Bill Maher's bigoted mocking of Terri Schiavo

By Mark P. Mostert, Ph.D.

The ugly side of humanity has always had problem with Terri Schiavo – mostly because it's easy to beat up on people who can't defend themselves.

In 2005, Terri Schiavo, a woman with a profound intellectual disability, not terminally ill and able to survive without any mechanical assistance, was subjected to a legal death warrant issued by Florida's Judge George Greer.

The government had gotten into the killing business. Yes, killing – that's what someone does to someone else by deliberately taking away their lives – and it was Terri's "caretakers" who had no choice but to comply, starving and dehydrating her to death.

Over the years Terri's disability and brutal death has been mocked, belittled and laughed at. One nasty example will suffice. In 2010, an episode of Fox's "Family Guy" opened with "Terri Schiavo: The Musical" depicting Terri hooked up to a battery of machines, including a ventilator.

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The lyrics were sheer spitefulness. For example, the character portraying Terri's husband sang, "She's a vegetable!" with the chorus responding, "We hate vegetables!" (to crass canned laughter). Also in the musical's ditties are references to pulling the plug, to Terri's "mashed potato brains" and that she was the most expensive plant you were ever likely to see.

Terri's disability was only half the story for her mockers. The other half was that many people actually had the temerity to oppose her killing, made worse by that fact that they (gasp!) actually prayed publicly for her safety and healing.

Get the definitive account of one woman's family in their effort to save her life: "Terri's Story" – as told by the WND reporter who broke it to the world

The pro-deathers were even more enraged by the dozens of disability activist groups that were equally incensed at Terri's treatment and stood side by side with the family. The disability activists understood all too clearly that if the government could come for Terri Schiavo, it could soon come for them, too.

Which brings me to HBO's Bill Maher. Here's what he said last week as reported by examiner.com:

Now, I understand having issues with Obama, but stop to think of all the crap we haven't had to deal with in the last four years. Anybody remember Terri Schiavo? Obama isn't perfect, but he never turned the entire federal government into a Jesus freak episode of "House."

On the surface, of course, this is a little jibe at a political party he despises – but it's also another attack against a defenseless woman with disabilities that died under police guard without her loved ones even being able to offer her a damp towel to soothe her cracked bleeding lips.

Maher's only use for Terri Schiavo was as a prop for his naked bigotry and unlimited intolerance of those he sees as different. He's hardly the first.

For centuries people with disabilities have been scapegoated, abused, beaten, maimed and killed because they were seen as different and devoid of even a basic humanity.

It's how they were seen by the eugenicists who sought to sterilize, institutionalize and kill the "feebleminded" in the 20th century and now promulgated again by those very same eugenicist advocates who celebrate the decimation of the Down syndrome population via abortion, all the while trying to convince us that more perfect people are better than those who have flaws designated as inferior.

Perhaps Bill Maher's greatest vulnerability is that he smugly spouts his narcissistic hatred under the illusion that he is untouchable.

However, we are all one accident, one stroke, one illness away from being Terri Schiavo. I hope that Maher will become human long enough to consider his own mortal condition and leave the disabled alone.