By Dave Andrusko

Al Pacino holding his Golden Globe award for his portrayal of Jack Kevorkian in the HBO program,  "You Don't Know Jack."

Okay, I know I shouldn't--and I'll try not to--make too big a deal out of Al Pacino winning a Golden Globe last night for his portrayal of Jack Kevorkian in the HBO program, "You Don't Know Jack." But, then again, maybe a far more egregious mistake than exaggerating what that might represent is minimizing how thoroughly journalism ("the first draft of history") is airbrushing what Kevorkian actually did out of the official portrait just a little over one decade later.

Those of us who've followed Kevorkian's trail--a trail along which you would find the bodies of at least 133 people--are very familiar with the slavishly servile manner in which Big Media treats Kevorkian. The media cult that has grown up around Kevorkian is not interested in what he actually did--and never has, for that matter-- providing zero perspective for the public from which to make a judgment.

Let's start with coverage of last night's award, which Pacino won for Best performance by an actor in a miniseries or motion picture made for television.

First, in accepting the award, Pacino said, "It's a great honor for me to portray such an extraordinary person." He later told the Los Angeles Times that "Jack, in a strange way, represents a kind of hope and that gives [patients] enough control over their lives. 'I can do it. I don't have to go through this. I can go out with dignity'".

I don't think you have to exactly stretch your imagination to figure out what Pacino's position is on assisted-suicide, but he insisted, "I am going to stay away from that controversy. It's not my policy to speak about that," adding, " I'm sorry, I don't mean to be unbelievably dull."

In one account I read, this exercise in phony baloney humility was followed by "Kevorkian was jailed in 1999 for assisting ALS sufferer Thomas Youk in ending his life." Let's tackle a couple of these items.

First, as Wesley Smith has written dozens of times, the last thing Kevorkian stood for/stands for is hope, let alone dignity. As Wesley wrote this morning,

• Before beginning his assisted suicide campaign, Kevorkian sought permission to experiment on prisoners as part of the execution process. …

• About 70 percent of Kevorkian's assisted suicides were not terminally ill. Most were depressed people with disabilities. Five weren't even sick upon autopsy.

• He is a eugenics believer, stating in a court document, "The voluntary self-elimination of individual mortally diseased and crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare."

• He ripped out the kidneys of one of his assisted suicide victims and offered them at a press conference, "first come first served." The "surgery" was so crude that the Oakland County Medical Examiner called it out of a "slaughterhouse" and a "bizarre mutilation." The media barely reported the story and it is now long forgotten

Second, Kevorkian didn't go to prison for a parking ticket. He was convicted of second-degree murder.

Kevorkian didn't believe in pushing the envelope, he was bent on ripping it to shreds. Although he had "assisted" in at least 133 suicides, Kevorkian repeatedly escaped punishment. Not until he injected a lethal dosage into Thomas Youk, videotaped the proceedings, and shopped it to "60 Minutes" which aired this grotesquery on November 22, 1998 (the 35th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy), was he convicted and sent to prison.

The title of the super-laudatory HBO biopic was intended, I assume, to convince the audience that we really don't KNOW Jack--that, as Pacino said, Kevorkian, in fact, stood for hope and dignity.

But if you read Kevorkian's books, or Wesley's exceptional overview of Kevorkian's track record (www.nationalreview.com/articles/221146/dr-death-returns/wesley-j-smith), or perused a collection of Kevorkian's "art" (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/ , you will discover a man whose obsession with death and hatred for Christianity exceeds anything you could have imagined.

And once you do, you will, indeed, finally know Jack.

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