The Passionate Minority and the Silenced Majority

[Triana]

Laurie King-Irani, The Electronic Intifada, 22 March 2005

What kind of truths do statistics tell? What version of reality is our media mediating? What kind of democracy do we settle for when the will of the majority is sidelined by the fanaticism of the few?



Just days after the second anniversary of the shocking death of a young American woman, the result of a murderous act underwritten by US taxpayers, millions of Americans were glued to their television screens as Congress debated and postured until 1:00 AM about the life and death of another American woman.

Thanks to wall-to-wall print and electronic media coverage, few US citizens are ignorant of the second woman's name and heartbreaking story. But it's a safe bet that not even a fraction of those who recognize Terri Schiavo's name and vacant face would know who Rachel Corrie is, what she stood for, or how she was mowed down by a US-supplied armored D9 Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza while she and others from the International Solidarity Movement bravely confronted the Israeli army. Unarmed with anything but a megaphone and her convictions, Rachel was crushed like an insect with all the impunity and inhumanity that her killers could muster. Rachel Corrie's story - shocking, stirring, incredible - is equally heartbreaking.

Terri Schiavo suffered a heart attack and medical complications in 1990 that cut off oxygen to her brain, leaving her in a "persistent vegetative state." According to certified medical experts, her brain is irreparably damaged and she will never recover. Although Mrs. Schiavo had expressed to her husband long ago a desire never to be kept alive if she were to fall seriously and irreversibly ill, her husband's attempt to honor her wishes and let her die with dignity has been thwarted by the politics of morality, or, as the religious right of the Republican Party calls it, "the culture of life."


http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3703.shtml