(Note: Unlike most people who have suddenly become very interested in Terry Schiavo, I've actually been following the case very closely for a number of years now. This is an excellent factual timeline for anyone who wants to get up to speed on things.)
Like Mark Wahlberg's character in I <3 Huckabees (who manages to turn every conversation, no matter how unrelated, into a diatribe about oil), anti-abortion activists have somehow made the case of a drooling vegetable into the flag-waving, magnetic-ribbon-applying, vigil-holding cause of the day.
Never mind the fact that the vegetable in question, Terri Schiavo, has no cerebral cortex and therefore, by definition, can't improve. Never mind the fact that there has never been a legal case in the history of our judicial system in which power-of-attorney for a married woman belonged to her parents rather than her spouse. Never mind the fact that the bullshit staged video of Terri "reacting" to her mother's visit with a smile is nothing more than a reflex that doctors observe her making 50 to 100 times per day with no stimulus (note how the video cuts just as she begins to listlessly slump off the bed – nice edit, mom and dad!). Never mind the fact that the parents' lawsuit is based on "irregularities in the State courts" when the courts have unanimously ruled against every legal position they've ever taken and not once ruled in their favor.
McGwire grunts to indicate that his colostomy bag is full while Curt Shilling (right) awaits his feeding tube
Irrespective of all that, Congress has subpoenaed her as a witness in a shameless (well, let's say downright pathetic) effort to meddle in a matter on which the law is perfectly clear. I sincerely hope she is kept alive long enough to appear before Congress, since Mark McGwire's testimony last week would make Schiavo the second vegetable to testify in one session. I would also like her unresponsive pseudo-corpse to be dragged out onto the floor of Congress so all those attempting to intercede on her behalf can take a look at the outstanding quality of life she leads.
This case has turned into a political football for anti-abortion activists who don't give two flying shits about this woman because she, like many young people, has no will. Had she taken that simple step, we wouldn't be watching Randall Terry's nauseating mug hog the camera as he rambles on about the sanctity of life (which apparently extends into death to include "brain death" as well).
Let ginandtacos never make such a mistake. This post will serve as a legally binding declaration of our final wishes in case illness or injury leaves us in a vegetative state.
Specifically, our foremost wish is that Tom DeLay and Jeb Bush do not get any political mileage out of us. Please, for the love of God, pull the fucking plug before they can start printing my name on little crosses and ribbons. Smother me with a pillow. Feed me arsenic. Drop a piano on me. Because really, let's get one thing straight – a brain dead person who can't sustain basic metabolic functions without constant assistance is dead. And it is our fondest wish upon being in such a state that our lifeless bodies not lay before Rick Santorum as he argues otherwise.