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Right now. On the main page. Uncle Orson Review many things, including "Million Dollar Baby." Not only does he agree with most of our take on the movie, he points people to two of my articles!!!!

Uncle Orson Reviews - Wedding, Racing & Boxing at the Movies

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But the movie is so intense and earnest about its phony moral dilemmas and its glorification of the murder of the helpless and despondent that you almost don’t notice how evil the message of the movie is.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Read Steve Drake’s review of Million Dollar Baby: “Dangerous Times” at the Ragged Edge website www.raggededgemagazine.com, a review of the movie from the point of view of someone who actually suffers from the kind of disability that makes do-gooders want to murder you for so they can feel good about themselves.

Then read his essay “From ‘Mercy Killing’ to ‘Domestic Violence,’” to get an idea of the real danger that old, sick and disabled people face in our murder-is-noble society.

Quite apart from the moral issues involved, I must point out as a writing teacher that suicide or “assisted” suicide is what bad or inexperienced writers resort to when they don’t have an ending.

I tell my writing students that everybody has to write at least one noble-suicide story – so write it now, to get it out of your system; then throw it away, because it’s junk.

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I tell my writing students that everybody has to write at least one noble-suicide story – so write it now, to get it out of your system; then throw it away, because it’s junk.

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What galls the film's adversaries - or so they say - is a turn in the plot that they started giving away on the radio and elsewhere in December, long before it started being mentioned in articles like the one you're reading now. They hoped to "spoil" the movie and punish it at the box office, though there's no evidence that they have succeeded. As Mr. Eastwood has pointed out, advance knowledge of the story's ending did nothing to deter the audience for "The Passion of the Christ." My own experience is that knowing the ultimate direction of "Million Dollar Baby" - an organic development that in no way resembles a plot trick like that in "The Sixth Sense" - only deepened my second viewing of it.

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There's no dream team, either in the boxing arena or in the emergency room, in "Million Dollar Baby." While there is much to admire in the year's other Oscar-nominated movies - the full-bodied writing in "Sideways," the cinematic bravura of "The Aviator," the awesome Jamie Foxx in "Ray" - Mr. Eastwood's film, while also boasting great acting, is the only one that challenges America's current triumphalist daydream. It does so not because it has any politics or takes a stand on assisted suicide but because it has the temerity to suggest that fights can have consequences, that some crises do not have black-and-white solutions and that even the pure of heart are not guaranteed a Hollywood ending. What makes some feel betrayed and angry after seeing "Million Dollar Baby" is exactly what makes many more stop and think: one of Hollywood's most durable cowboys is saying that it's not always morning in America, and that it may take more than faith to get us through the night.

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I don't see what all the uproar is about. Clint Eastwood had a story to tell, and it involved a woman who was paralyzed and wanted to die. This in no way invalidates the lives of the many disabled people living around the world (of which some probably would like to end their lives). This is supposed to be entertainment, and if you don't like it, don't watch it.

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Wow. He completely misses the point that disability rights activists like Steve are making.

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And the Loser Is...

By John Hockenberry

One can barely imagine how relieved the movie critics now climbing
over themselves to defend Clint Eastwood were to see the right-wing
media going after Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Suddenly they
were free to set the dispute into a broad culture war context as
Frank Rich did last week. They were free finally to ignore the true
outrage of the movie. These same critics failed millions of Americans
with disabilities by accepting as utterly plausible the plot-twist that
a quadriplegic would sputter into medical agony in a matter of
months and embrace suicide as her only option in a nation where
millions of people with spinal cord injuries lead full long lives.
No, these critics would much prefer to talk about offenses against
poor victimized directors, comparing Eastwood to last year's
besieged Michael Moore rather than to talk about their own failings
or about a group which has never had any standing in the
culture wars.

Plot twist is, in fact, an apt description of Million Dollar Baby's
ending. A spinal cord injury followed by a dolorous slo-mo
sipping of Eastwood's poetic hemlock avoids the inconvenient
truth that a female athlete outside of basketball and perhaps
professional mud-wrestling has virtually no opportunity to make
a living in America. That might make a more plausible reason
for suicide than the rationale Million Dollar Baby supplies.

Hollywood loves this disabled suicide plot and Eastwood is hardly
the only director to be enthralled with might be called the
crip ex machina theatrical convention.

How delusional is it for Hollywood to spend billions on teen
flicks and big budget films where teens and youth culture star
and yet there is practically never any mention that suicide is
the number one public health concern for American teenagers,
one of the leading causes of teen deaths? Somehow teen-suicide
seems just nutty compared to depressed quadriplegics offing
themselves. Maybe the plot twist Hollywood seems so desperate
to defend isn't really assisted suicide. Maybe its Eastwood's
own epic saga of slogging to the Oscar summit that gets these
critics all misty eyed?

As a right-wing culture war target, rather than an anti-disabled bigot,
Eastwood and the critics can certainly avoid mentioning the
director's high-profile campaign against the American With Disabilities
act after he was sued for owning an inaccessible restaurant. The
thought of insulting or offending millions of people who live full lives
despite a myriad of restrictions on their freedoms and a palpable
sense of impatience that we're "not dead yet" at all enter the minds
of these movie culture warriors. Had it occurred to them, they
might have mentioned that Rush Limbaugh and his gang were
among the biggest critics of the ADA, have endorsed restrictions
on healthcare support for people in need of long-term rehabilitation
and have eagerly used disabled rights to further their own agenda
when convenient.

If Mr. Eastwood is so convinced that his film is grounded in reality
then perhaps he might wish to accompany me to the U.S. Army's
Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland where there are 1000
or so severely disabled soldiers from Iraq whose lives are changed
forever, who were told they fought for Iraqi freedom and are now
perhaps wondering, along with their families, who is going to fight
or their freedom to live a full life here in America. As a paraplegic
for three decades I can help them with that question. Would
Mr. tough guy Eastwood and his new pals Frank Rich and
Roger Ebert have the guts to defend Million Dollar Baby's
"plausible" message of suicidal disabled people? Would they
offer to helpfully pull the plug on these soldiers? How's that for
a plot twist? Thank God there is another message of hope and
strength inside Walter Reed and in pockets of sanity in this
country. I pray that someday it's a plausible one in Hollywood
and throughout America.

John Hockenberry is an author and correspondent for NBC News.
He lives in New York with his wonderful wife Allison, and their
equally wonderful kids, Zoe, Olivia, Regan and Zachary.

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Boxing flick flops in medical circles
Patients can refuse care, but film glossed over that, experts say

10:39 AM CST on Saturday, February 19, 2005

By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News

Clint Eastwood's boxing film Million Dollar Baby is taking pre-Oscar body shots from commentators and activists who say the movie is pro-euthanasia or anti-disabled.

Whether those shots are on target, medical experts say there's no question the popular, highly honored film reinforces a widely held misconception that patients can be forced to accept medical treatment they don't want.

American law actually guarantees a mentally competent patient's right to make any medical decision – even if it results in death. Most religious traditions permit patients to make such a choice.

"Nobody did their homework," said Lennard Davis, professor of disability studies and human development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The film has been nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture, actor, actress, supporting actor and director. The story is mostly about how an aging boxing promoter, played by Mr. Eastwood, trains a tough but vulnerable woman, played by Hilary Swank, toward a boxing championship.

But the controversies turn on a surprise plot twist that has nothing to do with boxing. We will try to explain the issues without giving away the story, but be warned that we will spill some of the details:

One character, a quadriplegic, asks another character for help dying. The quadriplegic has no feeling or movement below the neck and cannot breathe without the help of a machine. The patient attempts suicide twice by biting down hard on the tongue, hoping to bleed to death.

Emotionally painful angst ensues, with the second character receiving conflicting guidance from a priest and a friend. Finally, the second character walks into the patient's room in the middle of the night, pulls out a syringe and vial full of adrenaline and – does what?

The final decision – to kill or not to kill? – is vital to the plot of the movie but not to explain the debate.

Start with the medical ethics problem: The quadriplegic is a prisoner of the medical center's care – desperately wanting to die and being forced to live. But U.S. law says that no patient should be trapped that way.

"What we have is a case of perpetuated ignorance," said Jeff Shannon, who may be the only quadriplegic in the country reviewing movies for a major newspaper. He freelances for The Seattle Times. (His injury was lower on the spine than the movie character and he lives a mostly independent life.)

He's given the film a good review but is troubled by the way it handles some of the details of disability and medical care.

"Basically, the third act of the movie is utter fantasy," he said. And he doesn't mean that as a compliment.

People like the patient in Million Dollar Baby are anything but fantasy. Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas had a similar patient in 1996.

When she told her doctor she wanted to die, he called in the hospital medical ethics committee, led then and now by Dr. Robert Fine. After several weeks of conversation, counseling and soul searching with the woman, the committee agreed her mind was clear and that she had the right to make her own medical decisions.

A few days later, the hospital complied with her wishes. While surrounded by loved ones, she asked that the chaplain read the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer. Two hymns were played on a tape recorder. A sedative was put in her IV and she fell asleep.

The ventilator was turned off. A minute or two later, her heart stopped.

Dr. Fine has seen Million Dollar Baby. What troubled him most was how isolated the characters were in the movie.

"He was all alone, left to bear all that burden by himself," Dr. Fine said.

Patients and their loved ones can expect support from the medical staff, he said.

Since a series of legal decisions in the early 1990s, any mentally competent adult patient in America can refuse medical treatment, experts say. That's true for surgery, medication, a blood transfusion or the use of a respirator.

That's true even if the doctor believes the decision will lead inevitably to death. And it's true no matter what physical disabilities are involved, as long as the patient is able to clearly express an opinion.

AMA spells it out

The American Medical Association spells these rights out in its official policies:

"The principle of patient autonomy requires that physicians must respect the decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment of a patient who possesses decision-making capacity."

A right to refuse medical care and die naturally is deeply ingrained in both Jewish and Christian tradition, said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

That the right is also guaranteed in American law is not common knowledge, he said. "There are a lot of folks who don't understand what their rights are."

Included in those folks had been Bill O'Reilly, who discussed the issue with Dr. Caplan last week on his Radio Factor talk show.

"Here in the USA you can say it [I want to die] and the hospital can overrule you and keep you alive even if you don't want to be alive," Mr. O'Reilly declared early in the show. Dr. Caplan explained that Mr. O'Reilly was wrong.

Part of his confusion seemed to be between active euthanasia – still illegal in every state but Oregon – and a natural death due to the withdrawal of treatment. Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicides would not have died immediately, except for the poison he helped administer. He's now in prison, convicted in 1999 of second-degree murder.

Other "right-to-die" cases are also different from the fictional case in Million Dollar Baby or the real Baylor patient. Terry Schiavo in Florida, kept alive by a feeding tube, is unable to express her desires and left no legal end-of-life directive.

Well-known similar fictional stories also differ in important details. The 1981 film Whose Life Is It Anyway and the current Oscar-nominated Spanish movie The Sea Inside are about quadriplegics who want to die. But in both cases, the characters can breathe on their own and live without other medical treatments.

Now weighing in ...

Whether or not they understand the actual legal rights of American patients hasn't stopped many of the critics from weighing in. Conservatives like Mr. O'Reilly say the film is pro-euthanasia. Disability advocates say the movie perpetuates the idea that death is preferable to paralysis, even though thousands of quadriplegics say they are living happy, fulfilling lives.

Mr. Eastwood is a particular target for disability advocates because of his public opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal law that guarantees specific right to people with various disabilities.

Mr. Eastwood, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said that the movie tells a particular story and is faithful to the original short stories written by F.X. O'Toole, a former boxing "cut man," like Mr. Eastwood's character in the movie.

That faithfulness may be exactly the problem, said Dr. Davis from the University of Illinois.

"He's certainly an expert on boxing and on cuts," he said of Mr. O'Toole. "But is he an expert on quadriplegics and dying? Obviously not."

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Although most people who read this article won't check it, a link to the NDY website is listed with the article. Reading this article - which is otherwise a pretty good discussion - might lead people to believe that the comments about the right to refuse treatment are new and original, and offered due to the wisdom and expertise of physicians and bioethicists quoted.

Y'all have been following this since the beginning, including my original article which listed the misrepresentation of the right to refuse a vent as a major problem with the movie. The "experts" are a little late on the scene.

And they're pissed.

I don't have time to post these right now, but two bioethicists have launched "critiques" of the disability-oriented protests of Million $ Baby. The most recent is by Arthur Caplan and is absolutely vitriolic.

The reason? Caplan believes the people who should the recognized authorities on disability matters are people like him - bioethicists. I think he's really enraged to see that, for once, disability advocates, scholars and activists are actually being heard about matters about us.

So, people like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd are bending over backwards to write us out of the story. Rush Limbaugh doesn't like us either, I would guess. And now the bioethicists feel threatened.

We must be doing something right.

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I'll dig those out later today. But you might be glad to know that there is a newly formed "Disabled Catholics in Action" - headed up by the former director of the Catholic Office on People with Disabilities. She was "let go" from that position and COPD has been very quiet since then, which may be what the Catholic Conference had in mind, sad to say.

Mary Jane Owen has a bunch of Catholic disability activists on board - I expect them to raise some noise within the Church once they get going.

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Thanks. I think I'll get in touch with her. I've had little time to proceed very far on my own project, and maybe I can get them interested in picking up some of my slack.

I know you must be terribly busy leading up to the Oscars, but I hope this publicity will actually do some good.

Dagonee

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CT,

it was clear to me, FWIW.

BTW, Caplan is now officially on the list of people I have annoyed. We've traded jabs at the blog on bioethics.net.

Susan Wolf, who has done some work I respect, also wrote on this. Her piece doesn't scream of contempt, but the agenda is still one of a professional reclaiming his/her turf - and relies on some of the same distortions in Caplan's article.

What 'Million Dollar Baby' has to say about disability and death

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"Million Dollar Baby" is Clint Eastwood's provocative movie about the relationship between a crusty trainer named Frankie and Maggie, a determined woman boxer. (Caution: plot details revealed below.) The film is drawing flack for raising serious questions about euthanasia. Conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and disability rights organizations such as the National Spinal Cord Injury Foundation charge that "Million Dollar Baby" advocates assisted suicide and euthanasia while perpetuating the stereotype that life with quadriplegia is not worth living.

As a bioethicist who has written about assisted suicide and euthanasia for years (opposing the legalization of both), I can spot a confused debate when I see one. A little bioethics might clarify what the film really says about disability and death.

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Dealing with quality of life decisions about these devastating forms of disability in a thoughtful way — in a movie, book or theatrical presentation — is not selling any kind of value message about disability or, for that matter, promoting a particular ideological agenda. It is using the medium to explore some very tough ethical questions. And that is a very good use of cinema, one that ought to be celebrated not denigrated. (emphasis added)

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While the movie makes too much of assisted suicide, any movie that can get Americans thinking about questions of life and death gets my vote.

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The film is drawing flack for raising serious questions about euthanasia.

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Here at Serenity Glen we pride ourselves on being one of the number one destinations for movie actors playing people who have just had a spinal cord injury. We specialize in poignancy, maudlin sentimentality, and quick endings to movies.

Serenity Glen is a fake low level rehabilitation hospital, created by an alliance of movie producers and nursing home advocates. Bring your actors faking disability to our facility, and support the nursing home industry, now under siege from disability rights extremists. Audience members need never know that long-standing attempts to channel money away from nursing homes and into community-based living have been opposed every step of the way by the nursing home lobby and its bought-and-paid-for politicians. You're wealthy friends who own stocks in nursing homes will be very appreciative!

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We do not allow any of our fake patients to drive their own wheelchairs. Any kind of technology for quadriplegics paralyzed below the neck is off-limits at Serenity Glen. Our motto is "Independence, who needs it?" (Our old motto, "Tod Macht Frei" for some reason made historically-minded audience members nervous.) That way, the helplessness and poignancy of any actor playing a person with a spinal cord injury is dramatically increased. Actors faking concern for the actor faking a spinal cord injury may mention such technology, but only in passing and in the abstract. Audience members won't even know that sip/puff technology is at least 25 years old! Or that other options exist for independence , including environmental controls (lights, speakerphones, appliances, televisions, stereos, doors, drapes, etc.), computer interfaces (voice input that gets faster every year, controlling a mouse by mouth), and ever increasing levels of access in the outside environment. And don't worry, if your lead actor and director opposes real access for real people with disabilities, and even testifies before the real Congress to that effect, your audience will not make the connection.

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When not in use, our wheelchairs always sit by windows in isolation, and throw long shadows on walls. Indeed, we can even have shadows painted on the walls to insure extra poignancy. You can count on audience members having seen other long shots of wheelchairs isolated by windows, or people sitting alone in wheelchairs by windows. Stir up these memories, use them to your benefit!

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Our fake respirator does not count as a form of medical intervention. Although real people with tracheostomies have the long-established right to have the tube disconnected while sedated, so that they can die anytime they want to, our facility does not offer this service. Because most audience members don't know this, this makes any fake murder or assisted suicide in our facilities more poignant and sympathetic.

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Indeed, we can even have shadows painted on the walls to insure extra poignancy.

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Some of you have met Diane. Besides being my partner and sweetheart of about 7 1/2 years, she's the founder of NDY.

She wrote her own op-ed about Million $ Baby, but no paper picked it up. That includes the NY Times, which also turned down John Hockenberry.

So we've put her article up on the NDY website. It's a different article than most of the others, and I think it's pretty powerful, although I'm admittedly biased.

Seeing "Million Dollar Baby" from my Wheelchair

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Seeing Million Dollar Baby From My Wheelchair

By Diane Coleman, J.D.

Many people have told me that they don't think they could "stand to live" if they needed a wheelchair like me. That's why I felt a little queasy about going to see Million Dollar Baby. But helping plan the first disability protest of the movie, in Chicago, I had a duty to see it.

I thought I was emotionally well-prepared. I already knew many details about the last half hour - the injury, hospital, nursing home and killing scenes - from disabled colleagues.

But my preparation was more than that. When I grew up, through braces and surgeries, my elementary school teachers called me "Mary Sunshine." When I completed UCLA law school from a motorized wheelchair, I was called "inspirational." I took it as the highest complement to be told by some non-disabled person that they "didn't think of" me as "handicapped." When I was excluded or rejected in my work or social life, I could always understand the other's perspective.

Even the few times someone would actually say they would rather be dead than be like me, I would just politely forge on.

In my early thirties, sharing experiences with disabled friends, I finally learned how to recognize and constructively resist discrimination. The connection and insights we shared gave me a new lens through which to view my life. Most importantly, I learned to look more clearly at the ways I had internalized the stigma and shame of disability, and began the lifelong struggle to undo the damage done by growing up in isolation from a true sense of community and mutual respect.

In short, a "Jerry's Kid" became a "telethon protester." Over the last two decades of involvement in the disability rights movement, I have faced arrest many times in non-violent protest to help win the right to ride the bus, and the right to not be forced into a nursing home because of the need for assistance to live. During Kevorkian's heyday in assisting the suicides of middle-aged disabled women, I founded a national disability rights group called Not Dead Yet. Using a ventilator at night since 2002, it's become even more personal.

I came into the theater, wanting to flee quickly when Million Dollar Baby was over. I sat through the whole movie without removing my coat, scarf, hat or gloves.

Queasy stomach, wish to flee - not typical for me anymore. Moreover, the threat of assisted suicide and euthanasia are daily fare for Not Dead Yet. We fight to be heard over the loud voices of players on both sides whose interests should be readily seen as, at best, secondary to the organized voice of those society says are "better off dead." So many of us have died too young, never getting a real chance to live.

In the midst of all that reality, what makes a fictional movie like Million Dollar Baby so disturbing that I want to flee?

As the movie unfolded to its star-powered conclusion, audience members sniffled in pitiful admiration of Maggie's determination to die rather than move on and leave her non-disabled life behind. They were deeply moved by Frankie's redemption through fatherly love, his wish to help her live and his profound sacrifice in giving up everything he had to free her from her "frozen" body. This is the bittersweet ending that inspires so much acclaim.

As I watched, I thought about the impact the movie would have on severely disabled people surrounded only by doctors, nurses and mixed up, grieving family and friends.

Swept along in the emotion, could any audience member imagine a happy and meaningful life for Maggie as a quad? For him or herself as a quad?

It took me another week to get in touch with my deeper personal discomfort.

Could people imagine a happy and meaningful life for me? Could they see that I am not living a fate worse than death?

I've always felt a tension between how others see me and how I see myself. By now, that tension, and my coping mechanisms, are way below the surface. Denial, the fantasy of acceptance, I have used whatever I could to endure and manage over 50 years of those looks, and looks away, to be who I am out in the world everyday.

But now I am forced to see how critics and audiences love this movie, resent our anger, and extol the virtues of open public discussion of euthanasia based on disability. My fantasy is ripped away.

If I'd been truly prepared, I'd have brought a sign to hold up, saying, "I Am Not Better Off Dead." I would have looked into every face exiting the theater, insisting that they see me, and this simple yet apparently incomprehensible message.

Diane Coleman, J.D. is President of Not Dead Yet and Executive Director of Progress Center for Independent Living, in Forest Park, Illinois.

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When he's covered those things, he hasn't bothered to think things through or even begin to do the most basic fact-checking.

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