Some (perhaps) final thoughts

Terri Schiavo's body has finally, years and years later, joined Terri herself in death. After the tube was withdrawn, the body survived for 13 days, within the one to two week time span that was predicted. With the tattered remains of Terri's existence shredded in bitterness and squabbling, torn by her parents' refusal to mourn, splattered by frothing reactionaries who saw her as a tool for their self-aggrandizement and the sensation-chasing media more interested in ratings than rationality, it is good that the body lay unaware of what was being perpetrated in the name of it's long-gone occupant.

Still the division persists and may never be healed. The autopsy completed, the body is to be cremated and the ashes interred in Pennsylvania near where Terri and Michael lived. The Schindlers have announced their intent to have a service without the body. I personally believe they intend to make some kind of shrine they can go to, where they can continue to deny the last 15 years happened, continue to tell themselves their daughter died in 2005 instead of when she as a person really did: in 1990, when anything that properly could be called "Terri," as opposed to a body, was lost.

I can only express the hope that now all concerned - and that means the families and those close to them, not the hyenas looking to pick what gain they can from the carcass - will be able to release their grief and truly mourn and truly heal.

But before I let this go, I wanted to make one last political comment. Specifically, to expand on something I said in a reply to a comment on the post a couple down called "Language Patrol."

No, we're not limited to soundbites; in fact, soundbites only work effectively when they come in the context of a broader cultural understanding. (That's one of the reasons the right stumbled in the Terri Schiavo case: The assumption was people easily would be moved to outrage - but too many of us, including, it developed, a major part of that fundamentalist base they rely on, have had the experience of making similar emotionally-wrenching decisions to be comfortable with government interference in them. The right, that is, misread that broader cultural understanding.)

The right did indeed stumble badly in this. Repeatedly, in polls a heavy majority of Americans sided with Michael Schiavo over the Schindlers, as I noted about two weeks ago.

That might have seemed unimportant to the fear-mongers and division-drivers who thought this was a good opportunity to fire up the base, one that could be easily roused to a frenzy by the specter of "activist judges" defying the "culture of life" - a "culture," of course, whose members supposedly consisted of the very evangelical Christians who make up the core of that "base."

But, as it turned out, it shouldn't have been. The same polls showed that upwards of half of those same evangelical Christians also were on Michael Schiavo's (and through him, Terri Schiavo's) side about the feeding tube decision and a CBS poll about the same time said that 68 percent of white evangelicals think that Congress and the President should "stay out" of the case.

There's evidence besides polls, as well. For one thing, despite the media pile-on and the repeated airing of the family's carefully-edited tear-jerker video (I'd like to know just how many times that balloon was seen on Fox), the mass outrage never materialized. There were also reports that Randall Terry and others were disappointed at the size of the crowds of supporters they turned out; they expected a much larger response. Eric Boehlert, in Salon for March 31, writes about how the press overplayed the protestors with imagery and commentary that made them seem more important than they were.

The GOPpers, at least a fair number of them, we quick to pick up on this. There was a reason why, after making a big point of flying back to DC to sign the bill to allow federal court intervention into the case, Shrub pretty much disappeared from sight except for the occasional "favor life" press release. There was a reason why, after making a bunch of noise about the vital importance of the case, brother Jeb threw up his hands and said "I've done all I can." (Do you really, really think that if there had been the uproar the Terry-toadies wanted and the thousands of protestors they thought they would get, that Jeb would have refused the demand that he "take custody" of Terri Schiavo?)

So the political fallout is unclear.

The politicians who dove into the storm over Terri Schiavo's fate failed to prolong her life, but their incendiary efforts may cause reverberations at the polls[, the Miami Herald reported on Thursday].

Public opinion surveys suggest a majority of Americans - among them many who label themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians - support the decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube. And overwhelming majorities believe it was wrong for politicians to intervene.

That leaves the GOP - which led the political push to keep Schiavo alive - treading carefully around a case that consumed two capitols. ...

Democrats - accused of doing too little to stop the GOP for fear of being tarred at the polls as willing to let Schiavo die - are also struggling to find their footing.

The one thing that is clear is that the issue did not play out the way the rightwingers intended or expected. How much staying power it has is something altogether different; some are predicting that it will have little

except among religious conservatives who pushed the case to the forefront.

But even there, where conventional wisdom is saying that GOP primaries may well turn on the issue (There is a saying that primaries are won by "radicals" and general elections are won by moderates, which is why you see the traditional "run for the center" once the primaries are over.) there is reason enough to doubt.

Democrats, though, believe they have an opening for casting the GOP as meddlers into private matters.

The Republican Party "saw political gain in this and turned it into high theater," said [Florida] state Democratic party chairman Scott Maddox, a likely candidate for governor. "By making it a political circus they caused additional pain to the family and they didn't deliver as promised. The base is disappointed and the rest of America is wondering why the party of less government was willing to thwart the judiciary."

The polls showing opposition among white evangelicals to government involvement and the even split among evangelicals on the issue of the feeding tube itself gives some credence to that notion.

Without offering any praise to the cowardly Dums, who did indeed run for cover, it still should be noted that there have been predictions that, like many movements before them, the thugs who now have the upper hand would overreach. On this, they clearly did.