Devout Catholics, Read No Further!

Thanks to tobyspinks for hipping me to the most ironic news of the day. In what would be the ultimate example of "practice what you preach," the Holy Father himself, Pope John Paul II, may need to have a feeding tube installed. Naturally, the papers won't draw any direct correllation between this and the Terri Schiavo controversy (aside from the OpEds, of course), but her parents are making their daughter's "devout Catholicism" the basis of their objections. Is this JohnPaulGeorgeRingo II's way of being down with his congregation? Is this the 21st century's answer to stigmata? "Feeding Tubes -- When A Hair Shirt Just Isn't Enough!"

I am not what most would call a political person. I am what most people would call an alcoholic person. Nonetheless, I do have a position on the Schiavo situation: Surprisingly, I think talentless and annoying techno-hippie Moby put it best when he skewered the religious right's stance on the whole thing. You'll execute retarded people and carpet-bomb brown people, but this utter paperweight has to be saved at all costs? I wonder about our priorities in general when shit like this arises. The poor [former] woman is a fucking vegetable. There is nothing going on in there.

The ironies just keep popping up: it's only because medical technology essentially allows us to play god that this woman is still alive. So it is in the name of god that all these people are cheering for the greatest sin of all... trying to be like god. Pure hubris. Hey, if it were up to the man upstairs, the chick would be dead meat. If someone can't think or eat, they should pretty much die. That's how this works. I won't make any pseudo-Darwinist claims about survival of the fittest as it applies to humans, because that involves a slippery slope that passes eugenics and Naziism on the way down. But I will say that brain-dead organisms incapable of eating on their own will starve to death. Or freeze. Or get eaten. That is not a moral position. That's reality. With all the hunger and immorality in this world, are we really going to waste food, electricity, man hours, paper, and breath on a zombie?? Oh wait... zombies can move and eat!!

All right. The soapbox has been returned to Dennis Miller. No more religio-political ranting. All this talk about vegetables and feeding tubes has made me hungry for asparagus.

**SUPER UPDATE** Ignore Nat Hentoff's shitty piece in the Voice. Check out Hendrik Hertzberg's New Yorker piece for the final word on the Schiavo case.