But the Issue Won’t Die
Terri Schiavo left this world yesterday morning, but that hasn’t stopped the media from continuing to keep the issue in the spotlight. Joe Scarborough was still arguing that Terri might not have been in PVS (persistent vegetative state). Let me break it down for you, Joe. Terri Schiavo was declared to be in PVS six years ago. If you had a problem with it, why on earth didn’t you bring it up then? She’s dead now. Right or wrong (morally speaking), she’s gone. It is extremely disingenuous to play Monday morning quarterback now that nothing can be done.
Now that Pope John Paul II has had a feeding tube inserted, the “oh my gosh, it’s just like Terri, Michael Schiavo is going to try to kill the pope!” people are coming out of the woodwork. Come on… that’s just not nice. No matter how brain-dead you think some of his positions are, you shouldn’t compare the Pope to someone with no cerebral function.
Wednesday’s episode of South Park just might have the best summation of the Schiavo issue so far: one side is right for all the wrong reasons, and the other side is wrong for all the right reasons. Wow. Don’t you hate it when foul-mouthed cartoon characters make you think?
Actually, South Park has a lot of good points on it’s episodes. Maybe I’m biased because I love South Park, but most of the episodes tend to make me think like that.
lol I am sorry I know it’s not suppose to be funny but it was to me. I agree Comparing the pope’s condition to Terri Schiavo was in is outrageous..
If you think the comparison between Schiavo and the Pope was bad, consider the comparisons between Schiavo and Jesus. Yes, I said it, there have been comparisons between Terri Schiavo and the Son of God. Sean Hannity had Mel Gibson on his radio show, and he used the term “crucifixion” when talking about Schiavo. As George Carlin once said, “allow me a small pun; Holy *&^%!”
Crucifixion was nothing more than a common method for torturing criminals to death. The reason it’s torture is that the head will end up resting on the chest, which eventually causes the victim to suffocate when they are too weak and tired to lift their head up off their chest. You end up dying basically because your back is so extraordinarily tired that your muscles aren’t strong enough to lift your head anymore, and the pressure is just high enough that your breath becomes more and more shallow until you die over a period of 2 to 3 days.
Jesus was hardly the last or first person to be crucified, and he also had a relatively easy time of it too. If Jesus existed at all.
Not that Sean Hannity isn’t a complete idiot, but who in the mainstream press isn’t?
Jesus wasn’t the only one to be crucified, but he was certainly the most famous. And considering the source, I don’t think there was much source as to what was being implied by a “crucifixion” reference.
Crucifixion suffocates you because you hang from your outspread hands and if your hands support your weight you can’t breath in (try hanging from a tree branch with your hands spread apart, you’ll find it’s true). To take a breath, the crucifixee had to support his body weight by his feet. When the person got too tired to do that, then they died.
I also think you’d have a hard time convincing a lot of people that Jesus had a relatively easy time being crucified. While it’s true that his was a much faster death, you have to agree that if the scripture accounts are accurate he had a much more intense, painful death. For Him to breath, he had to support his weight by his feet, which were nailed to the wood. Therefore, his weight was supported by a nail every time he took a breath. I think I’d prefer to just suffocate for 2-3 days then have my weight supported by nails for 3 hours before suffocating. Plus, you have to add in the scourging and beatings he endured beforehand. Doesn’t sound easy to me.
[...] On blogs, of course, that balance is achieved via different perspectives, some blunt in a way that reverent TV coverage can’t be. Most blogs mentioning the pope are also reverent but edstrong, a “radical left” blog, quotes at length from an indymedia blast at the pope:A picture emerges of a man gripped with hatred for condoms but in practice equivocal about paedophilia. Homosexuality is to him “an objective disorder” and “intrinsically evil”, but the rape of kidnapped boys is no bar to Sainthood.: Tempus Fugit says:Now that Pope John Paul II has had a feeding tube inserted, the “oh my gosh, it’s just like Terri, Michael Schiavo is going to try to kill the pope!†people are coming out of the woodwork. Come on… that’s just not nice. No matter how brain-dead you think some of his positions are, you shouldn’t compare the Pope to someone with no cerebral function. [...]