The campaign of Michael Schiavo

He fought for a long time to end the life of Terri Schindler Schiavo, and won. Not content with that victory, Michael Schiavo is running another campaign. It is vindictive, as if he should be the one seeking vindication. And he has the audacity to call his organization TerriPAC.

His group takes on those who intervened in Terri. His group sets sights on those who intervened in legal battle.

That’s really how the sub-head appears in that article, so this seems to be a hastily thrown together news piece. Is that why they get some facts wrong?

He had legions of followers — and plenty of enemies — during the emotional 2005 battle over whether his wife, Terri Schiavo, should be kept alive artificially or allowed to die.

Okay, he did have plenty of “enemies,” and yes, the battle got emotional. But it wasn’t about keeping Terri alive artificially, because she was only being given nutrition and hydration — food and water. And the “allowed to die,” part….she wasn’t dying. Some people said it was time to “let her go,” but she wasn’t going anywhere. The media really never got the full story on this, except for a few of us.

A 1990 heart attack deprived her of oxygen and she entered what doctors said was a persistent vegetative state.

She didn’t have a heart attack. She didn’t have an eating disorder, which is another fallacy. She was not in a persistent vegetative state, though some doctors frequently interviewed merely took as secondhand information the speculation that she was, and continued to generate that misinformation.

She collapsed the night of February 25, 1990 for still unknown reasons, and as Detective Mark Fuhrman pointed out in his book “Silent Witness,” and told me on my radio show — and as I learned as an investigative reporter on the story – many of the circumstances of that collapse are suspicious. It was never well investigated by law enforcement officials in the beginning, and there are still many unanswered questions.

But back to Michael’s new political life. Among other things, he has inserted himself into the Connecticut race against Joseph Lieberman to back his opponent.

Mr. Schiavo pointedly reminded Connecticut voters that Mr. Lieberman has supported the president and congressional Republicans in passing emergency legislation involving federal courts in an attempt to save Terri Schiavo’s life while he, Michael Schiavo, was respecting her wishes which she could no longer communicate to die.

Which brings up the opportunity to remind you that nobody but Michael claimed to have known that Terri wished this. In fact, transcripts of a Larry King Live interview last year show Michael admitting “we didn’t know what she wanted, Larry, this is what we wanted.”

Now, this Washington Post article by Nat Henthoff does get it right. He’s one of the few who has the full story.

Connecticut voters were not informed that Democrats as well as Republicans were in favor of intervention by federal courts, including Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who is deeply knowledgeable about disability rights.

Nor, of course, did Mr. Schiavo, while on the hustings, mention that when the feeding tube was removed, Terri Schiavo was not terminal, was breathing naturally on her own and, according to several of the neurologists who had examined her (others disagreed), was not in a persistent vegetative state.

This is a good article by one of the handful of us who long followed and investigated the Terri Schiavo story. Read it, and keep an eye on who Michael Schiavo is campaigning for this time.

Michael Schiavo will also be campaigning, The New York Times notes, for challengers against Sens. George Allen in Virginia and Jim Talent in Missouri, and will be helping congressional candidates in Florida and Pennsylvania. He is likely to tell his audiences as he has in a marker he placed on Terri’s grave that “I kept my promise” to his late former wife. 

That is, if any reporters know enough to ask him about the case.

There will be a few, but not many.