Because there are plenty of people who won't remember it from the Biblical parable, and he acted as though they don't exist. There was an implicit assumption in a his phrasing that everyone is either a Christian or at least a believer in god.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: I had 10 minutes on Laura Ingraham's show, which went surprisingly well.
I did two segments on her show seven years ago. I was goggy and unsure, it was a five in the morning in California, and she came out swinging. I bobbed weaved deftly in the first segment, I think I won on style and substance, because I was right and I was 20. The cohost lit me up pretty good on the second segment, as I had gotten a little more cocky and sloppy. Never again!
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote: For many disabled Americans, seeing the final images of Terri Schiavo was like looking at a terrifying picture of themselves -- undervalued and at the mercy of others.
"We do not identify with the spouse or the parents," Diane Coleman, president and founder of the disability rights group Not Dead Yet, explained just days before Schiavo's death. "We identify with her. She is one of us."
The battle over the severely brain-damaged Florida woman sparked a wave of congressional and legal wrangling and a renewed interest in end-of-life directives. But for many who are disabled -- whether from a recent accident or a lifelong illness -- the case triggered a much more immediate, personal reaction.
Watching the Florida drama from the opposite coast, it looked as though Schiavo was "put to death for the crime of being disabled," said William G. Stothers, deputy director of the Center for an Accessible Society. "Among the disability rights community, it is a generally held belief that in society at large the view is 'better dead than disabled.' "
Distrustful of the medical establishment and worried they may be considered a "burden," disabled people such as Stothers fear they may be one ER visit away from becoming the next Terri Schiavo.
"What happens if I go to the hospital and they say, 'He's so disabled anyway, should we do these heroic measures?' " said Stothers, who contracted polio 55 years ago and now uses a wheelchair. "It scares me."
Although Schiavo, 41, may not have appeared handicapped in the conventional sense, "to people who have disabilities or advocates for people with disabilities, they [saw] Terri Schiavo as a disabled person," said Lennard Davis, a professor of English and Disability Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "People with disabilities perceive they are on a continuum between themselves and Terri Schiavo."
Immediately after her death Thursday, Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, linked his sister to the cause: "Terri, your life and legacy will continue to live on as the nation is now awakened to the plight of thousands of voiceless people with disabilities that were previously unnoticed."
Internet chat rooms dedicated to disability issues have revealed a range of reactions, said Karen Hwang, 37, a quadriplegic in New Jersey.
"For some people, the big fear is being kept alive in this persistent vegetative state," as Schiavo was for 15 years, Hwang said. "I'm one of them. For others, it's that somebody will put them to death prematurely."
It looks like the media finally realized there was more to this story than a simple two-sided culture war. Too bad they likely only did it to milk the story one more day, but it's something.
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