Terry Schiavo and the Imminent Danger of Bill Frist
choir director for the rapture
Our friends over at the excellent blog Gotham Image have these words about the ambitious Senate Majority Leader, Dr. Bill Frist, who has repeatedly lurched this week into the spotlight over the Terry Schiavo case:
Whenever you see him slime someone, say something scandalously dishonest or disingenuous, or just plain nasty, take note what venue he does this in. Usually it is from floor of the United States Senate.I find Frist really frightening myself. He has an odd habit of smiling at inappropriate times, and by his own admission lied to the SPCA and adopted cats so he could experiment on them and kill them. The DMS-IV definition of an antisocial personality disorder, or APD (which was previously known as the psychopathic or sociopathic personality disorder) includes both of these characteristics, in addition to glibness and superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, conning and manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect and failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions. It is estimated that 3% of all adult males suffer from this disorder, and every time I see Frist on TV I wind up betting dollars to donuts he's one of them.
Civics lesson: Read this link, because Frist and his aides know about this.
This is not an accident. Frist is well aware of what is contained in the above link. Also, reader of polls that he must be, he must know that his constituents are unaware of such things. The floor of the United States Senate has legal protection. You can say anything!
Frist cannot be sued for libel or slander for anything he says on the floor.
Don't think he did not know this when he went after Richard Clark for being a whistleblower. It now seems just about everything Frist said about Clark has been proven false. Has Frist apologized?
Further, one of the scabby media-ific attack he made on Clark, was that Clark was just trying to sell books. Interestingly, Frist himself had just published a nauseating book about himself.
Projection?
Physician, heal thyself!
So, this is why I took note of Frist today.
Frist to the well of the Senate and diagnosed Terri Schiavo as not being in a vegetative state.
Frist made this 'diagnosis' on the basis of some old videotape. Frist is not a brain doctor, but he is smart enough to know that he can use the image of his MD to make 'the base' think that Frist knows what he is talking about. They want to believe him. They want to believe he is honest. In this case, Frist is like someone with a PhD in Phys. Ed, calling himself "Doctor" to sell supplements or bogus impotence pills.
Will Frist's medical license be revoke for such quackery? See the above link about congressional immunity.
Frist was very careful not to pull this stunt while congress was not in session. Frist was also careful to insert a few qualifying sotto voce doubts, for pundits ears, but phrased in a way that would go over the head of his targeted audience - people he thinks of as the worthy rabblement.
Why is a character like Frist, who never showed much care about unnecessary and accidentally death in Mesopotamia, with no WMD found, now trying to show his 'concern' about Terri Schiavo and the culture of life?
Will this 'excite the base' (Another example of their Marxian style use of propaganda to properly direct the wrath of the 'proletariat' for revolutionary purposes) as this memo illuminates as the reason for action this day.
Make sure to read the memo contained therein- it's a 'cookie full of arsenic.' Linda Douglas of ABC deserves great credit for ferreting it out of the rat's cage.
This memo suggests the Republicans in DC think of Schiavo not as human being, but as an idée fixe.
The DC Republicans, not ordinary people, insincerely claim to be her ally. The DC Republicans view her as modern equivalent of those 'socialist realist' posters the Soviets used to motivate the masses.
That's just sick, because many of us have mixed feelings about the case. We have no idea who to believe.
In fact, we think that many people now have sided with Schiavo's husband over the parents because common sense suggests that if Frist, Delay, and Bush are one side, prudence suggests taking the other side.
I think he's dangerous as hell. And for all of the above reasons, we should all be very, very afraid that he's one of the frontrunners for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. I know this country's got some messed up karma, but I really tremble to think we deserve that.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 3/23/2005 12:00:00 AM
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