Posted by
Ali Elizabeth Turner on Thursday, March 05, 2009 2:10:08 PM
I might have just gone nuts in the alliteration department, but I am ticked, so please just consider the overuse of the letter 's' in the title as cathartic rather than tedious, would you please? I am booing and hissing at something that at least could be considered poor form and at worse something much more sinister.
Recently Rolling Stone magazine published a piece that is so vile that it stretches my committment to the concept of freedom of expression. Of course the primary target is our former president, George W. Bush. (Love him or hate him, at least we Americans were absolutely sure that he was constitutionally qualified to sit in the Oval Office, which is more than I can say for the current guy, but I digress.)
But when they attack people that you know and love personally, people that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be honorable, gentle, loving, and truthful, then a new stretching occurs, and that is to love my enemies. But before I bloviate any further re: enemies, let me tell you about my friends.
Most of you know that Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother, wrote the foreword for my book, A Ballad for Baghdad: An Ex-Hippie Chick Viet Nam War Protester's Three Years in Iraq. As a result of doing research for the chapter entitled Stetsons for Terri Schiavo, as well as being a guest on their radio show America's Lifeline, the Schindlers have become very dear to me. The media and Death Culture portrayal of them and their quest to save their darling Terri from being starved and dehydrated to death against her will has sickened me, our soldiers, Iraqis, and Americans, and the Rolling Stone article is no exception. They are indeed a remarkable family, in my view, a national treasure.
Bobby told me that hardly anything shocks him any more when it comes to the things said about Terri and their family, but that he'd be lying if he said that what I am about to share with you didn't bother him.
Rolling Stone did a mock and mocking interview with George Bush wherein a reporter asks why President Bush made "such a big deal out of intervening in the whole Terri Schiavo thing?" I won't quote the gross sexual stuff attributed to Karl Rove, but what I do have to quote is disturbing enough. The premise was that it was to improve ratings and approval levels. The result was supposedly a Bush White House dream come true.
"So sure enough, (Bush speaking)
we're watching TV later that night, and CNN just has her and her drooling-a_ _, doped-up smile on this endless loop. Karl is literally jumping up and down with excitement at the sight of her. "She's the best thing since Old Yeller," he's saying. "I want to see every liberal in the country on Larry King campaigning to yank her feeding tube. Get Ben Affleck on there, Sean Penn. Show them side by side with her looking fat and helpless with those dead-fish eyes of hers, split-screen. She'll get us 10,000 votes an hour.
"The best thing since Old Yeller?"
Old Yeller was a beloved dog who was put down with one reluctatntly fired heartbreaking shot because he had become rabid in the process of protecting his family from an infected wolf. Would to God that Terri's death could have been that merciful. She had blood pooling in her eyes from what her body was going through. Her "husband's" lawyer said he'd never seen her "look so beautiful."
"Drooling-a_ _, doped-up smile, dead fish eyes of hers?"
Go to
www.terrisfight.org and click on the videos of the woman erroneously described by the media as"brain dead" and viciously by Rolling Stone as as "doped-up" with "dead fish eyes." If that is what you see, I pity the death that has already overtaken you. Terri, the full person disrespectfully referred to by lawyer George Felos as a "houseplant" was so sweetly full of life and love that her last act was to hug her mother, and sob. She had one tear left and spent it on her mother.
Go ahead, if you have the courage to consider an opposing view to the Stone. But be forewarned: you might have to come to the place where you conclude that she was executed on our watch for being in the way, and that some day it could be you if you don't speak up or out.