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Mar 24 2005

Let’s try something new.

Posted at 8:14 pm under Terri's Fight

Okay. I’m flexible.

Let’s play a game.

Tell me in one paragraph why I shouldn’t support the feeding tube being reinserted into Terri Schiavo by any means necessary.

No doctoral theses, please. Just one simple paragraph, free of rhetoric, opinion, or reference to how in the hell you would want to live.

Facts.

I want to understand you folks, really, and I figure this is a good way to start.

(PS: If you support the tube being re-inserted, just hold on. DO NOT POST HERE. Your turn will come later).

Choose life.

Comments to “Let’s try something new.”

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 8:28 pm

You should not support it being reinserted “by any means necessary” because the factual evidence (not “allegations” and unsubstantiated affidavits) simply does not support the premise that she wants to live. You are not a doctor and you cannot judge by four minutes of video what she wants or would want. You are not nor were you ever in an intimate relationship with her, nor do you know the people who were (and thus have no basis other than hearsay for impuging their credibility), so you are the last person who should be supporting what essentially amounts to the violation of her civil right to die with dignity as her guardians (both husband and judge) determined was her wish. As there will never be “proof positive” we can only go by the evidence they found to be “proof” enough–irrespective of what doctors say, irrespective of what her family says, irrespective of what your personal beliefs are. You have simply decided that those who assert that her wishes were to die are “wrong” and that those who assert the opposite must be right simply because it’s what you want to think. There simply are no FACTS to support that, only innuendo, allegation and rumor. (And by the way, there IS NO MONEY either).

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 10:30 pm

Here’s another take on why:

Is it possible that the soul of Terri Schiavo has been floating â€šÃ„Ã¬ held in some prolonged and excruciating limbo â€šÃ„Ã¬ waiting for doctors to stop interfering with the process of her death?Â¬ I believe that this is so, and that is why I have supported her husbandâ€šÃ„Ã´s desires to have her feeding tube removed.Â¬ Â¬ Terri Schiavo isnâ€šÃ„Ã´t being murdered.Â¬ Sheâ€šÃ„Ã´s being allowed to die.Â¬ Death will not be an end for Terri Schiavo, it will be a beginning.Â¬ She will finally be allowed to claim the reward that ultimately we all seek, a reward sheâ€šÃ„Ã´s earned and deserves.

stageleft Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 10:32 pm

I’m not gonna tell you why you should or should not support either side because that is a personal decision you have to make. Just as Michael Schiavo made a personal decision and just as Terri Schiavos’ family made personal decisions…. and they, like everybody else in the world, will ultimately have to deal with the results of the personal decisions they have made and their associated personal consequences. For that is the way things work when personal decisions are made regarding anything.

Vinny Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 10:41 pm

Deb, with all due respect, and I mean this in the nicest way… Go fuck yourself, okay?

Instead of telling me why I should, you told me why I was wrong.

Just go fuck yourself.

Hard… Fast… And completely…

And when you’re done go fuck yourself again.

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 10:57 pm

You know Vinny, you were nice when you were FAT. Maybe you should lay off the supplements (or are you taking roids too, with your anger, seems like).

You have gone completely off the reservation if you can say this to me this publicly this rudely this IGNORANTLY. But I guess living friends aren’t as important to you as dying strangers.

Vinny Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:00 pm

Yeah sure, Deb. I’m on roids. Yep. I’m pumping steroids.

I haven’t gone off the reservation. You’ve spent two days basically calling me an inconsiderate uncompassionate idiot, and I’m just supposed to go “MMMmmmmm, okay Deb. Still friends?”

If that’s a friend, lock me up in the room with the dying woman.

Buddy.

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:05 pm

You wrote:

Tell me in one paragraph why I shouldnâ€šÃ„Ã´t support the feeding tube being reinserted into Terri Schiavo by any means necessary.

I wrote:

You should not support it being reinserted â€šÃ„Ãºby any means necessaryâ€šÃ„Ã¹ because the factual evidence (not â€šÃ„Ãºallegationsâ€šÃ„Ã¹ and unsubstantiated affidavits) simply does not support the premise that she wants to live.

Shouldn’t is a contraction of “should not” so I pretty much thought I did what you asked.

Or did you miss that day in 8th grade English?

I’m guessing your sense of humor and your integrity were lost in those first dozen pounds or so.

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:07 pm

show me–in quotations–where I called you “uncompassionate” or an “idiot?”

SHOW ME. “Buddy.”

Vinny Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:10 pm

Go ahead. Keep making fat jokes.

If it makes you feel better, go right ahead. I’m comfortable with who I am and the work I’m doing to be even better.

I won’t be dignifying anything you have to say from now on, so just don’t even bother.

RKB Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:12 pm

For me, Vinny, it really is about the precedent. The case has been heard in court, an has been appealed numerous times. Like it or not, for this individual case, due process has been followed. If you allow that there might be more evidence, or “what’s the harm in waiting a little, giving some other credible expert a chance to testify,” then you absolutely MUST give that same opportunity to every death-row inmate, at the very least. Scott Peterson, right now, gets a new trial. Absent a videotape and four eyewitnesses that actually SAW him murder his wife, then we’re not absolutely one hundred percent sure that he did it. If he has a right to life, even after the courts determined that the evidence was sufficient to convict him, then we must ignore the court’s decision. Every individual that might be put to death must be afforded the opportunity to bring in new experts, use the latest in forensic technology, pull different eyewitnesses, for as long as it takes to ensure that they do not die.

If you circumvent the court in the Schiavo case, then you are in danger of making our legal system irrelevant. You can’t break the law when you’re trying to correct it. The only way to bring about change is to do it within the parameters that have been set by the system.

In this particular case, that means you do what you can do to get laws in place that protect future Terri Schiavos, hoping the courts will be bound by those laws when making future decisions, but that right now, in this case, you simply must abide by their decision.

(sorry, longer than one paragraph, but I haven’t written anything all day)

Deb Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:16 pm

I’ve done nothing all day but ask you desperately to examine the facts before consigning ME to the “uncompassionate idiot” box, and you response in the end has been “go fuck yourself.”

If you had been the least open-minded, I would never have bothered to fight so hard, but I was so mystified and shocked by your behavior and attitude that I pushed harder. I kept waiting for the Vinny I used to know to show up on the other end of the keyboard, but you just got more and more and more hostile to anyone who didn’t agree 100% with your take on this issue. I said numerous times that I agree the laws are flawed. I said numerous times this is tragic and that I feel for her parents, but rather than agreeing to disagree, you attacked me, called me names, said I had my priorities totally screwed up. At no time did I get nasty or personal with you, until now.

But this is it, I’m done. I will now go have a shot to mourn the death of the Vinny I once knew and liked. May he (and Terri) rest in peace.

RKB Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 11:37 pm

Deb, I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree with your opinion. I don’t think he is at all “more and more and more hostile to anyone who didn’t agree 100% with (his) take on this issue.” The entire POINT of this post, in particular, was to solicit alternative viewpoints. I disagree with Vinny, and yet our debates — both public and private — have remained civil, and extremely cordial.

You write about being Vinny not being “open minded” in the same sentence that you admit you “pushed harder” — to get your opinion across, I’m sure. You’ve made up your mind already, as have many people across this country. I doubt you’ll find ANYBODY who is suddenly going to have a lightbulb pop over their head, thinking “oh, NOW I understand exactly. I can’t believe I was so wrong and uninformed.”

Truly, this is as binary a discussion as there can be. It’s not about political candidates, or the nuances of American-Canadian relations. It ultimately boils down to life or death. You either think a person should die or you don’t, and you’re likely to have a litany of reasons that to support your case.

But you’re not going to convince somebody to change their mind about this one. You’re just not.

Deb Says:
March 25th, 2005 at 1:11 am

RKB, I pushed harder to get him to consider what I was saying–to enter it into the discussion. SEe, he started it–he came on my site and told me flat out I was WRONG. He didn’t say “I disagre,” he said I was flat out wrong. So I simply asked him to examine the facts and then tell me I was “wrong.” If he had, and had come back and said, “Well, I still disagree with you, but at least I now see that there’s a lot the media is lying about in terms of the facts,” I’d have left it alone completely. Plenty of people disagree on what the outcome should be, but I’d like to think that people I once thought were rational (like the old Vinny I once knew) would at least not just hurl insults like “your priorities are screwed up.”

I wasn’t trying to convince him to agree with my point of view, just to see it as VALID.

Vinny Says:
March 25th, 2005 at 7:57 am

Heh… I was once rational…

You know, before you sprang out a kid you weren’t a raging lunatic. Maybe the stress of being a mommy has finally gotten to you? Maybe it isn’t some grand change to me, but a life change to you that’s the problem…

Pal.

You wanna talk about the old Vinny? Let’s talk about the Old Deb.

See the old Deb I used to know used to say hi once in awhile, but the new Deb can’t seem to squeeze a “friend” into her time for any reason whatsoever.

But the new Deb in her new role as a mommy can’t find two seconds, somehow to say hi, and can only find the time to rip me a new asshole on my site.

So while you’re mourning the death of the old Vinny and accusing him of taking steroids, I’m mourning the loss of the Old Deb, who, if she wants to criticize the way friends act toward each other needs to back her weather-pixie-envying-ass up to a mirror and examine it a little closer if she thinks she’s the ideal friend.

Guess once you didn’t need someone to talk about how the big bad neighborhood kids were scaring you and your husband, you didn’t need your “friend,” any more.

Here’s a lesson for you: Friends aren’t about convenience, and despite your best efforts to pin everything on weight loss, steroids, and other way out idiotic shit, you haven’t exactly been a role model in that department either.

So let’s just both move the hell on and that’s the end of it.

Pal.

Deb Says:
March 25th, 2005 at 12:16 pm

Oh really? I can’t “find the time?” Well maybe between being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and my daughter being diagnosed with failure to thrive (and having to fight off DCFS and Early Intervention from taking over my family and accusing me of starving HER to death), I’ve been a little busy. Emma was hospitalized recently–did you know that? Yeah, that took a TEENSY bit of my time. I’ve been ill off and on as well. Did you know that? No.

Yet I’ve sent you a Christmas card (via e-mail) and various links (also via e-mail) and hello messages on e-mail and as often as I could I blogged (to keep it from dying completely) and tried to explain my absence to friends and foes alike, but apparently none of this matters to you.

As for coming on yours site and “ripping you a new asshole,” I’ve already asked you how my numerous entreaties to examine the facts and not the highly emotional opinions circulating the media and the web can be construed to be attacks, but you have yet to explain that–to cite instances in which I was openly nasty. Was I argumentative? Sure. That’s what goes on on blogs and in comments. Was I trying to convince you my point of view was “right?” Not as much as I was responding to your nasty and short remarks on my site in which you told me that I was “ranting in the wrong directon.” No argument, no facts, no discussion, just the equivalent of “Long time no speak. Fuck you Deb, you’re wrong.”

So before you go slinging dirt in my direction, think back on your own behavior in the last several months Vinny. I haven’t blown you off–I have a baby who has some issues that have kept me going to doctors weekly. I have problems myself. We have family problems too. I don’t write about every detail of this shit on my site becauase a) I don’t generally want the public knowing all of my business b) I barely sleep as it is c) I’m not looking for pity or donations from anyone, even you.

I did expect a little RESPECT however, and I’ve been nothing but respectful of you and your views here. I’ve shared your horror at what is happening from an emotional point of view, and I’ve said so–repeatedly. I don’t know how to say it any better than that. Emotionally this is a NO WIN situation, but I chose to take a long hard look at it–to examine how I thought (not felt) it went all these years. Did the government fuck up or not with Terri’s case, and I determined that factually and legally they did not. Morally is another question, and I have conceded that, but that notwithstanding I cannot justify changing the law on the fly for one person. As I’ve said, if hte government had had the balls to do it for ALL, I might be more supportive. That’s the only way the Jim Crow analogy would work in fact. They didn’t select only Rosa Parks did they?

But again, I’m not trying to convince you of anything other than the fact that there are two points of view about Terri, and caring thoughtful compassionate people CAN disagree on it. You used to get that. You used to self-check for integrity and honesty, and you used to be very critical of the media manipulating emotions.

I’m not here to argue anymore. I’m just really truly sad. It’s bad enough this poor woman is in the condition she’s in and will die, but now our nation is even more polarized about it, and our friendship is gone because of it. None of us has the power to effect a different outcome, so all we can hope to do is learn from it and work towards making it never ever happen again, but apparently you’d rather throw all your energy into being angry and hateful towards anyone and everyone who disagrees with you and tries harder to explain why than just saying “well hey, you’re entitled to your opinion.” I could have said that, but as your friend, I felt I could trust you with my true feelings and opinions and that you wouldn’t just run ramshod over me like I’m your enemy. Even if I had blown you off like you say, I didn’t deserve that. If every human life is valuable Vinny, that includes me too.

Vinny Says:
March 25th, 2005 at 12:24 pm

Did you know that? No.

Did you tell me? No.

I rest my case.

If every human life is valuable Vinny, that includes me too.

Hey drama queen… Nobody’s pulling your feeding tube, okay?

Don’t pull friendship out and beat me over the head with it because it’s a convenience to you now. You’ve basically said shit to me since Emma was born. That’s fine, she has issues, you have your issues, and I understand that.

But don’t try to make it out like you’ve been some kind of model friend and I’m a scumbag, okay? I don’t need your bullshit, your drama, or your excuses.

Now that that’s all said and done, you can move on with your life like I moved on with mine.

And don’t give me lectures on integrity and honesty. Please. Holier than thou is a color that looks like shit on you.

Let’s try something new.

Vote!

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