THERE are some days when I would enjoy traveling to New York City and personally beating up members of the mainstream media. There are a lot of days when I could use a trip to Washington to take a few Republicans to town. And there are even days when I feel that my beloved Democrats deserve little better than a slap to the back of the head. It is a rare occasion that I feel morally obligated to step into the ring and take on all three simultaneously over the same conundrum, but the utterly shameful exploitation of the case of Terri Schiavo by pundits and politicians alike presents such a rarity. So let's go a few rounds.
Anyone who has watched a news broadcast or picked up a newspaper in the past week (this one included) has seen some sort of reference to the controversy over the condition of Terri Schiavo and the decision to remove the feeding tube that was keeping her alive. But even the casual observer can see that this story keeps appearing in some slightly modified form again and again and again. The amount of coverage that has been given to this one poor woman is simply staggering. The scandal-sized reporting effort fits Politics Prof. Larry Sabato's definition of a "feeding frenzy," a case in which all media outlets feel that a story is the moneymaker that will bring in ratings and readers. Consequently, they give it such disproportionate coverage to its actual significance that it completely obscures occurrences of actual news.
According to LexisNexis, an online media database, there have been over 400 television news broadcasts and over 300 major newspaper articles about this case in the past week alone. You wouldn't know that there also happens to be a major debate regarding the future of Social Security happening simultaneously (four articles), or negotiations to help ensure that North Korea doesn't nuke us anytime soon (82). According to the mainstream media's wisdom, these matters are of secondary importance to the viewing public. The media's decision to exploit this family's pain with fervor usually reserved for first-class political scandals is nothing short of shameless.
But if anything could be worse, it's the Congressional Republicans' political grandstanding over the issue.They vowed to protect Schiavo from the abuses of a much-maligned "activist judiciary" by passing unprecedented (and quite possibly unconstitutional) legislation bringing the case to federal courts, despite the fact that the case has already been reviewed in Florida state courts 19 times and was rejected for review by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the same time, a memo was passed to Republican Senators earlier this week reminding them that this was a "great political issue" that would pay dividends with Christian conservatives in the 2006 midterm elections if handled correctly.
Republican strategist Richard Viguerie openly admitted that this debate "could be the opening shot in the Supreme Court nomination battle," and Republicans would simply love to have "Remember Terri Schiavo" as their battle cry. They have carefully crafted the situation into a win-win scenario in which either they play the hero by saving an innocent woman from a cruel and out-of-control judiciary or the woman becomes a martyr for their cause and the entire right-to-life movement.
As long as it is in their interest to appear to care about this issue the Republicans will do so with all the zeal of the televangelists whose support they so badly need.
Many Democrats haven't done much better. While few have been openly pushing the Schiavo bill, not nearly enough have actually stood up to the Congress' interference in the judicial process, and those that have seem to possess motivations about as noble as those of the Republicans. While they can claim to have kept the bill exclusive to Schiavo rather than setting a legal precedent for similar cases, their other efforts at opposition have been paltry or simply nonexistent. A leading Democratic senator, Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., did accuse Sentate Majority Leader Bill Frist of setting "a new standard in overreaching," but went on to link the issue to the President's judicial nominees and Republican attempts to modify Senate filibuster rules. Sensing a politically risky issue, most Democrats have decided to take the path of least resistance: ignore the issue and hope it goes away.
The utter disrespect the media and both parties have shown for the suffering of Schiavo's family and their willingness to use them as pawns for their own ends is simply sickening. If any of them actually cared at all for Schiavo, they would allow her family to settle the matter privately and stop trying to use her to further their own careers.
A.J. Kornblith is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.
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