3.20.2005
Clone Terri Schiavo
I've got it; it's the solution to everyone's problems. We just need to allow Terri's parents to clone her. They'll get a new daughter -- brain intact and everything. They'll even catch the bulimia before it becomes a problem this time, 'cause they'll know it's coming. The cloning process can't cost a whole lot more than the taxpayer money Congress is already spending on this, can it?
OK, OK. It's really sad what's happened to Ms. Schiavo, but it's nauseating (Kevin Drum is right for once) what the U.S. Congress is putting us all through over her.
"Americans think death is optional." I first heard this phrase in a radio interview with Jane Walmsley, but apparently it's an "old saying" (at least according to a 404'd page of the Beloit Daily News).
I love my cats, but if people are going to spend $50,000 and wreck the lives of numerous other animals in order to have a clone of a dead cat, because they can't stand not to have [what they imagine to be] THAT VERY SAME ANIMAL, I suppose it should not surprise me that Terri Schiavo's parents can't let go. If I were them I'm sure it would have taken me a long time to let go. Maybe it would have taken fifteen years. I don't know. Here in America, we spend obscene sums of money to keep bodies alive that in any other time or place could never have survived. How did people, how DO people, in those other times and places deal? Here in America, we think we can buy our way out of tragedy. We think it is such an outrage when we are bombed on our own soil that it is right and just that we must multiply the outrage against innocents many, many times "in return." We have become Nietzsche's Alexandrian culture: a stale, ossified people who kill because they can't bear the thought of death. We have no sense of tragedy--which is our tragedy. It means we blind ourselves to the beauty and fragility of life. Hell, maybe even the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life does not mean preserving alive a brain-dead shell.
I can't help thinking about the people dying in Iraq, kids growing up in poverty here in the US, and all over the world, and the only thing Congress can think to do to "affirm life" is demand that a person in a persistent vegetative state testify before them. Maybe it's because they identify; their own brains have also turned to fluid. Maybe it's America that's a persistent vegetative state.
But leaving that aside, what I want to know is this: are they doing this mainly to attack abortion rights? Or are they doing this mainly because they will not rest until our courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of Creepo DeLay & Co.?
Addendum: I JUST LEARNED that the Senate voted unanimously for this obscene intervention.
OK, OK, they weren't all there. Further note: Actually, only three of them were. Good grief.
But still.
Have they no decency?
OK, OK. It's really sad what's happened to Ms. Schiavo, but it's nauseating (Kevin Drum is right for once) what the U.S. Congress is putting us all through over her.
"Americans think death is optional." I first heard this phrase in a radio interview with Jane Walmsley, but apparently it's an "old saying" (at least according to a 404'd page of the Beloit Daily News).
I love my cats, but if people are going to spend $50,000 and wreck the lives of numerous other animals in order to have a clone of a dead cat, because they can't stand not to have [what they imagine to be] THAT VERY SAME ANIMAL, I suppose it should not surprise me that Terri Schiavo's parents can't let go. If I were them I'm sure it would have taken me a long time to let go. Maybe it would have taken fifteen years. I don't know. Here in America, we spend obscene sums of money to keep bodies alive that in any other time or place could never have survived. How did people, how DO people, in those other times and places deal? Here in America, we think we can buy our way out of tragedy. We think it is such an outrage when we are bombed on our own soil that it is right and just that we must multiply the outrage against innocents many, many times "in return." We have become Nietzsche's Alexandrian culture: a stale, ossified people who kill because they can't bear the thought of death. We have no sense of tragedy--which is our tragedy. It means we blind ourselves to the beauty and fragility of life. Hell, maybe even the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life does not mean preserving alive a brain-dead shell.
I can't help thinking about the people dying in Iraq, kids growing up in poverty here in the US, and all over the world, and the only thing Congress can think to do to "affirm life" is demand that a person in a persistent vegetative state testify before them. Maybe it's because they identify; their own brains have also turned to fluid. Maybe it's America that's a persistent vegetative state.
But leaving that aside, what I want to know is this: are they doing this mainly to attack abortion rights? Or are they doing this mainly because they will not rest until our courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of Creepo DeLay & Co.?
Addendum: I JUST LEARNED that the Senate voted unanimously for this obscene intervention.
OK, OK, they weren't all there. Further note: Actually, only three of them were. Good grief.
But still.
Have they no decency?
