Some days are fat with it; others are lean. I’m talking about news, real news and not a rehash of yesterday’s events. Today, in my opinion, was a fat day with several stories competing for the front page. And, just in case you didn’t get to chew on all of it in your favorite newspaper or newscaster, here is a recap.
Terri Schiavo died, but the story didn’t. Her husband and her parents continue to wrangle in public, so that both her passing and their ongoing animosity toward each other still hold our national attention. The autopsy, the cremation, the burial, all will consume airtime in the days to come. My only hope is that there are others out there, like me, who have tired of the spectacle and have turned off their radios and television. Maybe ratings will express what I cannot.
The Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, declined in health. Newscasters said he had a high fever brought on by a urinary infection. This is on top of Parkinson’s disease, a recent tracheotomy to ease his breathing, and the insertion of a feeding tube yesterday. It does not look good for the soon-to-be eighty-five year old man. So while the Schiavo case moves into the post-dying phase, the Pontiff’s condition takes its place in the annals of death-watching.
Reports from the committee created by the President to study the original 911 Commission Report lambasted the theory that Saddam Hussein had an enormous store of weapons of mass destruction. While it stated that there was no evidence that Bush and Associates tweeked the information before using it to go to war, it did note that B&A were remiss in believing everything they heard without getting, as they say in the medical profession, a reputable second opinion. President Bush went on television and sidestepped the issue altogether, although he did weigh in again on the Schiavo case.
Speaker of the House Tom Delay weighed in too, although it strikes me that his comments were out-of-line, given that his own father was badly injured in a bizarre accident in 1988. Kept alive only through various intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, the Delay family was told the father would be forever in a vegetative state. They elected to “pull the plug.” So I’m not sure why he sided with the Schindlers in their daughter’s situation. To read more about it, go to
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,5710023.story?coll=la-home-headlines.
In sports, Coach Bruce Weber of the University of Illinois received his Coach of the Year Award for bringing his basketball team on a long journey and winning all but one game along the way. I enjoyed this honor, because my own son got his Masters and his Ph.D. from that school. I doubt Kevin is even watching the NCAA Final Four, so I’m doing it for him.
And the Chicago Bulls . . . hey, they’ve won eight in a row. Given where they had to come from, that’s remarkable. Michael Jordan should be proud.
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