Three Years Ago This Week: Terri Schiavo

(Ed. Note: It’s hard to believe that three years have passed since the first significant battle of the 21st century culture wars was fought. Most Americans watched on in either rapt amazement or abject horror as a brain dead woman in Florida became a symbol of all that was wrong with the marriage of convenience between the Republican Party and the fundamentalist Christian conservative base. As a reminder of what took place in March, 2005, ASZ is republishing a post, below, that should take the reader back, and once again remind all progressives of what’s at stake in 2008, in both the presidential and congressional elections.)

March 20th, 2005:

The three ring media circus over a corpse that remains technically functional, yet who’s human spirit departed her earthly bonds so long ago, continues in earnest today. As I type this blog entry, both houses of congress are poised to bastardize the limits of legislative (and perhaps moral) authority as it attempts to deal with the Schiavo case.

This whole situation has gone well beyond extraordinary. The country is going to hell in a handbasket. The planet is going to hell in a handbasket. Hundreds of thousands of functional people will die around the world today from war, state sponsored genocide, starvation, AIDS, spousal abuse, execution, gang violence, narco terrorism, and many other social causes, yet the U.S. congress would never, in a million legislative days (the measurement of time in Washington, DC), consider meeting in emergency session to deal with those issues. Never. Yet they meet today to deal with the moral question of a brain dead woman being allowed to depart this mortal coil with some modicum of decency.

The Schiavo case has gone well beyond the realm of the sublime and absurd, and entered the venue of the ghoulish. But you know what? America is getting what the majority voted for, just like ANWR. Bitch, whine, and moan all you want, but there’s not a goddamn thing you or I can do about it. Progressives do not have the media reach. We do not have the high profile pitchmen (and women) who are willing to put everything on the line and pull out all the stops to wake up a nearly completely comatose America. DOCTOR Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, makes a bullshit eighth-hand medical diagnosis for the media, and the TASS-US stenos dutifully lap it up. DOCTOR Howard Dean, newly elected chairman of the DNC, says nothing publicly.

The hypocrisy is, indeed, stunning. Liz at Blondesense comments this morning: