Terri Schiavo & the Right-Wing Machine

• While national headlines and TV chat shows have been filled with news about the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, this larger picture of worsening health, poverty and crime statistics rarely gets in-depth attention.
  

The media frenzy surrounding the Terri Schiavo case is new evidence of the American Right’s ability to dominate national news cycles, a power that has become possibly the most intimidating force in modern U.S. politics. In the Schiavo case, however, the Right has discovered that even its impressive message machinery sometimes can push the envelope too far. In the Schiavo tragedy, leaders of the Christian Right and the Republican Party marketed themselves as the defenders of life and painted their liberal adversaries as intellectual elitists lacking compassion for a defenseless woman. Conservative leaders also hoped to rally their base around the need for more conservative judges who would defend the so-called “culture of life.” With stunning bravado, the Right played on the Schiavo story’s appeal as a round-the-clock cable TV drama: a life-or-death countdown; grieving parents; a husband who could be made into the heavy; supposedly insensitive judges; Republican leaders rushing to the rescue, including both Jeb and George W. Bush. But then the results of early opinion polls rolled in. Those samplings of public opinion suggested that – at least this time – the religious Right, congressional Republicans and the Bushes may have overreached, looking more ghoulish than godly. The conservatives may have underestimated the risk of exploiting a crisis that touches on the personal experiences of too many Americans. [more]

• Terri Schiavo, 84,000 Black Men,  and Dominant Media's Selective Morality [more]