Friday, October 31, 2003

WELL, HE'S NOT A CATHOLIC PRIEST...
...So It Musta Been OK


The same Limousine Liberals in Hollywood who repeatedly bash the Catholic Church over the negligence of some Bishops vis the "pedophile priest" issue seem to have no problem with the presence of pedophiles in their midst as long as the perverts in question wear Armani suits rather than Roman collars.

Case in point: "Jeepers Creepers 1 and 2" director Victor Salva is apparently well-known amongst his peers as a registered sex offender who especially enjoys molesting young boys while videotaping his activities. In one instance, for which he was caught and convicted, Salva served time in the joint. And we don't mean Chuck E. Cheese.

Word is, he hasn't changed his predatory pedophile ways one whit since prison. Yet Salva remains one of the darlings of the Hollywood elite, with Mary Steenburgen, Jeff Goldblum, and Francis Ford Coppola --who produced Salva's "Jeepers Creepers" flicks ("The film[s] did very well at the box office -- that's all that matters to us")-- among his most ardent defenders.
REVENGE OF THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS:
A Flasher Gets an Unexpected Reception


South Philly has always had a reputation for being a tough neighborhood. This became especially clear yesterday to Rudy Susanto, 25, a known sexual predator who on several occassions had been exposing himself to some teen-age girls attending St. Maria Goretti* Catholic School in Philadelphia.

This time, as this CNN report notes, the girls took matters into their own hands:

...[A] group of girls in school uniforms angrily confronted Susanto with help from some neighbors, police said.

When Susanto tried to run, more than 20 girls chased him down the block. Two men from the neighborhood caught him and the girls took their revenge.

"The girls came and started kicking him and punching him, so I wasn't going to stop them," neighbor Robert Lemons told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Susanto was later treated for injuries at a local hospital. Police said he would be charged with 14 criminal counts including harassment, disorderly conduct, open lewdness and corrupting the morals of a minor.

Way to go, gals!

*(Editor's Note: Ironically enough, St. Maria Goretti was a 12-year-old girl who was murdered for resisting another sexual predator who tried to rape her.)
OF CODE-CRACKING & CRACKPOTS:
ABC News to Promote The DaVinci Code as “History”


We learned today that ABC News plans to air a special next week titled "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," which proffers the “theory” that the controversial novel by Dan Brown –which novel revolves around an ancient global conspiracy to cover up the supposed marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, who begat a child and, after Jesus' death, moved to France establishing a new “royal” bloodline.

Brown claims that his novel is based on “historical fact.” But what it’s really based on is a sensationalist tome written in 1983 which first publicized that “theory.” The book --Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Newage “researchers” and conspiracy theorists Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh-- can be found alongside books on UFO abductions, channeling, crystal-gazing, Enneagrams, how to become a witch or develop your psychic powers, and the like in the Crackpots and Kooks section of your local bookstore. In other words, you won’t find it in the History section, and rarely in the Religion section, and for good reason:

In their book, Messr.s Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh wove a fanciful theory about the ancient legend of the Holy Grail and a search for it by a Medieval warrior-monk order known as the Knights Templar, which group during the Crusades rapidly degenerated into a violent Gnostic cult –so much so that the Catholic Church disbanded the order, tried its leaders for heresy, and had them executed.

As part of their “research” --gleaned almost entirely from ancient myths, fairy tales, rumors, ludicrous Gnostic “gospels, and fake “ancient” parchments produced by the Priory of Sion, a looney mid-1900s French occultist sect-- Messr.s Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh soon “discovered” that Jesus married Magdalene and fathered children whose bloodline (the “real” Holy Grail) continues today. But, at variance with Brown, Messr.s Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh speculated, based on some ancient Gnostic "gospels," that Jesus may have bypassed the cross altogether and lived with Magdalene to a ripe old age.

As history, Monty Python’s version of the Holy Grail legend would be a lot more accurate.

Last, but hardly least, is the vacuous yet venomous Jack Chick anti-Catholicism which permeates Brown's novel. In his strange make-believe world, the Vatican is an all-powerful villain on a global scale, out to subjugate women, destroy democracy, and oppose All Things Good and Beautiful, even to the point of directing Opus Dei (!) to "handle" the Priory of Sion (the good guys in Brown's novel) by assassinating its leaders to keep the "secret" of the Grail secret.

This was too much even for uber-liberal Catholic novelist and pundit Fr. Andrew Greeley, who found the book "a skillfully written read" but flawed with anti-Catholic bigotry and unrealistic, anti-historical nonsense:

"...The [Vatican] is hardly all that deft and devious, save in its internal plots and conniving -- like getting rid of a colleague or undoing an ecumenical council. It is in fact a fractionalized bureaucracy whose heavy-handed personnel would have a hard time conspiring themselves out of a wet paper bag. Poison and daggers were abandoned long ago."

Greeley also sets the record straight about the real origins of the Grail legend, and it had nothing to do with Mary Magdalene bearing kids for Jesus:

"Back in the dim prehistory of Ireland, there was a spring fertility ritual (enacted on Beltane, usually May 1) in which animal blood was poured into a concave stone altar to represent the union of the male and female in the process of generating life. Later tales grew up to explain the rite, the best known of which is the story of Art MacConn. Memories of the ritual and the story floated around in the collective preconscious of the Celtic lands in company with folk tales, myths, bits of history and cycles of legends about such folk as Arthur, Merlin, Parsifal and Tristan. Later writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Thomas Mallory, and Wolfram von Eschenbach combined this bricolage of images and myths into more systematic stories with an overlay of Christianity. However, these storytellers (excepting von Eschenbach) were tainted by the perspectives of Catharist heresy and the results were dreamy, flesh-denying, life-denying legends that violated the older, if pagan, Irish tales. The Grail is always to be sought and never found. This version persists in the work of such disparate artists as Richard Wagner, Alfred Tennyson, Fritz Lowe and Robert Bresson. In the Irish story, Art gets the magic cup and the magic princess, though, more realistically she, being an Irish woman, gets him -- a happy ending!"

Yet here we have a bona fide journalist and alleged Catholic, one Elizabeth Vargas, who actually takes Dan Brown's balderdash seriously enough to convince ABC News higher-ups to actually finance and air a documentary promoting Brown's novel as credible historical theory instead of laughing her out of their offices. And, of course, Vargas manages to get a well-known All Purpose Useful Idiot --Fr. Richard McBrien, the media's favorite Catholic theologian, who always seems eager to embrace any crackpot notion which comes across his desk-- to lend “credence” to her efforts.

The mind just boggles.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

IT’S THE BIOLOGY, STUPID
On Gay “Marriage,” Some Folks Just Don’t Get It


In his op-ed piece in The Washington Post yesterday, columnist Harold Meyerson asserted that the main reason conservatives and the GOP oppose gay “marriage” and want to make it a major campaign issue for the ’04 elections is that they are stuck in “Old Testament morality” and want to manipulate “xenophobic, homophobic and racist fears.”

The GOP, Meyerson says, needs more “moderate” Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger if they hope to retain both Houses of Congress in addition to the White House. The irony of this is that Meyerson’s example is himself opposed to gay “marriage.” During the California recall election, Schwarzenegger, in response to a question on this very subject during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, declared that “marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman" and not for same-sex couples.

Nevertheless, Meyerson misses the point about why at least half of the US population –including conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike—are opposed to same-sex marriages:

(1) The nuclear family is the most fundamental and most universal building block of any society, and always has been since the dawn of time. It transcends modern American society, and predates the modern American state by untold thousands of years. Its roots are not in modern legalism but in nature itself: The joining of one man and one woman to procreate and perpetuate the human race. Obviously, artificial “procreation” methods aside, that cannot be achieved when the partners are of the same gender.

(2) The state has no business tinkering with, and ultimately threatening, this natural building block by allowing a bunch of lawyers to redefine it to suit the personal preferences of certain special interest groups. The result could –and mostly likely would— be utter chaos, as is usually the case when Big Brother is allowed to redefine most things.

So, Mr. Meyerson, the main issue behind opposition to gay “marriage” is not about “hating gays” (although, no doubt, a relative few oppose it for that reason). Nor is it even about supposedly “outdated” moralities.

It’s about the biology, stupid.
”KILL TERRI, VOL. ONE”:
Schiavo First Tried to "Grant" Wife's "Wish" in 1993, Court Records Show


Michael Schiavo and his attorneys have been telling the Establishment media that he waited until 1998 (the year he hired “right-to-die” activist lawyer George Felos) to “grant” Terri’s “wish” to “allow” her to die if she had to be kept alive “artificially.”

But the court records tell a very different story:

(1) According to Schiavo’s November, 1993 Guardianship Hearing Deposition Schiavo first attempted to "allow" Terri to die via withdrawal of emergency medical treatment in June of 1993, when Terri contracted a potentially fatal urinary tract infection ---barely seven months after telling the court in his malpractive trial that he intended to "[take] care of my wife" and "spend the rest of my life with her." However, the Deposition shows, Terri’s doctor and nursing home staff refused to carry out his order because it violated Florida law:

[from Michael Schiavo Deposition, Guardianship Hearing, November 1993]:

Q. What was [Terri’s] bladder condition [in June 1993]?
[Michael Schiavo] A. She had a UTI.

Q. What is that?
A. Urinary tract infection.

Q. What did the doctor tell you treatment for that would be?
A. Antibiotic usually.

Q. And did he tell you what would occur if you failed to treat that infection? What did he tell you?
A. That sometimes urinary tract infection will turn to sepsis.

Q. And sepsis is what?
A. An infection throughout the body.

Q. And what would the result of untreated sepsis be to the patient?
A. The patient would pass on.

Q. So when you made the decision not to treat Terri's bladder infection you, in effect, were making a decision to allow her to pass on?
A. I was making a decision on what Terri would want.

Q. Had the bladder condition been treated?
A. Yes.

Q. And was...what was the reason that the bladder condition was treated?
A. Sable Palms Nursing Home said they could not do that by some Florida law which wasn't stated.

Q. But you didn't change your opinion or your decision to not treat the bladder condition?
A. We did change it.

Q. Correct?
A. Repeat the question.

Q. You did not change your decision not to treat the bladder condition, correct?
A. I had to change my decision.

Q. Sable Palms changed it for you?
[Schiavo’s] Attorney Nillson Objection

Q. Okay. Is there any reason that you would not make the same decision that you previously made if the problem came up again?
A. Repeat your question. You're losing me here.

Q. Let me be more specific. If your wife developed another condition that could result in her death, is there any reason that you would not take the position that you're not going to treat that condition and you're going to instruct the doctor not to treat that condition?
A. I wouldn't instruct anybody, no.

Q. You instructed the doctor not to treat the condition, correct?
[Schiavo’s] Attorney Nillson Objection

Q. You did instruct the doctor not to treat her bladder condition, correct?
A. Uh-huh. Yes.

Q. If a similar...would you do the same?
A. I'm thinking.

Q. Take your time.
A. I probably wouldn't instruct the doctor to do it.

Q. So you've changed your opinion?
A. Sort of, yeah.

Q. Why have you changed your opinion?
A. Because evidently there is a law out there that says I can't do it.

Q. Is that the only reason?
A. Basically, maybe.

Q. What you're telling me is, is that there is nothing in your belief or feelings that have changed. The only thing that has changed is the fact that you perceive the law prevents you to do what you intended to do?
A. Correct.


(2) Another court record, Schiavo’s Malpractice Testimony, also shows that barely seven months earlier, during his $20 million malpractice suit in November 1992, he told the court that he intended to take care of Terri “for the rest of my life” (he was awarded over $1 million total, including $700K for Terri's care and rehabilitation, in January 1993):

[from Testimony of Michael Schiavo, Medical Malpractice Trial, November 1992]:

Q. Why did you want to learn to be a nurse?
[Michael Schiavo] A. Because I enjoy it and I want to learn more how to take care of Terri.

Q. You're a young man. Your life is ahead of you. When you look up the road, what do you see for yourself?
A. I see myself hopefully finishing school and taking care of my wife.

Q. Where do you want to take care of your wife?
A. I want to bring her home.

Q. If you had the resources available to you, if you had the equipment and the people, would you do that?
A. Yes, I would, in a heartbeat.

Q. How do you feel about being married to Terri now.
A. I feel wonderful. She's my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. I believe in my marriage vows.

Q. You believe in your wedding vows, what do you mean by that?
A. I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.


Apparently, a lot can change in seven months. Especially after winning a hefty sum in a malpractice suit.

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

LARRY KING & SCHIAVO OUT-TAKE:
Caller Makes Great Suggestion; Team Felos Blows Smoke


From the transcript of Larry King's Interview with Schiavo and Felos:

KING: Aurora, Illinois, hello.

CALLER: Hi Larry. I have a question for Michael. Since he's so passionate about it being Terri's wish, when she was 25 years old, that watching a TV program, to give peace to Terri's parents and brother, why doesn't he just take a lie detector test?

And one more quick question. If they could bathe her, they could probably give her a pap smear. So he should just take a lie detector test and it would bring peace and resolution to the situation for the parents and brother.

FELOS: The ultimate lie detector has gone before 20 judges who found Mr. Schiavo to be a loving, caring husband.

KING: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you could voluntarily take one, right?

FELOS: Sure.

KING: Would you take one?

SCHIAVO: I'll refrain from that right now.

KING: OK. This ain't a court.

SCHIAVO: It's not a court.

KING: Farmington, New Mexico, hello.


Of course, as most folks know, polygraph test results are inadmissable in court as evidence of anything. But, as King himself pointed out to Schiavo, "this ain't a court." So Schiavo should have nothing to fear about taking one, especially if he is as convinced and sincere about what he claims are Terri's wishes as he appears to be.

After all, polygraphs don't really detect lack of honesty, for psychopaths and trained undercover agents can pass them easily. Rather, they detect lack of confidence and sincerity via involuntary responses in the body.

Moreover, others who have been publicly accused of chicanery but were as confident of their positions as Schiavo seems to be have consistently and eagerly volunteered --and even begged-- to take polygraph tests, if only to generate better P-R. And isn't that at least one of the main purposes for Schiavo's increasingly frequent public appearances?

So why the reluctance on Schiavo's part to take a polygraph test? Why commit such a P-R faux paux, and on live national t.v.?

In fact, why didn't he take one on his own initiative years ago, when the Schindlers began to challenge his claim that their daughter wanted to die in her current state?

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

IN OTHER NEWS*
The Great Southern California Wildfires Continue Unabated...


...exacerbated in part by some thoughtless to-Hell-with-the-facts activism by the Tin Foil Hat Wing of the environmentalist movement and the Useful Idiots who cave in to them.

*(After all, the name of this blog isn't "All Terri All the Time," though we're sorely tempted to do make it so.)
NEW COMMENTS BOXES ADDED!
Many Thanks to Our Friends at Haloscan


Once again, you can leave whatever various and sundry brickbats, profundities, penetrating queries, or hymns of praise strike your fancy.
"THE INTERVIEW THAT WASN'T":
Wesley Smith Raises Some Questions Larry King Didn't Ask


Some of the questions Smith poses are,

Why did Schiavo tell a medical malpractice jury in 1992 that Terri would live a normal life span?

...Michael presented evidence ...that Terri would likely live a normal life span [and] that he intended to ...care for her for the rest of his life

Given that the jury awarded $750,000 to be used in part for Terri's therapy, why hasn't Schiavo provided any rehabilitation for her since 1991?

...The only efforts ever undertaken to improve Terri's condition took place in 1990 and 1991. They had ceased by the time of the malpractice trial in 1992 because her insurance coverage had run out....

[H]ow could Terri's father make any money off the case?

Schiavo's story is that once Schindler became Terri's guardian, ...he would stop her food and fluids....[A]s next of kin, the Schindlers would inherit their daughter's money. This sounds like a mighty stretch, particularly given that Bob Schindler has spent every nickel he has --including his entire retirement fund-- desperately trying to save his daughter's life. If Bob Schindler is a venal man, he has a funny way of showing it.
THIS IS TOO FUNNY!
ScrappleFace on Michael Schiavo


See his wonderful send-up, Michael Schiavo Slips into 'Carnivorative State'
THE GREAT SNOW JOB OF ’03:
CNN and Larry King Play Host to Schiavo and Felos


Last night Larry King Live featured a full-hour interview with Michael Schiavo --looking for all the world like a downtown Miami coke snorter with fake Rolexes to sell-- accompanied by geeky Newage lawyer George Felos.

Of course, with maybe one notable exception (about which in due course) King asked no hardball questions and to date has made no plans to give Terri’s parents equal time. Even the call-in segment, which lasted less than 20 minutes instead of the usual 30 or more, was typically bland with the deck stacked in favor of callers sympathetic to Schiavo: Of the six callers aired, only one posed anything approaching a skeptical query.

Our initial impression of King's interview with Schiavo and Felos can be summed up in two words:

”SNOW JOB”

--When asked by a skeptical caller if he would be willing to take a polygraph test to back up his claims and "settle" this controversy "once and for all," Schiavo hemmed and hawed and evaded, saying that the "nineteen judges" who believed him were "enough" of a test."

--When asked by Larry King if CNN would be allowed to take a camera crew to the hospice to document Terri's condition for themselves, Schiavo declined with Felos replying that they wanted to "respect Terri's privacy” (a little late for that, ain’t it, George?)

--When Schiavo claimed that Mr. Schindler –with, conveniently, no witnesses within earshot-- demanded to know where his share of the malpractice award was, Schiavo neglected to mention the fact that the Schindlers were never a party to the malpractice suit to begin with. Therefore, they would have had no rational expectation of receiving a share. King should have asked Schiavo about that but failed to do so.

--When King played a tape of an interview with Terri’s brother, in which the brother asserted that Terri had responded to him and tried to communicate with other family members, Schiavo called him a “liar,” claiming that he could “count on one hand” the number of times her brother visited her over the past 13 years. Schiavo’s only “evidence” for that claim was that those were the only times he saw him there. King let that one slide as well.

--When Schiavo made the preposterous claim that Mr. Schindler had received a letter from "an inmate" offering to kill Schiavo, and implied that Mr. Schindler welcomed the offer by not releasing the letter to the police, King failed to pursue Schiavo with some obvious questions, such as "how do you know?"

--However, and to his credit, King finally asked Schiavo something approaching a probing question and elicited a very telling response from Schiavo:

When King asked Schiavo why he thought Terri's parents were so intent upon opposing his decision to kill their daughter, he replied that they were trying to "just make [his] life Hell" because they were influenced by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Never mind that by his own admission in a 1993 deposition Schiavo tried to have his wife killed waaaaay back in 1993 --long before the VRWC showed up on Terri's doorstep-- by instructing Terri's caretakers to refrain from giving her antibiotics for a severe urinary tract infection. About which King, of course, said nothing.

Not very impressive.