On 4/3, our favorite Michelle posted : AN HONEST SCHIAVO POLL
In my March 23 column, I wrote: " Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill." Well, no need to imagine any longer. A new Zogby poll suggests that if Americans knew the details of the Schiavo case they would not have supported removing her feeding tube.
Here’s the part that they get wrong.
"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked. A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.
That sounds like what most Americans would say to a question like that. The only problem with it is that it does not describe Terri Schiavo. Terri Schiavo was suffering from PVT, an injury that not one person has ever recovered from according to Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN. (you know where to find all the facts)
A group of right wingers jumped on this like: David Limbaugh's : Now they Tell us
If a person can't swallow or eat and needs a device implanted in them to keep them alive. Then isn't that life support? Steven Taylor of Poliblogger and James Joyner of Outside the Beltway agree. They say:
"Further, to ignore that the feeding tube was medical intervention, of a type similar to, although not as dramatic as, a ventilator is to put ideological blinders on. At a fundamental level it ignores the fact that for the vast predonerance of human history, Terri would have died 15 years ago."
The problem really isn’t with the poll, but how it was applied.
Now of course the obvious truth has reared up and shown its truthful head.
on 4/10 Malkin posts: A SECOND LOOK AT THAT ZOGBY SCHIAVO POLL : But now some skeptical bloggers--conservative bloggers--are revisiting the poll and asking questions about the sponsors, poll wording, and reporting on the poll.
So she starts apologizing not because the poll doesn't accurately describe Terri, but because some of the information about the questions was not released by Zogby, and the poll was a joint effort with The Christian Defense Coalition.
Smells fishy to me. Of course Malkin tried to say how thoroughly the conservatives were investigating and fact checking this story now, so there's no problem here. Don’t criticize us you nasty liberal bloggers. Then she’s gives us the stupid example from her "MICHELLE MALKIN IS A C**T" post.
I know apologizing is getting quite common for the right wing blogosphere lately. Can you please just apologize not only for getting the story wrong, because we all will at some point, but for the fact that you were blinded by your ideology to honestly look at the facts of an issue.
(Update): The same is happening with the Drudge driven UNHINGED LIBERAL PRODUCTS FOR SALE. The bottom line is that Cafe Express is getting a lot of action because of these dimwitted efforts to try and help Tom Delay. Is that all Drudge and Malkin can find to defend Delay and smear liberals with? More on this later...
