowledge of)...that's the truly scary thing to me...it's just a really bad, bad precedent. As an aside to that, whatever happened to all that sanctity of marriage stuff that the same conservatives who are all over this case talk about all the time? Arrgh...
Anyway, sadly, I guess, I've never heard of Jessica Lunsford, but I've more or less given up on TV news in favor of (for TV viewing) mindless television shows, sports, do-it-yourself shows, and movies. I did miss the shark movie though...kinda glad, but I watched the first part of "Short Cuts", which was not at all uplifting either. But, if you missed it, Arrested Development from last night might fulfill your need to see fat kids dancing on the internet.
The thing that really stumps me on the Shiavo case is the "between her and her husband" thing, because as far as I've heard, her husband is just going on what he felt like she would want based on coversations before her heart attack. I would be completely in favor of it if she were able to clearly state that she wanted to die, but she isn't. That muddies the waters a good deal.
I guess maybe we all should think about living wills, no matter how young and healthy we may be. I'm neither, so I really should think about it. Let this blog comment stand as a testament that if I'm so incapacitated that I can't tell you my favorite Stephin Merrit lyric, please have me put down immediately, preferably in a way that makes a funny story, like Christian "accidentally" hits the adjustable bed and it flings me out the hospital window or something.
I am with you Doug, though, on the conservative lawmakers. While it does seem a little exploitive, what really bugs me is that it shows once again that conservatives can bitch about big government all they want, but when it's a pet issue of theirs, they're all for making government as huge and intrusive as it needs to be.
Another factor that (somewhat) further muddy's the waters: Michael Shiavo has been living with another women for 10 years, with whom he has two kids. Not that it should strip him of his rights as legal guardian. But it does make you more apt to at least listen and consider the feelings of Terry's parents and siblings as well. This is an issue that can be agonised over endlessly. On the one hand, I also find it repulsive that the GOP is choosing to politicize an intensely personal family matter as a manner of reaching out to and bolstering its right to life constituency. And the mind boggles at the dangerous legal precendent that this may establish (or knock down, such as it is). On the other hand, I find the liberal cries in defense of federalism to ring somewhat hollow. That didn't seem to be such a concern in November 2000, did it? (A coincidence that we're dealing with the courts in Florida again?!) Ugh, it's all terribly depressing. Reid's right though about the upshot: it's never too early to write a living will.
What's really disheartening about the Schiavo case is that it's a dispute between the family (husband vs. parents). It's not like past cases where it was family vs. doctor, or family vs. the government. I see it as more similar to the whole Ted Williams cryogenics saga...only it doesn't involve a celebrity or a crazy sci-fi theory. But it seems more and more each day like the parents are just resentful of the husband and don't want him collecting any life insurance money. And they're using the courts and now Congress as weapons in their family feud.
I didn't hear about the Lunsford saga until it was all over. Very sad, but unfortunately it's not the first time something like that's happened. It upsets me sometimes how the media will pick and choose certain instances like hers and sensationalize it, while there are probably a thousand other cases just like it that we'll never hear about.
Something that really got to me last week was Scott Peterson being sentenced to death. I avoided the whole media frenzy over that saga as long as I could, but then finally gave in and read about it as the trial was ending. I'm not against capital punishment, and the guy seems like a slimeball who probably did it...but how can you convict, let alone sentence, someone without any true physical evidence? Everything was circumstantial. Plus the whole precedent of an additional count of murder being given for a fetus (no birth certificate, yet they kept referring to it by name)...to me, that's the scariest thing to come out of the courts recently.
Good point about the family's potential ulterior motives, Scott. Ugh. The bottom line for me is that if the husband's case has been upheld by *19* different judges in Florida. Certainly those judges have been more qualified to make a knowledgable ruling than anyone in Congress or the White House. In the absense of a living will, sadly, that's as definitive as it probably gets.
I'd like to see how many people have or are going to do living wills after all this...I'm thinking about it. But, just in case I don't get around to it, put me down as a big fat DNR.
Hell, I think I'm much more scared of becoming a celebrity vegetable than a plain old vegetable.
Well, here's something that you might not consider "good news," but it made me laugh today. I'm currently going through my semi-annual country phase (about twice a year I get this craving for country music and wind up listening to nothing but country for a week or so). Anyway, I was in my car running errands during lunch today and the voice on this one song sounded oddly familiar. I hit the info button and the artist was none other than Bret Michaels...from Poison. Apparently he released a country album. And to be honest, the song I heard really wasn't bad at all.
You all are much more up on the music scene, so you may have heard about this already...it just really struck me as funny.
Jon Stewart just put it perfectly on the Daily Show: "If you ever wanted to know just exactly how sick you have to get before Congress takes an interest in health care..."
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