I was talking to my mother today about this Schiavo mess. She sad it's ridiculous and hypocritical for our congressmen and governors and president and all those TV talking heads to be making such a big circus over Terry Schiavo's body's impending death when there are people dying all over America for lack of health care, on a daily basis.
So my mother said, gee, we should round a whole bunch of dying poor folks and wheel them up Capitol Hill with loudspeakers and signs and do a vigil until they all die, do a countdown.
"Well, it's day six of the Healthcare Vigil, and Mrs. Chastity Jones of Almsville, Ohio, has died because Tom DeLay doesn't think she's worth as much as Terry Schiavo."
Given, neither one of us knows how one would actually organize such a thing, so this is just talk on our part, but the spectacle would be powerful, and the fact is that people die all the time because, essentially, they can't pay the bills.
Report: Care Without Coverage
I know that right now there are people in hospital or home beds all over America who might live longer if they had health care or money to buy it. People who in that way are entirely different from Terry Schiavo, who is for all practical and spiritual purposes dead already. Some of these people are undoubtedly watching the media circus and thinking exactly this: "Mr, DeLay, where's my bill? Mr. DeLay, why won't you save me?" I'm sure there's some poor child somewhere dying of AIDS because his parents can't afford the cocktail thinking, "Why is she better than me? She can't even talk. Is it because she's white?"
People like Tom DeLay picked Mrs. Schiavo for this symbolic battle precisely because there's nothing they can do for her; they don't really care about life or health or they wouldn't be cutting Medicare. If they really cared about preventing people from dying needlessly they'd support health care instead of the war in Iraq.
They've fired a symbolic volley here, taking a stand that is ridiculous upon examination but which they believe can be made to seem noble with sufficient bloviation. They way to puncture their bubble is to confront them with the real people who really need their help. Maybe nobody can get a thousand, but how about a hundred? Ten? Even one? Even one dying fellow with enough gumption to wheel up to Capitol Hill and scream "TOM DELAY, WHERE'S MY BILL?"