Libertarian Librarian

Well, the title of Lee Siegel's media column at The New Republic pretty well sums up its content: Raging Bullshit. In all fairness, it's an accurate name for the column, as Siegel is clearly raging and the result is clearly bullshit. You do have to sign up for a TNR account to access the article, but there's no cost involved other than having to delete the periodic emailings from TNR. I'd like to reproduce the entire thing, but that would almost certainly be a copyright violation, so I will settle for highlighting some of the more egregious of his statements and my own commentary thereon.

Here's the gist of the thing as far as I can determine: somehow NBC's new show The Contender, which I have not viewed but involves amateur boxers fighting each other while we get to know their life stories and listen to dollups of wisdom from Sylvestor Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard, is comparable to the Teri Schiavo situation. How, you rightly ask, can a made for TV "reality" show about boxers be comparable to the legal and moral quandry of the Teri Schiavo controversy? Well, it's tortured logic, and according to Siegel, the comparison is only really valid for the Christian right, and, and, well, I'll let Siegel try to make the case:

But there is something more. In a stroke of utter fascinating inanity, "The Contender" has made its motto Nietzsche's overquoted epigram, the war-cry of every hormonally imbalanced adolescent: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." This seems to be the message extracted from Terri Schiavo's condition by the Christian legions. They don't, as good Christians would, want to leave Schiavo's death in God's hands and allow her to ascend to heaven. They don't, as no one has the courage to point out on the talk shows--the lions are throwing themselves to the Christians--see a contradiction between their opposition to stem-cell research and abortion on the grounds that God's will must not be tampered with by science, and their insistence that science must interfere with God's will and keep Schiavo alive. (And there was Senator Joe Lieberman on "Meet the Press" Sunday, describing America as having been founded on "Christian" premises. But the origins of the Constitution lie in the Enlightenment, in deism, and in Voltairean revulsion against religion. Is Lieberman now afraid to say so?) These Christians really think that if Schiavo is kept alive long enough she'll come out of her vegetative state--she'll win. Just as those poor pummeled guys on "The Contender" might win if they allow themselves to be pulverized enough. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger--even if it kills you. You realize that pulling punches on the show is like imploring death to pull its punches with Schiavo. In both cases, the spectacle of suffering is prolonged to the satisfaction of some observers.

Got all that? Well, let's break out the sweeping generalizations to make it easier to digest:

1) "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is the war-cry of every hormonally imbalanced adolescent. Yup, I can't count the number of times I shouted that as I charged into battle against the Man as an adolescent. And just as two small pedantic point, the quote is actually, "What doesn't kill me, makes me only stronger," and most folks are satisfied with putting just a z in Nietzche's name, eshewing that extra s.

2) "This seems to be the message extracted from Terri Schiavo's condition by the Christian legions." Really? Gosh, between the Christian legions and the hormonally imbalanced adolescents, it's a wonder I don't hear Nietzche quoted every ten minutes. Heading to the cafeteria I would expect to hear people contemplating the mystery meat shouting "What doesn't kill me, makes me only stronger!" Going to church last Sunday, it seems the other members of the Christian legion had also missed the memo, because I don't recall anybody rallying the troops with "What doesn't kill me, makes me only stronger!" Though that would've been an interesting sermon for Easter, don't you think?

3) "They don't, as no one has the courage to point out on the talk shows--the lions are throwing themselves to the Christians--see a contradiction between their opposition to stem-cell research and abortion on the grounds that God's will must not be tampered with by science, and their insistence that science must interfere with God's will and keep Schiavo alive." How did we get here from The Contender? How does this relate to anything? Where does he come up with the idea that Christian opposition to stem-cell research and abortion has to do with God's will rather than with sanctity of life? Ye gods, what is this type of over-generalized tripe doing in a friggin' media column? But wait, there's more:

4) "These Christians really think that if Schiavo is kept alive long enough she'll come out of her vegetative state--she'll win. Just as those poor pummeled guys on "The Contender" might win if they allow themselves to be pulverized enough. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger--even if it kills you. You realize that pulling punches on the show is like imploring death to pull its punches with Schiavo. In both cases, the spectacle of suffering is prolonged to the satisfaction of some observers." Oh, okay, there's suffering in The Contender and suffering in the Schiavo case, so the two are morally equivalent. Gotcha. And anybody that thinks that pulling Terri's feeding tube was wrong is doing so only because they want her suffering to continue. Wait. That can't really be what he meant, can it? Sadly, it is exactly what he meant as Siegel makes clear in his concluding paragraph:

So for the Christian right, Schiavo has become something like a human antidepressant. Her plight, perhaps, makes them feel better about themselves and not Left Behind by Hollywood, or by sophisticated Northeastern elites, or by urban decadence, or urban mores, or urban wealth. And by arguing, no, insisting that her story have a happy ending, they can cheer themselves up about the society they are helping to create every day, a society in which being able to celebrate the spectacle of the weak getting pummeled, and the weak wasting away from within in a vegetative state, is the measure of one's strength. Nietzsche and Christ, together at last.

Got that? I know it's hard to grasp the breadth of his stereotyping and the tortured nature of the logic, but it boils down to a simple premise. If you oppose the killing of Terri Schiavo, it isn't out of principle, it isn't because you believe in erring on the side of life, it isn't even that you believe that Michael Schiavo is a scumbag. Nope, if you oppose the killing of Terri Schiavo, it is because keeping her alive helps you feel better about yourself, because you enjoy watching the weak suffer, and because it helps you feel superior to all those Northeastern elites. You rotten, hate-mongering bastards, why can't you just embrace forgiving, tolerant liberalism and advocate killing this woman slowly in a tolerant, compassionate way?

If anybody is wondering why I have firmly renounced any association I had with liberalism, this kind of poison is the main motivating factor. And if anyone wonders why I think the mainstream media has a strong liberal bias, let this be exhibit A.