Schiavo, Elian: Tears and circus

[Say_What]

<clips>

By Max J. Castro

It was hard to imagine that any spectacle could ever top the saga of Elian González in sheer tragedy, collective hysteria, media manipulation, and political demagoguery. But the sad, sad story of Terri Schiavo and her deeply divided family, which for years has been coming to the present climax, has managed to do just that.

The parallels are uncanny: the media circus, the vigils, the unbridgeable differences and animosity between the two sides. These were both cases in which one side lost every legal argument and the fight over public opinion without losing any of its self-righteousness. In the struggle over Schiavo’s fate as much as in that over Elian Gonzalez, one side seemed to be operating on a mystical, religious plane impervious to evidence or the rational logic of law or science. One side had visions and illusions – dolphins, apparitions of the Virgin Mary, intuitions about the motives of Elian’s mother, the perception that a woman in a persistent vegetative state with a destroyed cerebral cortex was communicating her desire to continue to live – and the other had bedrock arguments about the right of custody, guardianship, and the meaning of a flat EEG.

In both cases, as the outcome became more and more certain, the losing side pulled out all the stops; anything in order to prevail. Misleading videos, unreliable witnesses, and biased experts came out of the woodwork at the last minute. If you can’t win in court, demonize: Michael Schiavo and Juan Miguel González went from hero to devil by virtue of choosing what they thought best for their charges. The pronouncements of Brother Paul, the Schiavo parents’ spiritual advisor, recall the bizarre media appearances of Marisleysis Gónzalez. Wild accusations were bandied about. Murder! Starvation! Kidnapping! Brainwashing! The atmosphere of fanaticism and intimidation, then and now, is palpable.

Then there were the posturing politicians. In both cases, numerous members of Congress and other politicos injected themselves into a legal and family dispute in multiple and outrageous ways. But here there is an ominous difference. In the Elian case, some members of Congress wanted to legislate the outcome but desisted in the face of overwhelming public opinion in favor of the father regaining custody of the child. In the Schiavo case the Congress did pass a law to try to change the legal outcome and President Bush rushed back to Washington from Texas in order to sign it.

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek=1112335200

[Lindacooks]

1. Boy, if that isn't right on.

Especially the desperate tactics of the losing sides. No lie was too big, no statement too egregious, for the right wing whackos in both cases.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Max Castro would know. He saw them both at close range.

His article is excellent. The two political catastrophies have so much in common.