Spin Dry

Update: Marissa's mom, Dawn, has commented on this post, which you can read by clicking the "comments" link. She corrects my misstatement -- Marissa is not in a vegetative state; nonetheless, this is a tragedy that could have been avoided if certain groups valued all lives equally.

Here's a name for the "culture of life people" to burn into their skulls. Marissa Amora. Forget Terri Schiavo. Fuck Terri Schiavo. If the repugnant repubs really cared about life, there would be an uproar right now seeking Jeb Bush's head on a platter. But they don't, there isn't, and a little six year old girl may die.

Why? She committed the crime of not being born an upper middle class white woman with Christian parents.

Correction. She committed the crime of being born a little black girl in Florida.

'Cause, you see, the wingnuts will pay all the lip service they want to the "culture of life" bullshit, provided the lives in question are white. But when it comes to members of the non-white classes, they couldn't give two flying rats' asses. To whit:

(Jeb) Bush's minions went to court earlier this year in a bid to cut off medical aid to Marissa Amora, who, at the age of 2, had been abandoned by Jeb's "Department of Children and Families" despite overwhelming evidence of horrific past abuse -- and the imminent danger of more to come. More came. Within weeks, she was beaten almost to death; then Jeb's agents tried to stop her medical treatment and let her die. She survived their malign intervention and is now thriving with a new family -- but still suffers from permanent, catastrophic damage caused by the entirely predictable beating she received after the DCF cast her aside.

Remember, now -- these are the same asshats who tried to write a law to force the State of Florida to make Terri Sciavo's husband keep her feeding tube in place against his will and Terri's wishes.

And I don't see a difference. Not that I agree with the concept of forcing someone to live in a persistent vegitative state if they don't want to, but where is the consistency? If the wingnuts had any integrity at all, they'd be out protesting in force in this case too, demanding that Jeb Bush give little Marissa the proper care to see that she remains alive.

But they won't, because, to them, Marissa is just some little ghetto child. I wouldn't be surprised if they even refered to her as a crack baby (a myth created by the Reagan administration, BTW) and wrote her off. Because, if you're a Republican hypocrite, "culture of life" really means "culture of white life with money."

If Jeb is stupid enough to try to run for president in '08, I want to see pictures of Marissa and her story dogging him at every campaign stop, with the slogan, "Jeb, why did you try to murder this little girl?"