I feel that the lady on a feeding tube deal isn't news.

Alright, before proceding, I feel very badly for that family that their daughter/wife (or estranged wife). I hate it that anyone has to suffer. I hate it that someone has to have a loved one suffer. I hate it that anyone has to die or that someone has to have a loved on die. I may be a trained killer, but I really am very sensitive. There's a time and place for everything.

Where is the story, though? Once again, this is politics flowing into daily life. Flowing isn't superlative enough. Tsunami'ing.

The real story is that HEY AMERICA, OUR POLITICIANS HAVE FOUND ANOTHER PLATFORM TO JUMP ON.

The media floods into your life with inane stories such as this and makes me feel callous because I am interested to hear it the first day that it's mentioned...and then when it's concluded. My life is not a court of law! I don't need all of the facts and testimony and witnesses and lessons on due process and echelonment of our courts.

News: Today, a sadly maimed lady was taken off of her life support. The case is being hotly contested in the Florida Supreme Court by her parents vs. her husband. Oh by the way, she and her husband are separated and he's living with his girlfriend who he has 3 kids by.

Stand by for the weather.

Not news: Breaking news! Today Ms Feeding tube lady's husband's girlfriend's 3 year old child speaks out to Geraldo Rivera about his stand against euthenasia.

I don't care what close relatives think. I don't care what the immediate people involved think. I don't care what celebrities think.

Additionally, I don't care about celebrities or politicians killing people.

I don't give a crap about politicians boning some intern.

How is I want to hear about abducted children...but admittedly, I wasn't nearly as interested before I became a parent, but I don't want the details of the manhunt everyday as they develop. I wish I were, but I'm not a stalking expert. I want to hear that they've found the guy or they didn't.

Now, am I setting myself up for ridicule because I'm the USA Today population? Well, guess what? They have this new invention called the internet and newspapers on microfiche and magazines. Let me hear the blurb and allow me to make up my own mind about those stories that I want to hear more detail on so that I can go research them myself.

Now, I'll qualify all of this by saying that I know that the news you see on the tv is cause and effect driven. Editors allow stories that people historically want to hear, but I also know that I define niche. I want to hear who Petter Solberg's or Boris Said's major influences are. 99.98% of the population don't know who those guys are (I know y'all do, though.)

In essense, stories on the tv news are what the people of America have somehow, in some form, told the media that that's what they want to hear. I know I can scan past those channels. I know I don't even have to turn on my tv, but I'll tell you the effect it has on me is a deepening cynicism. I'm not going to empirically state that ALL of my friends and acquaintences feel the same way I do, but I know that I've heard nearly the same sentiment from a lot of folks I've rubbed elbows with.

So what does this all say? ...about us? About the American population in general? About the American/western hemisphere media?

 

I agree. I would have never become huge if the media didn't cling to the story. The story only came when politicians starting "jumping on that platform."

Controversy is key in the media. Always has been. You're lucky if you hear about the truck that spilled lethal toxic waste on 30 people 100miles away.

 

So you're for euthanasia. Nice to hear.

 

You must be Helladumb or something.

 

If it means the difference between living and suffering (or a non-existence) vs dying via a cessation of life support, I could easily kill my son, wife, father or mother (or allow a doctor to put them to sleep. Whichever). I can't stand the thought of those I love suffering needlessly and I'm not so selfish as to not allow their life to be extinguished simply because I'd miss them or I'd feel guilty or I am scared of being alone.

Anyhow, that's not the them of the thread. The theme is that it IS news...for a day. As to the bigger picture of this story being the catalyst that is creating new or revised law, well what's the difference between that and any other boring law getting challenged/changed?

Personally, I'm not pro nor anti abortion. I'm pro-law. If I have an issue with an existing law, which I don't, I rally to have it changed. In the case of pro-life, I don't have an issue so am am for the existing law that allows abortion.

Life and death aren't that serious an issue. I know that there is no way that I can say that without a long list of supporting argument detailing all of the factors of my opinion, but that's my stand. If you're sick and suffering and you want to die, you should be allowed to. That said, I wish there was no suffering in the world.

 

I agree with gpat. This should of never been news. This should of been a private matter. Oh well I honestly think this hurt the Republican party more than anything else.

 

If nothing else, this will generate valuable discussion about whether or not people would want to live given certain circumstances, and unfortunately give fuel to the euthanasia proponents. Politically, it did show the power of the courts over the power of the President, and if Bush was the "evil tyrant" people made him out to be, he would have forced the issue....... or for you conspiracy theorists, he didn't really mean what he said, right?

Jesse Jackson brilliantly stepped into the issue today, and generated a victory for the Democratic party, hijacking reality and making idiotic americans think that the democrats are actually against killing her. Well played!!

I tend to be against euthanasia, but in this case, I'd rather see her put to sleep than tortured by lack of food and water, dying a slow, painful death.

 

I agree with pat too, I feel terrible for the whole family, but there's no way for anyone to know what really happened, each side has put thier own spin on the story. The media has made this story way too big, most people don't realize it, but similar situations happen all the time. I agree with salty that the media feeds on contraversy, that's what made this story so big. But I don't think the government would've gotten involved if the media hadn't blown it up to goliath proportions.
I feel sorry for the families involved. Every time I turn on the news or even the TV I see something about this story, and I think to myself, 'how much could the story have changed since they last reported on it 10 minutes ago? Isn't there anything else going on in the world?' I'm not in sensetive about the story, I just don't want to see it every time I turn on the TV. It's depressing.

 

Exactly.

And even if she truly cannot feel pain her family still can during this period. This is what a lot of protesters against Schiavo failed to understand. If she cannot feel pain as they so suggest, then leave! Why make the parents suffer because you were ignored as a child and think we care about your .02?

I just don’t get their inconsiderate logic. It would be like going to a funeral for a suicide victim then having some punk kid wearing a Che Guevara shirt say to his surviving wife and kids, “Ya know... he did have the right to kill himself.” It absolutely blows my mind! I wonder how these people were raised. I don’t know about the rest of you but I had to be excused from the table as a child.

 

Right now I work nights so I'm home most of the day, my three favorite channels (thc ,tlc and dsc) are full of susie homemaker, interior design with liberacci and the real world meets bob vila. Every time I turn on teh news they're re-interviewing a family member or friend or even some irrelevant bystander or celebrity about thier opinion or something they already said a hundred times yesterday, it's not news. The initial story is news and if something actually changes it'll be news. I don't need to hear about every little item of hear say propaganda or the idiots standing outside holding giant spoons and chanting lame slogans.

 

I don't like that analogy very much. It's more like the Metalica video for that one song where the soldier has no arms or legs and his whole head is wrapped in bandages. You can hear his internal monologue and he's begging the nurses to kill him. He says he doesn't feel physical pain, but he wants to die rather than be a bouy for the rest of his life. But the nurses won't kill him because they think like Schiavo's parents. Selfishly.
Regardless of weather or not Schiavo feels anything, there's more dignity and a hell of a lot more honor in being let die than in existing as an inanimate object that has absolutly 0% chance of 'coming out of it'. The feelings of her parents? Yeah, they're important too...but having their daughter partly alive is only prolonging their pain. They'll never have the chance to get closure on the issue unless they let her go and realize she was lost to them 15 years ago.
And I'll add this, to address the religious aspect:
If Schiavo is still alive in the state she is in now, she has not yet gone to heaven. She must be in some type of pergatory. So wouldn't it be better to remove the feeding tube (a man-imposed object) and let 'God's will' be done (clearly God would make her able to eat if he meant her to live...) and let her go to heaven?!?!?! But no...somehow even religious zealots would rather her parents be happy than allow an innocent soul ascend to heaven.

 

I don't condone religion.

 

Neither do I, but a lot of the people that want Schiavo's feeding tube put back in do.

 

This story is news, but the part that is news isn't whats taking up hours of tv time. The legal maneuvering and the response of the Supreme Court is valid news, but only in the form of a five minute daily update, not hourly sermons.