one of the nice things about being television-phobic is that i tend to avoid being sucked into manufactured political controversies. it has been interesting to witness the obsession with this tragic case relentlessly infect the blogosphere. her life and death has become a proxy for about half a dozen other controversial issues -- euthanasia, abortion, the limits of judicial, executive, and legislative power, and the role of religious morality in secular government, just to name a few.
there has been some debate about whether a feeding tube is an extraordinary life-saving measure. personally, i find all this nitpicking tiresome. ultimately, what was important was what mrs. schiavo herself would have wanted. it doesn't matter whether we can come to an uneasy truce defining 'extraordinary life-saving measures'. in most cases, people are allowed to refuse medical treatment -- extraordinary or not. the point of all the years of bitter litigation was to determine what sort of treatment mrs. schiavo would have wanted for herself. time and again, the courts decided that she would have refused the treatment required to keep her body alive if she had been able to do so.
i know that in light of mrs. schiavo's catastrophic brain injuries, there's no way she ever would have been in a position to request or refuse medical treatment. the current assumption is that the next of kin most likely would know what the wishes of the patient were. in this case, the next of kin was the patient's husband. the disagreement between mr. schiavo and mrs. schiavo's parents wasn't a difference of opinion over what she wanted. her parents made it clear that what she wanted was irrelevant. had the decision been in their hands, they would have ignored even a living will indicating that she wanted to die.
for me, this matter wasn't complicated at all. there's nothing complicated about respecting a person's wishes regarding the medical treatment they receive. i find nothing complicated or nefarious about allowing the next of kin to decide when the patient doesn't have a living will. i have faith that our court system can make a reasoned and rational choice when there is a dispute between the next of kin and other interested parties. in my opinion, this is what happened -- the courts carefully and fully evaluated the case and made a sound decision based on sound reasoning.
clearly, this situation resonated with a lot of people. it's also clear that those who were most vocal in support of one outcome or another were not thinking about mrs. schiavo, but about themselves. a fair number of disabled people tried to make the claim that removal of mrs. schiavo's feeding tube somehow represented an attack on the rights of the disabled. others have tried to use this tragedy as a means to advance an anti-abortion agenda. others have turned this into a issue of judicial activism. and undoubtedly, for many it was just politics. in other words, it was about everything under the sun except mrs. schiavo. it wasn't about what she would have chosen for herself, but what they would have chosen for her.
the other interesting and uncanny aspect of this farcical media circus is the role that manipulated imagery and narrative played. i sincerely feel a world of sympathy for mrs. schiavo's parents. there's no doubt in my mind that they have suffered enormously over the last 15 years. however, i feel that there is an aspect of delusional thinking in their crusade. the videos showing mrs. schiavo 'responding' to commands and other stimuli did not present a complete portrait of her condition. the images played endlessly on television for the last week are a manipulated and incomplete narrative. they were taken from several hours of footage showing mrs. schiavo *not* responding to commands and stimuli. taken out of context, the few clips that were aired over and over again appear to be far more meaningful than they actually were.
when mrs. schiavo's CAT scans were made public, i thought that the revelation that her cerebral cortex was liquified would put an end to the incorrect notion that she was aware of anything. when the CAT scans and the knowledge that the video clips were taken from footage that largely demonstrated just how unaware and unresponsive she was failed to measureably alter the debate, i assumed that most people simply didn't understand the significance of the damage to her brain. then i realized that this was a rather foolish assumption.
there was no outcry from the vast majority of the schindlers' supporters that the couple had deliberately mislead them regarding their daughter's condition. in a society where one-way mass media reigns supreme, people are accustomed to manipulated narratives. they are not offended at being led to conclusions based on imagery and dialogue designed to elide conflicting evidence.
this, of course, makes it much easier to selectively believe that which supports one's desired conclusions while discounting that which contradicts them because all narratives are suspect. if all narratives are suspect why not privilege the one that supports one's preferred conclusion? this whole sensationalistic frenzy was a manipulated, manufactured controversy. these sorts of decisions are carried out several times a day all over the country. there was nothing particularly unusual about this case other than the bitter and lengthy litigation. i'm sure those who took part in stoking the flames managed to sell a lot of advertising.
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