It occurred to me over the Easter weekend, that if the Schiavo case has gone several bridges too far, and it certainly has, you almost can't blame the "let her live" protesters, however fanatical (and cruel for dragging their poor children out into the street with tape over their mouths). You've got to blame the people who are manipulating them -- starting with the "pro-life" activists like Randall Terry, who have turned poor Terri Schiavo into a grown-up Elian Gonzalez, complete with religious symbology, in a cynical attempt to advance their cause. (Next, they'll be trying to drag her poor addled body to Disney World). Their newest gambit: hawking the list of donors to the parents' cause, with the parents' complicity, of course -- who said this wasn't about money...?
From the NYT:
The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.
"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father.
"These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"
Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish. "I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."
Executives of Response Unlimited declined to comment. Gary McCullough, director of the Christian Communication Network and a spokesman for Ms. Schiavo's parents, confirmed that Mr. Schindler had agreed to let Response Unlimited rent out the list as part of a deal for the firm to send an e-mail solicitation raising money on the family's behalf.
[...]
On Sunday, as the Schindlers gave up on their legal battle and their daughter passed her 10th day without food, others continued to rally supporters and solicit money in an effort to restore the feeding tube.
"This time, we have a real chance to break through the 'roadblocks' that the enemies of life have been putting up in front of us," said a mass e-mailing from RightMarch.com, asking supporters to urge Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene somehow.
The message added: "We're asking you to give a donation to help with our activism efforts to save Terri's life. Battles cost money; resources cost money; media costs money; we could go on, but you get the picture."
Mr. Sheldon - whose father, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, has also sent appeals urging support for Ms. Schiavo - apparently played a dual role as a partner in RightMarch.com, which is working with the anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, and as a broker for Response Unlimited*. Mr. Sheldon did not respond to phone calls yesterday.
*the firm that bought the mailing list.
Wonderful.
After that, you've got to blame the media, whose complicity in this whole, sordid circus has been more subtle, but perhaps even more pernicious. The live setups by MSNBC, Fox and others outside the hospice -- meant to be a place of rest -- is as obscene a spectacle as anything I've seen since Elian's temporary Miami home became a pilgrimage point for fanatical Castro-thumpers.
The media are to blame for having, since the November elections, coddled, stroked and pandered to a small sliver of religious zealots, who now believe themselves to be the country's super-majority "values voters," single-handedly responsible for reelecting the president, elusive and mysterious to the wickedly secular "mainstream media," and therefore entitled to have their every wish implemented -- by the state and federal legislatures, by governors, by the president, and by the courts -- or, as the infamous Randall Terry so eloquently put it over the weekend, "there will be hell to pay."
Hell? Really? Well my definition of hell would be living in the world these people are trying to create. Religious fanatics of the Christian variety are every bit as nutty as Islamists, because in the end, both want the same thing: a society built on religious law, where God trumps all secular authority and their particular reading of God's law is put into forceful action -- for everyone, like it or not. They are so clouded, they don't even realize they are vastly outnumbered by sane, variously religious but socially secular, Americans.
(By the way, an interesting poll from none other than Fox News shows that Americans have changed their minds very little on the Schiavo case over the course of a year. From a June 18, 2004, Fox Opinion Dynamics poll:
Three times as many Americans think Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed as think it should remain and — if in her place — most Americans say they would prefer the tube be removed. When asked to consider what action they would take if they were Schiavo's guardian, a 61 percent majority says they would remove her feeding tube and 22 percent would keep the tube inserted, according to the latest FOX News national poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation.
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dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
