The Last Gentleman and the Purple Sage Wednesday, March 23, 2005

We lost two saints this week. The first you may have heard about. Bobby Short sang cabaret; or rather he was a cabaret, elegant, wily and witty; a champagne bubble of a man. He sang like Cole Porter wrote. He was the montage at the beginning of Manhattan. A class act, another fragment against the ruin. Last year I turned down a chance to see him at the Carlyle, where he held court, another regret I get to take to my grave. But the melody lingers on here and here.

The other was Father Duffy, who taught religion more or less forever at my high school. By the time I got there he looked north of ninety, frail and long-limbed and ribbed like a walnut; he lasted another two decades. He was a nut on golf--he designed a gadget to help your swing, and had a newspaper photo of it taped to his door--and ran a basketball pool every year. (He called himself the "Budokan Bookie," but I don't remember where that name came from.) I must have rushed past that picture hundreds of times, after he dismissed us from class with an abrupt, "OK, go go."

His medium was the mimeo. Every trimester he worked up a bunched of study sheets, in fuzzy purple, with densely typed questions and answers he would review in class and then put on tests. The only one I can remember compared faith in God to faith that the "6 train would stop at 86th Street." Or "fish and tuck": He said that he had come up with these as alternatives to the big-ticket swear words. To drive home the point, he banged the desk and hollered, "Shit! And fuck!" (His theory, I think, was that you didn't really need the curses, just vocal sounds that gave you the same feeling of release.)

After "The Exorcist" came out, he got mistaken all the time for Max Von Sydow. That didn't stop him from being exceptionally kind and generous to an outerborough introvert who was too scared to speak. For that, and the decades of help before and after, God speed him to his reward. Go go.

@ 11:43:00 PM, ,

The Lady Vanishes II

Here's the latter half of an argument on the National Review's blog. The first writer, not shown here, made a strong commonsense argument for discontinuing feeding. This is part of the reply. I reproduce this because it crystallizes what I think: In cases where the patient's decision is unambiguous, I'm OK with not performing heroic measures (not extending to assisted suicide, tho). But this case is full of ambiguities.

I do not doubt the propriety of the people of Florida governing themselves, or that they may deny sustenance to a person who (a) actually is in a PVS and (b) actually has asserted in a knowing and intelligent way a rejection of life saving measures in certain dire circumstances. What I object to here is the appallingly suspect evidentiary record on these two crucial questions -- especially on PVS, where it seems indisputable that fairly standard tests, which would be easy to do in relatively short order and which could give us confidence in the PVS finding, have not been done. If we can be confident that Terri is a PVS case -- and particularly that her brain damage has left her largely insensitive to pain -- I seal my lips and accept the outcome, however much I may question its wisdom insofar as society's general regard for life is concerned. Under such circumstances, the Supreme Court has said sustenance may be withheld, and the absence of pain would destroy my contention that she is being tortured.

I am not interested in attacking the motives of Michael Schiavo (something that seems to be of importance to you) unless the evidence against him becomes more reliable than it is now -- although I do believe his incentives are highly relevant on the question whether Terri actually evinced a desire not to have life sustaining measures because he is the primary witness on that score. But I must say that on this score it has seemed to me, reading your exchanges with others, that it is you who is abandoned to rhetoric. Much as I instinctively agree with you that a spouse should be given great deference in these matters (and as I would try to ensure that my own wife had a free hand in making them for me), the law is that it is not the spouse's decision. It is the individual's decision, and it cannot be removed from the individual because you decide that in your own life you would not want intrusion into what you regard as your affairs. My view is that the proof that Terri actually made this election is highly suspect. (It is worth noting that a court, for example, is not permitted to allow something so comparatively inconsequential as a confession into evidence in a criminal case without clear and convincing evidence that the defendant's waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege was knowing and intelligent.) I would like to see the issue fully reviewed by an impartial federal court (as I believe there is great reason to question the impartiality of the judicial proceeding in Florida). Again, if after a full and fair hearing the federal court determines that Michael is credible and Terri did make this assertion, I have nothing to complain about. As the Supreme Court's Cruzan case indicates, the proof in this regard need not be inarguable, but it does have to be credible.

@ 4:56:00 PM, ,

Dream of a Russian Princess Monday, March 21, 2005

I will point out, in reply to a charmingly combative comment, that (1) the grounds for starving this lady to death are one brief conversation that nobody else knows anything about except her husband, who has a clear interest in getting rid of her (remarried with kids since she went into the hospital?), which makes his character a vital issue in the case (2) her family is prepared to take care of her, whether or not she is brain dead. Which she is not: She is in a persistent vegetative state but can respond to outside stimuli. As for never coming out of the PVS, it is unlikely but possible.

And let's not forget (3), the procedural corner-cutting that took place along the way--all of which would get her case thrown out of court, were her family, say, appealing a death row conviction.

@ 10:52:00 AM, ,

The Lady Vanishes

One more point on the post below. A good summation by the WSJ:

In Florida so far, at least 19 judges in six courts have weighed in on Mrs. Schiavo's case since 1990, when she suffered the heart attack that left her severely brain damaged.

Since then her parents have been locked in a highly public legal battle with her husband, Michael, who says that Terri would not have wanted to live in an incapacitated state. Mrs. Schiavo was a practicing Catholic and she left no living will, but a Florida judge years ago agreed with Mr. Schiavo--a finding of "fact" that has made the subsequent appeals difficult.

Another judge might look differently today on Mr. Schiavo's right-to-die claims given his apparent incentives to be rid of the burden of a severely disabled wife. He lives with a girlfriend, with whom he has children. It was not until 1993, after a medical-malpractice jury awarded him roughly $1 million for Terri's long-term care, that he began to seek his wife's death.

@ 9:47:00 AM, ,

Life and How to Live It

If I write about this, I'm going to get angry e-mails from half of my (four, maybe six) readers. If I say nothing, the other half will feel slighted. So I'll punt and direct you to somebody else's coverage of this poor lady and her charming spouse.

@ 7:29:00 AM, ,