Artificial Outrage

Excuse me for being heartless, but am I the only person on earth who just doesn't care what happens with Terri Schiavo?

It's not that I'm unconcerned with the fate of an innocent woman, but hasn't this attention all gotten a little out of hand? Every single blog I've read today - every single one* - had at least one Terri post written in the past 48 hours. You know what else happened in the past 48 hours?

60,546 people died around the world of starvation and it's related illnesses. Think about that. If a woman in Terri Schiavo's situation were to die each and every day it would take over 82 years to equal the starvation death toll of a single day

and

16,000 people died of AIDS - and there were 28,000 new cases.

All this attention for one woman, when many, many worse things are going on around the world. Surely there must be something special about this woman. Hmmm, what could that be? Ah yes - its the dirty little secret nobody wants to acknowledge. Very few of the people kicking up all this fuss actually care about Schiavo. All that matters is that she can be used as a tool to advance whatever cause they happen to be fighting for this week. What I'm seeing around the blogosphere today looks a little too shrill, a little too packed with outrage: and just why that is becomes clear as soon as you read the last line of the post:

"I can't believe those damned Democrats/Republicans are doing this to that poor woman."


*To illustrate my point, here is a list of the blogs I've loaded today, with a link to each Schiavo post:

Wizbangblog
Powerline
Daily Pundit
Protein Wisdom
Dean's World
Oliver Willis

Disclaimer: this isn't to say that there's anything inherently wrong about making the case a partisan issue. I'd just like to point out the moral bankruptcy of the whole wailing and gnashing of teeth. I'd also like to point out that the sites listed above were picked out only because they are my regular reads, for the very good reason that they're damn good writers with whom I share many opinions and beliefs (with the exception of Willis. That guy's just an asshat.)