A Monday Morning Catch-Up
I hope you had a great weekend.
To get the week started right, today's edition
will discuss three items, beginning with the
response to the life-affirming film "Bella."
My wife and I had a chance to see
the film, starring Eduardo Verastegui
and
a remarkable actress,
Tammy Blanchard, Friday night. According
to "The Numbers," Bella debuted in 17th
place, just behind a powerful film in its own
right, "Into the Wild." Very impressive!
We have real reason to hope that
this solid start will be a springboard for
"Bella" to be shown in many more theatres across
the land. (For information, go to
www.bellathemovie.com. And for a very funny,
very perceptive review, go to
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/REVIEWS/710250301/1023.)
There has been a fair amount of
attention paid to a study released today by The
Project
for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and
Public Policy at Harvard University that
examined coverage of the 2008 presidential race
from January through May.
Joe Strupp's opening paragraph in
a Editor & Publisher story titled
"Campaign Coverage Still Focuses on 'Horse
Race,' Says Study," offers this summary: "News
coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign has
centered predominantly on just five candidates,
offered very little information about their
public records or what they would do in office,
and focused more than 60% of stories on
political and tactical aspects of the race,
according to a joint study released Monday."
What the lead omits, however, is
more important that the chronic complaint that
most news stories concentrate on "who's ahead,"
more than "the issues." And that is that the
uniformly pro-abortion Democratic presidential
candidates received much more attention--and
more positive attention--with Sen. Clinton the
subject of the most coverage by far.
Likewise Democrats were the
beneficiary of much more positive coverage that
the almost uniformly pro-life on abortion
Republican field. As you would expect, media
darling pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama
(D-Illinois) received the most favorable
attention--47%.
The study reviewed 1,742 campaign
stories. Included was coverage from five major
newspapers, cable news shows, radio programs,
major Web site, and the network morning and
evening news programs.
And, if you have a chance, by all
means go to
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/282dwxzn.asp.
Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has authored a
wonderful overview, under the headline, "Awakenings:
The Schiavo case revisited."
As always, Wesley packs a ton of
information into a single column. He reminds us
a string of cases of which Jesse
Ramirez is only the latest
example in which "an unconscious patient wak[es]
up after being consigned to death by
dehydration."
Last June, one week after Ramirez
was rendered unconscious following a serious
auto accident, Ramirez's wife and doctors
"decided he would never recover and pulled his
feeding tube," Smith writes." He went without
food and water for five long days."
But, fortunately, Rameriz's
mother took the wife to court and won
guardianship. "The judge ordered that Jesse be
temporarily rehydrated and nourished," according
to Smith.
"Then Jesse regained
consciousness. Now, instead of dying by
dehydration, he will receive rehabilitation and
get on with his life--all because his mother
rejected the reigning cultural paradigm that a
life with profound cognitive dysfunction is not
worth living."
Ramirez is only the latest
example of an "awakening"--and when there are
such happy endings, doctors and reporters always
manage to get their stories straight. The
starvation and dehydration death of Terri
Schindler Schiavo is/was "different."
Terri's death has been used by
pro-death forces to further the "devaluation of
the weakest among us," according to Smith,
turning them "into a disposable and exploitable
caste." But the tide can be reversed.
"Jesse Ramirez, Haleigh Poutre [a
young girl in Massachusetts], and the
groundbreaking research into the treatment of
serious brain injury are powerful reminders that
where there is life, there is hope," Smith
writes.
