Right Hook

Invoking bin Laden, Nazism and beheading by chainsaw, right-wingers pulled out all the stops to make their case for "saving" Terri Schiavo.

By Mark Follman

Mar 30, 2005 | As the Terri Schiavo case moved into its final days, hard-line conservatives boiled over with moralistic hysteria. In their effort to stake out the high ground, they left no depth unplumbed, from imagining Osama bin Laden in Schiavo's place, to offering $5 million to "buy" her away from husband Michael in an ad-hoc "divorce settlement," to evoking Columbine and Auschwitz.

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan wasn't the only one to compare her opponents to Nazis. Jay Nordlinger, managing editor for National Review Online, saw fit to declare advocates of removing Schiavo's feeding tube worse than the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

"In a discussion with a friend," Nordlinger wrote, "I mentioned something about Dr. Mengele's laboratory. He said, 'No, this is worse. Mengele had the pretense -- indeed, the argument -- that he was benefiting humanity [with his inhuman experiments]. Where's the argument here? They're just starving her to death.'"

Nordlinger cited another "friend" (one who apparently didn't require anonymity) to explain the thinking behind liberals' rage over the case.

"I have a friend -- Michael Walsh, the writer -- who insists that liberalism is a 'death cult.' (Michael has a well-thought-out explanation of this. And, by the way, when I say 'liberalism,' I'm using it in the contemporary American sense -- which is bonkers, but that's not my fault.) He wrote me the other day -- concerning Schiavo -- and said, in essence, 'See?' Yes, I see. It's amazing how they -- you know: they -- need her to die. She has to die, or they will be livid. Her continued life is a kind of offense to them. If she doesn't die, then Tom DeLay and Jerry Falwell ... well, they'll be happy!"

He also shared a few thoughts about how to alleviate Schiavo's condition.

"And, by the way: Rather than starve her to death, why not shoot her? I mean, why not put a bullet through her head, or chest, or whatever? What's the difference (except that the gunshot may be 'kinder')? 'Removal of the feeding tube' sounds so anodyne -- they're just starving her to death. Why pretty it up? Why not shoot her? Or take a chainsaw and behead her? If the point is to have her dead -- is the method all that relevant?"

Ways of killing Schiavo appeared to be the talking point of choice over at National Review, an attempt (just a wee bit transparent) to frame liberals' position -- and most of America's, for that matter -- in diabolical terms. Editor Rich Lowry's point of departure was "one expert" who told the New York Times that Schiavo wasn't being denied food and water with the removal of the tube because Schiavo, being in a persistent vegetative state, had "no knowledge of food."

"By this logic," Lowry said, "it would be morally acceptable to suffocate her with a pillow since she has 'no knowledge of air.' She could be dropped out of a 15-story window because she has 'no knowledge of gravity.' She could be shot because she has 'no knowledge of ballistics.'"

While flashing those faces of death, Lowry did in fact acknowledge a "misuse of words" -- but in reference to Michael Schiavo's no-longer-pristine marital status.

"Then there is the misuse of words that are thrown at Republicans to prove their alleged hypocrisy. For example: Why aren't conservatives respecting the 'sanctity of marriage' here? But Michael Schiavo -- perhaps understandably, given the wrenching circumstances -- long ago moved in with another woman, with whom he has two children. This is no longer a case of simon-pure 'sanctified' marriage."

Preaching a miraculous prognosis
In the face of all medical evidence, many on the right sought to deny that Schiavo's physical condition was hopeless. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, compared Schiavo's condition to his own recent ailment, implying that she might very well be on the verge of rising up out of bed to deliver the gospel.

FALWELL: "She has never been on life support. A month ago, I was on a ventilator to breathe, and I had a feeding tube down my nose, just like she. And thank the Lord, I'm out of it, and I preached two times this morning in my Easter services. But I've already given my living will. Don't you dare pull the plug on me. I want to wake up in 14 years and say, 'What day is it? What time is it?' But I really think that the courts have been wrong -- "

BLITZER: "But Reverend Falwell, you can't compare, you can't compare, Reverend Falwell, the condition that you've been in -- and thank God you're OK right now -- to her condition. It's been years since she's been able to utter a word or anything along those lines. And all of the doctors, apparently, who have testified before various courts have suggested she's not going to improve."

Falwell, however, was unimpressed with the expert testimony.

FALWELL: "Well, it's actually been 15 years and she has been aware. Everyone that I have listened to whom I do believe, like a lady last night on one of the shows, said that they were contemplating divorce before she had her illness, and they were actually buying furniture, she and the lady friend, to get away from him. But it is, to me, the courts -- this has not happened suddenly. When they legalized abortion on demand, then came infanticide, now euthanasia."

Next Page: Limbaugh saves the polls (and the whales); Randall Terry demands Jeb Bush "be a man." Are Republicans in big trouble?

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