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The saga continues...

The Schindlers haven't sued anyone yet, but they're all busy bickering about Terri's funeral (the poor, poor woman...). I wonder if James Sokolove has called them yet?

The saddest irony or the sickest joke in the whole affair has to be the Schindler's statement immediately after Terri's death, asking the media to give the family privacy to grieve. Privacy? Privacy??? The Schindlers haven�t granted their daughter or her husband privacy for years--they have relentlessly dragged her case before the spotlights of every media hound they could find. They've worked tirelessly to attract the attention of every influential person imaginable, up to and including the Pope and the President of the United States. About the only detail we all haven't been treated to is a speculum's-eye-view of Terri's gynecological exams--and I don't know why not. That couldn't have been as purely obscene and indecent as the revolting photos and videotapes of Terri's vacant, gape-mouthed dead face.

Many bloggers, and Air America radio, have been citing this extremely sardonic column from the St. Petersburg Times. Trouble is--the implications of the whole Terri Schaivo case are almost too scary to be parodied. Mark Morford is right--it's a dark, dark time for the true people of light.

The Princess is dead--Long live the lawsuits

Well, Terri Schaivo is dead at last, the poor pathetic woman. I wish I could say that this ends the matter, but we all know better than that. It's hard to imagine a single case so perfectly representing--to a degree of disgustingness so disgraceful that it boggles the mind--the depths to which the American relationship with death and loss has sunk, and the completely hypocrisy of self-proclaimed "Christians."

There's no such thing as grief anymore. The initial shock lasts a few seconds and then the bereaved are looking around someone to blame--and that means someone to sue. Grief changes a couple of letters in that first gasp and becomes greed. There are those who get all huffy when this is pointed out to them and claim that "it's not about the money." Of course it's about the money--all about the money. When did anyone sue and ask not for monetary damages, but punitive ones only: a public apology, a permanent loss of license, whatever? In fact, monetary awards are pure cynicism, a pay-off to the bereaved to shut them up and avoid real consequences (should such consequences be deserved at all). Insurance pays the award, having gotten their own legal extortion from the defendant in years of usurious premiums. The plaintiffs pocket their cash, the attorneys bank even more, and the defendants carry on with business as usual. Right now WCVB is interspersing its coverage of the Terri Schaivo "breaking news" with advertisements for Boston ambulance-chaser James Sokolove (motto: "when doctors make mistakes, I make them pay." Pay James Sokolove, that is.)

Terri Schaivo's family won a lawsuit they shouldn't have won in the first place, claiming that Terri's doctor should have diagnosed an eating disorder that ought to have been screamingly obvious to her family. Terri's family knew that she had a genetic obesity problem, weighing over 200 pounds by the end of her high school years. Family members have also been quoted as observing that Terri, six years later, weighed 110 pounds while eating huge amounts of food. Only an idiot would fail to link those facts and conclude that Terri was doing something pretty suspicious--either she was on major drugs or she was bulimic. Menstrual irregularities and suddenly collapsing in cardiac arrest at the age of 26 strongly suggest bulimia. Michael Schaivo was in bed with Terri every single night having intimate marital relations with her--who, on this planet, was in a better position to notice that something wasn't right? Moreover, victims of eating disorders are notorious for lying to medical professionals and family and finding almost preternaturally clever ways of concealing what's going on. And yet both of Terri's families and a set of very stupid jurors clearly believed that the doctor somehow was to blame.

And having gotten that big award, the Schaivos and the Schindlers then got into a fight over who should have the money--while Terri continued to languish in a hopeless state. By all accounts, Michael hovered at his wife's bedside constantly in those early years. No one could blame him for finally deciding that enough was enough and it was time to let Terri go. No one rational, that is. The Schindlers' obsessiveness and controlling behavior betrays them as anything but rational. It's little wonder that they raised a daughter who developed eating disorders. How could any sane person not see those videotapes that the Schindlers have so tirelessly promoted, as anything other than what they are: a revolting, even obscene, parading of a dead woman's decaying face before the world?

The big question now, I guess, is: who are the Schindlers going to sue first, now that Terri's dead? It won't take long, I can promise you. They're already raising the money they need by selling the list of names of people who donated to their cause. (A frequent question on talk radio demanded "who is paying for" the Schindler's continued legal representation and challenges: churches and donors, is who.) Maybe Michael Schiavo can buy a copy of the list and sue everyone on it for aiding and abetting his harassment. The Schaivos will need to do something, because as Dan Kennedy points out in this week's Boston Phoenix, Michael Schaivo's ass is grass as far as all these "good Christians" are concerned. When we have registered sex offenders sending their 10-year-old kids to be arrested as protesters, we know we're dealing with the slime at the bottom of the barrel. But we knew that, anyway.

I spoke too soon...

Conservative lawmakers are already aggressively pushing decency standards for cable and satellite media. That leaves webcasting...or just buying what we want to see on stand-alone recorded media, like DVD's and whatever replaces them. As long as we can buy uncensored recorded media, that is...

The television show "Angel" has been ruled not indecent by the FCC in response to a two-year-old complaint by the so-called "media watchdog group" Parents Television Council. The FCC stated that the scenes in question (out of many scenes on "Angel" that could have been cited, including the cleverly camouflaged nudity in an "alternate reality" bedroom scene involving Angel and Buffy, or Cordelia's having sex with a young man she had foster-parented) "was not 'patently offensive' by today's community standards."

Who is this "Parents Television Council" group? Do they really represent parents, or the community, or group standards? Do they represent you? They are certainly influencing what you, and I, and everyone, can see on broadcast television, as moot as that point may eventually become with broadcast television in its final days. (When television becomes entirely digital, it will only be available via cable, or possibly the Internet, and the era of free broadcast television will come to a close.) Who takes an interest in joining and supporting such a "watchdog" group, and with what ulterior motives in mind?

E Online reported,

In December, MediaWeek obtained an in-house FCC report that estimated that the Parents Television Council was responsible for 99.8 percent of all indecency complaints that were investigated by the agency. Such statistics prompted critics to accuse outgoing FCC boss Michael Powell of allowing a special-interest group to drive the agency's agenda, allegations that he denied.

99.8 percent, and you probably never heard of this organization! We should be concerned, though--because it won't stop with network broadcasts. As more and more of the viewing public turns to cable exclusively, and as cable thereby becomes increasingly ubiquitous in American homes, "watchdog groups" will start to monitor and attempt to control cable broadcasts in the same way they do the so-called "public airwaves"--and they'll start to have influence. And while that is going on, these groups will also target the Internet. We already have conservative-Christian biased "filtering software" on the market that filters sites on ideological, as much as moral, grounds. We have legislation requiring public libraries to use this biased filtering software to "protect" children. There is even software available that censors DVD's for "moral" content. How long before Internet content itself is regulated? ISP's already bow to pressure concerning some content, including content that in strict legal terms, is protected free speech.

The trouble with applying "community standards" and other wholly subjective criteria to "indecent" or "obscene" content is that they're gauged on the visceral reactions of individual people. A person who is mentally ill, neurotic, repressed, traumatized, or otherwise screwed up for any of a number of reasons may find all kinds of things emotionally repellent. Should everyone's expression and enjoyment of healthy sexuality be controlled by the standards of someone who is sex-phobic?

I'm pleased about the decision on "Angel," but the FCC has a lot of other cases on its docket, most of which you and I don't even know about. The Parents Television Council is making decisions for you, and none of us should be happy about it.

Here we are, one week into the new fascist state. I've been listening a lot to Air America, either online or on the local station, AM 1200 out of Framingham. Why that station has so much interference after sunset, I don't know--it seems to have a pretty strong signal, I can pull it in up in Nashua. But that's the trouble with AM. But these guys missed the obvious when they chose their name. I think of them as "Radio Free America."

Lots of arguments about "how Kerry lost the election" and increasing amounts of chatter about the evidence that this whole election was rigged. Personally, I disagree with all the analyses of why Kerry didn't win (as I prefer to call it). Kerry, like just about every non-Republican candidate, made the mistake of trying to suck up to the voters who would not, would never vote for him, instead of playing to all the voters who feel that no politician ever represents their interests. The radical religious right has managed to make itself into the 500 pound gorilla, and it seems that every politician lives in terror of appearing too "liberal" to win them over. All of us true progressive/alternative/radical people toward the left side of the scale haven't felt that anyone gave a damn about our interests for decades--maybe since Bobby Kennedy. That's what I wanted to say to Kerry from Day One: "please don't be afraid to campaign to the people who actually want to vote for you!"

I keep thinking about 1972. Nixon won by a landslide--the only state he didn't carry was Massachusetts (leading to a political cartoon I vividly remember, of Nixon with a pair of scissors, and holding up an American flag with one star cut out of it.). This was at the height of the Vietnam war protests. Within a year and half, Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached--and it was because of illegal activities during the campaign. Whether or not the shennanigans at Watergate had any effect on the election, I have no idea-but that's not really the point. The point was that he never dreamed he'd be caught, and the dirty tricks came back and bit him in the ass, and brought him down. (And one year later, we all learned what OPEC means, and had the Arab Oil Embargo and a major recession.)