Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Terry Schiavo, Hottie

After many, many days and weeks of trying to ignore the issue, and
being unable to do so--the story of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube
beating out such recent favorites as the Red Lake, Minnesota school
shootings, the ongoing war in Iraq, the Syrian pullout in Lebanon, and
even the "elections" going on in Zimbabwe--I was finally pulled into
the debate by the comments of my friend Michel, who, upon finishing a
battie this weekend and seeing a news clip flash on the bottom of the
screen said: "Man she used to be hot is all I know. People need to
leave that bitch alone."

Having grown accustomed to pictures of listless eyes and a distended
face (come to think of it I never have seen pictures of her body,
which must be attached to this pathetic countenance, somewhere,
somehow), this possibility piqued my interest, and I set out on a
Google image search, which revealed this photo:

Terry Schiavo, Hottie

Ouch. That is hot. There's no denying it.

Doesn't the decision to pull the plug, or rather, to leave the plug
out once it's been pulled, become a little easier when you compare the
above picture with, say, this picture?:



Or, perhaps even more compellingly, this picture?:



On this, the tenth day of her knife fight with death, I brought up the
issue with my office mate, D---, who promptly said: "They need to get
over it and get on with it. Their daughter's been dead for ten
years
. They can do whatever they want with their memories of
their daughter but don't mess up my judicial process. The
fact that I think that there are dozens of people who could benefit
from her harvested organs has nothing to do with it."

He clears his throat.

"The Bible is a misogynistic piece of shit." Whether this is a
continuation of his previous train of thought is unclear.

And then there's the other side, that comes out in angelic fashion on
the PATH train and the subway. While examining the gape-mouthed,
expressionless face on the cover of the Daily News, my
friend's buddy asks, purely, it seems, for the sake of conversation:
"What do you think of this Schiavo girl?"

As I begin an explanation that includes numerous hesitations and
qualifications (even at the outset), he blurts: "IT'S A HUMAN LIFE,
MAN."

I'm in the camp--a small camp, apparently--that doesn't see this is as
a cut-and-dried issue.

Is it me, or do the divisions created by this crazy, crazy case (read:
a distraction) make it seem like a horrific repeat of the Presidential
elections?