Posted on 04/05/2005 7:23:38 AM PDT by Smartaleck
The courtroom was mostly empty Monday, Jan. 24, 2000. The quiet wasn't remarkable that morning, but five years later, the quiet is what I hear.
A handful of Terri Schiavo's immediate family members and a few close friends sat in the first few dark wooden benches. I was the only reporter there.
There were no cameras, no curious spectators, no protesters.
Nobody accused Michael Schiavo of abuse.
Nobody appealed to the Pope.
Nobody proclaimed that Terri was trying to talk.
No politicians were grandstanding, no special interest groups were shouting, nobody was invoking God's will.
The once-close family had battled about what to do with Terri for years. That's why they were in court, to ask a judge to determine what someone they all loved would have wanted. But no one disputed that they all loved her. After five days of trial, the judge said he would issue his ruling in a couple of weeks. Bob and Mary Schindler suggested I visit Terri for myself. I asked Michael Schiavo for permission. He said okay. At the trial that week in 2000, witnesses - even family members - used the words "coma" and "comatose" to describe Terri. We had used those words in the newspaper.
Please use the link to see the whole article.
MS didn't turn into a monster till the MSM showed up?
Yes.
Sorry, but I'm not sure that it is a different picture. Other testimony I've read suggests that she doesn't respond immediately to voices of those she doesn't know. And as for the use of the word "coma" and so forth, the family were naive. The used whatever language the doctors and nurses in the hospice used, without considering what the legal implications might be.
Have you ever heard of a Potemkin Village? If a newspaper reporter was given access to Terri, you can be quite sure that she would have been nicely cleaned up for the occasion and the nurses instructed what to say. If they said the wrong thing they would be fired, as several were.
So maybe this is accurate, maybe not. But it reminds me of all those "brilliant" reporters who visited Moscow under Stalin and saw whatever they expected to see and whatever Stalin decided to show them.
The St. Petersburg Times has an agenda, just as those reporters did back then.
"Yes."
People who feel threatened or scared do indeed have a tendency to change behaviors. ;-)
This was Terri's pre-hospice nursing home.
In 2000 she was moved into the grimmest of spartan hospice rooms to lie for 5 years, never leaving that room, until Mike got the tube pulled for good.
Every indication this was totally staged for the reporter. The normal Michael-ordered lack of drawn blinds, no sunlight, no flowers or pictures (which her mother defied)any other "sensory-stimulating" comforts in her room has been repeatedly noted.
In fact, this setting sounds eerily like the same one Mikie staged for her 14 day death ordeal. Mikie who put her cats to sleep bought her a stuffed tabby to cradle as she died. I'm verklempt.
The fact that Michael the control master permitted the reporter to visit suggests he would have controlled every aspect of the setting. The makeup is a dead tipoff. One (or two nurses?) have said that Michael ordered them to apply makeup to Terri prior to his visits. Also that he sometimes controlled her pain medication schedule so as to affect her alertness when he know she was going to be visited.
How interesting and sickeningly sad for all concerned, especially Terri, huh?
MSM motto "if it bleeds it leads" --- I can see where MSM intervened and the hatred began. Figures.
Yes. They do. Judge Greers wife works there.
It's supposed to be the job of a reporter to see past emotions and get to the facts but in this country news is entertainment. The story about emotions is an easier one to report than the one about facts. Conflict is dramatic so of course the media plays up the disagreements and harsh words.
Lawyers are excellent at taking family disputes and making them worse. Even better from the media's point of view. But making everything into who's the good guy and who's the bad guy is besides the point. The real issue here is a legal system that is in bad need of fixing.
"if it bleeds it leads" OUCH....sad but true.
Sounds or at least seems a lot people where manipulated?
"Yes. They do. Judge Greers wife works there."
Who else works there?
"Lawyers are excellent at taking family disputes and making them worse. Even better from the media's point of view. But making everything into who's the good guy and who's the bad guy is besides the point. The real issue here is a legal system that is in bad need of fixing."
Great points. Thanks
Absolutely.
Nothing like having MSM insert itself.
They play the "let's you and him fight" game superbly.
Friends of Pat Greer I should imagine.
Thanks for posting this. Although I doubt the rabid types who intruded -- from all sides -- into a personal tragedy will promptly dismiss this report, it's clearly the simple truth.
"it's clearly the simple truth."
I'd be nice to think so and it does seem to follow court records.
Her husband denied her rehab for 13 years.
Her husband denied her dental care for many of those years.
Her husband refused to allow her the possibiltiy of feeling the sun on her cheeks or the grass under her feet for the past 5 years.
All in all, a wonderful guy.
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