Enough
Now Playing: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas
The comments about Terri Schindler Schiavo and her family that I have come across here and there are very often extreme and, frankly, hurtful. I wish the people making them had the decency to stop and consider what an awful thing this is for that family.

Terri Schindler Schiavo herself is beyond blame. Something terrible happened to her a very long time ago ---and her body has kept whatever is left of her as a human being trapped in an unknowable and unknowing hell. It is very sad.

I wish for her to finally be at peace.

I wish for her family to know the truth about her and to let her pass away. But I do not blame them as parents or siblings. They see their loved one in a way that none of us can know, except in our own experiences with our own loved ones.

But this is not a blameless situation. The Republican leadership of this country and a great many of the evangelical Christian community in America are to blame. The conservative punditocracy of this country ---such as John Gibson on FOX News and most of the staff of the National Review and bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt and others are to blame. They have, in the past week, made me genuinely ashamed of my association with them.

I think they have gone mad. I mean that sincerely. They are like the inhabitants of a medieval village who have all eaten moldy grain and slipped the bonds of reason.

It is very likely that Terri Schindler Schiavo will die in the next few days. You can be sure that there will be displays of fundamentalist hysteria the likes of which we have not seen in this country in a very long time. And when these things do happen and when a lot of outrageous and irresponsible nonsense is spouted, I will be standing with people with whom I very rarely stand to condemn those who've got it coming to them.

That's you, President Bush. That's you, Governor Bush. That's you, Tom DeLay. That's you, Dave Weldon. You people have committed a very terrible error in judgement and it is you who will be responsible for the backlash to come.

I have no idea what's gone wrong inside your heads, but you will be smacked down. Passing that law in the dead of night and against all parliamentary decorum? Intimating that there are "options" at your disposal that circumvent the rule of law? Intervening in the private life of an individual who cannot defend or define her own wishes?

It is an obscenity.

This isn't goddamned Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson or any of that degenerate filth that the cable news networks force upon us every day of our lives instead of addressing the real issues in this society. This is an event imposed upon us by the United States Congress and the President of the United States. They have taken the private grief and torment of a family and used it for political purposes.

I hope all of you are made to pay for this with your jobs and your credibility. I hope this culture finally awakens to the disgusting spectacle of the fundamentalist threat staring us down.

That's part of my shame, see. How often do I find myself defending you people and your right to display the Ten Commandments and to pray in public schools and at sports events? How often do I justify your ways to my secular correspondents and opponents? And this is what it comes to? This craziness that exposes me, too?

Let the storm come. Maybe it will fix you this time.