corrente

Well, we liberals were right. Again. Massive grovelling and apologies by the winger opportunists and media whores who used Terri Schiavo's living death for political gain may now begin. Fat chance.

We expect Republicans to bear false witness, of course, but rarely has their shamelessness been so apparent. Take Bill "Hello Kitty" Frist. Please. Catching Frist lying is so easy there's hardly any sport to it. You just quote him now, and then quote him then:

Frist now:

'I NEVER MADE A DIAGNOSIS'

"People said, 'Bill Frist you're making a diagnosis, Doctor, you're trying to wear your white coat on the floor of the United States Senate,'" Frist told reporters on Thursday.

"I never made a diagnosis. I wouldn't even attempt to make a diagnosis from videotape. I will ask questions and say before you withdraw food and kill somebody that you've got to make sure the diagnosis is right."
(via Reuters)

Frist then:

On the Senate floor in March, Frist several times discussed Schiavo's diagnosis, referred to his own experience as a transplant surgeon and quoted a medical textbook.

At one point he said, "Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond."

Discussing the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, Frist added: "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicted something very different than persistent vegetative state.

Frist also said that "when the neurologist said, 'Look up,' there is no question in the video that she actually looks up."

And what, during the whole flaming circus, whipped up by the wingers as part of a long-planned campaign to pack the courts with more theocrats, was Terri Schiavo's condition?

The medical examiners found Schiavo's brain "profoundly atrophied," only half the normal size, and said that "no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

She was completely blind and could not have swallowed food or water safely on her own.
(via Herald Trib)

And the wingers couldn't let her die in peace. They had to have a spectacle. Disgusting.

And what of Terri Schiavo's parents? They (did they but know it) are the saddest spectacle of all. The Herald Trib again:

The findings will not satisfy Terri Schiavo's parents, who remain convinced that she interacted with them before her death and could have responded to treatment.

I can see how any parent would desperately wish to believe their child was still alive. But Terri's parents were trying to "create their own reality" (while, gruesomely, videotaping it for media distribution). They were projecting their desperate wishes onto the random twitchings of Terri's braindead body. Such projection seems to be a form of delusion particularly virulent among Republicans, doesn't it? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Politial Disorders calls this a Persistent Delusional State, and there's a lot of it going around these days; exhibit A: Iraq.

Fortunately for Terri, the reality-based community stepped in. Let's hope, over the next few years, the country is so lucky.