Betsy McCaughey's Daily Show Appearance

I'm posting Jon Stewart's interview with Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York who is credited with starting the myth that the current healthcare reform bill will lead to senior citizens not getting medical care. In other words, she is the mother of the hysteria about elderly people being encouraged to sign DNRs even if they don't want to, being told they have to just sit back and die instead of receiving actual care. 

And according to political gossip, McCaughey inspired Sarah Palin's controversial remark about "death panels." 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Betsy McCaughey Pt. 1
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

The interview shows how complicated this bill is, but also, how easy it is for it to be twisted to one person or another's purposes. Also, it's a great interview on Stewart's part, if you can stand watching a little confrontation. He does an excellent job of cutting through her double-speak and forcing her to point to exactly where the bill says what she is claiming it says. (Which by the way, it doesn't.) 

Apparently, McCaughey resigned her position on the board of directors of the Cantel Medical Corporation following this interview. 

But here's a silver lining: Maybe this hyperbolic, fear-mongering spin is finally backfiring, and now, people will actually start to really think about living wills and advance directives in a serious and calm manner. We can hope, right :)

Violent Death Onscreen

Christian Sinclair sent me this great article about Mike Doyle, an actor who has died violently on television (or acted out dying violently on television) seven times.

Several things we learn from the article: it's easier to fake die with your eyes open; find a comfortable position to lie in because you might be there for a while; when thinking back on past roles, sometimes it's hard to remember whether you were the murderer or the murdered; and moms don't like this type of work. 

Every time Doyle dies onscreen, his mother phones: “She’ll call me and say, ‘I know it’s not real, but I just want to make sure you’re O.K.,’ ” he said. “Not that many mothers have seen their son die over and over.”

Sweet and surreal at the same time. 

Lost Season Finale Tonight

No spoilers here, but I am speculating about what might happen, so if you don't want to read that, you should pass on this entry. 

All of you Lost fans out there know it is a complicated show with an active online community. The producers of the show will frequently throw in little details, inside jokes, non-cannon elements, that only the hardcore—you could say obsessive—fans will pick up on. (No dig intended here; I'm one of those obsessive fans.) It's not necessary to understanding the show, so if you don't pick up on it, it doesn't hurt your understanding of the show one bit. But it's fun if you catch it. 

One of these jokes is related to the "red shirts" phenomenon. This joke dates back to the original Star Trek series. The show, infamously, only had one extra costume for actors to wear when the crew went out on planetary expeditions. So, it would be Spock, Dr. McCoy, Captain Kirk, and some random dude in a red shirt. When bad things went down and someone died, guess who it was? The guy in the red shirt. 

So, producers of Lost will often put the extra who is going to die in a red shirt. Here's the story of one such unfortunate soul. 

In a big finale of a show that is definitely not afraid to kill off major characters, viewers are no doubt wondering whether someone will be killed. 

Well, several episodes ago, the character Juliette had a wardrobe change, and she's now wearing a red shirt. 

It makes me wonder. 

Middle Man

A hilarious clip about the reading of a will from one of my favorite shows, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

There's nothing new here, I just ran across this online and felt like sharing. 

I love the sweater Dee wears to her mother's will-reading :)

Oprah Cancels Columbine Show

Yesterday, Oprah cancelled the airing of an already-taped show that was to mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. 

Her reason: she reviewed the finished show and found it focused too much on the killers. 

Clearly, from just the standpoint of informing her viewers, the perpetrators are a large part of the Columbine story. This dilemma of Oprah's brings up an interesting dichotomy that I think much of the media faces whenever there is a tragedy of this sort. 

To some extent, you have to investigate the killers or criminals and give them press or attention in order to get answers to "What were they thinking?" and "Why did they do it?" And isn't everyone wondering that when something like Columbine happens? 

But then there is this guilt that comes along with the fascination. A self-imposed punishment for giving attention to the people who did wrong. And on top of that, I think, an even greater sense that it's wrong to give them any compassion. 

I think these sensations appeal to the smaller part of our nature. What happened was wrong, without a doubt. The killers were responsible, without a doubt. But being curious about them is nothing to be guilty about. And extending compassion their way does not lessen the amount of compassion we have left over for the people they killed. 

Compassion and attempts to understand do not mean we condone. 

Facebook Tribute Page to Television Character

Either fans or producers of the TV show House MD have developed a Facebook page as a memorial to the character Lawrence Kutner. 

I don't watch House, but apparently, Kutner killed himself on last week's episode of the show. The Facebook page includes photos of the character and hand-written notes from his "friends," i.e., other show characters, with their reactions to his death.

It's easy to dismiss this as people going too far for a television character. But, if they're upset about the character's death, I think it's great that they have a place to come together and publicly "grieve" about it. And I've certainly had my share of becoming emotionally invested in characters from television and literature. 

That said, I do wish the language was restructured a bit ... just to make it more clear that everyone involved is really making the distinction in their minds that this is a television character. And that, while they may be sad to lose his narrative, they do realize it's not a real-life death. 

For example, the page's description reads, "Dr. Kutner was a hard working young doctor with a kind, unassuming, gentle manner. He will be missed by all of us." They couldn't have called him a character? I don't think it would have diminished the page to be honest about what it was. 

People become emotionally invested in television characters. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in feeling a little sad when a character dies. And publicly grieving for that character with other fans might be healthy. But let's not get together in a virtual group to pretend that character was a real person who we really knew just because we have new technology that allows for it. That's where this page goes too far, to my mind. 

And thanks Christian Sinclair for the tip. 

Planning for Your Funeral in Advance ... and Personalizing It

The Today Show has a story about the need to pre-plan your funeral. 

Meredith Vieira interviews the authors of Grave Expectations who were inspired by attending several funerals that did not reflect the character of the deceased. 

From the small amount I've been involved in funeral planning for other people, I find it's usually done in stressful, emotional circumstances, and you don't have the frame of mind to really think through what would reflect that person's personality. 

If you want your funeral to reflect your own style, I think planning it in advance for yourself is a great way to go. Plus, you can really take burden off of loved ones in terms of logistics and finances. 

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Also, if you watch the piece, I love the idea of the "vid-stone" ... but would it hold up to the elements?  

Torture on Television

Once again on Lost last night we saw that torture works as a means of extracting reliable information. 

Experts in information gathering repeatedly tells us that torture is not a way to gather reliable information, and yet TV shows like 24 and Lost continue to show it as a way of finding out the truth. 

In last night's episode, the truth that was found out was so outrageous, no one believed it anyway ... but it was actually the truth. 

I love Lost, so I'm not turning against the show because of this facet of it, but it does continually annoy me that they insist on glorifying the usefulness of torture. 

Neptune Memorial Reef

A follow up to my post below.

Here's a Fox News report on the Neptune Underwater Reef.

The "reef" is a man-feature. People's cremated remains are placed into the sculpture/reef and will potentially replenish the reef, nourish the fish, etc.

I can see being interested in this as a final resting place if you were an avid scuba diver or loved the ocean. But I don't buy the whole, "giving back to the earth" angle as a primary motivation, which the CEO pushes.



Heck, if you like the idea, more power to you. Personally, it CREEPS ME OUT!

Death isn't just for dead people

So, a bit of an offbeat post, but it's been a slow day at work, and I have been watching episodes of the live-action Tick series on YouTube.

Here are a couple of clips of the Tick waxing philosophical on death. The first one starts right out and goes until about the 50-second mark. The second clip starts about 35 seconds in.

"That's what a hospital is for."

"Nobody should have to go to work thinking, 'Oh this is the place that I might die today.' That's what a hospital is for."

-Michael Scott on last night's special episode of The Office.

The following chaos ensues after Stanley has a heart attack:



You can watch the full episode online, here.

A Super Bowl Story

From The Today Show:

The story of Super Bowl Star, Arizona Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald, is a story of not saying I'm sorry until it was too late.

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Manipulation or Good TV Drama?

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that one of the few TV shows I follow with any regularity is Lost.

When last year's season came to an end, the fate of one of my favorite characters, Jin, was left up in the air (almost literally). Jin was on an exploded freighter, and under reasonable circumstances could not have survived ...

but Lost does not operate in the realm of the reasonable. And we've all seen enough TV to know, if the show's not reasonable, you can't count the character dead until you see the body.

After an eight-month hiatus, Lost returned last week with two new episodes. We saw what has been happening to the Oceanic 6. What's been happening to the survivors on the island. But no sign of Jin, dead or alive.

So, it seems we will have to wait longer to hear Jin's fate. Maybe we'll find out in tonight's episode. But somehow, I have a feeling this will get drug out for at least a couple more weeks.

I posted at the end of last season that I felt manipulated by these maneuvers. Am I wrong? Is this just good dramatic storytelling? Obviously, there have to be shifts in the story, big changes, surprises, unknowns, titilations to keep us guessing, keep us holding on to some level. I just felt like, intentionally holding one character off to the side, and telling the viewers, "We're not going to let you know whether he's dead or alive," for months and for multiple episodes, went too far. Especially since, they did this to Jin twice in season four.

What do you think?

Torture on TV

So, this is only about death in an indirect way, but this video and this argument are very compelling, and I want to share.

You've probably heard this argument in one form or another before, but the way torture is shown on television is not accurate. On television, torture always works, which isn't true to life. And one of the problems this causes is that actual military recruits, when they come to training, think they can use torture to coerce suspects—because they saw Jack Bauer from 24, or another television character, do it.

Here's a video from Human Rights First that lays out the case beautifully:


I don't watch 24, so it's pretty easy for me to condemn the show ... but I am a huge Lost fan, which is also mentioned in the video. And this video has got me to thinking, there is a lot of torture in that show, both with Sayid, who was an actual torturer in the Iraqi Republican Army, and with other characters. (Think Locke with Miles last season.) And I'm a little conflicted about how I feel about all of that. Actually, I'm not so much conflicted as I feel a little gross about it, and I'd like to pretend I don't. Especially since, if you watch this video, Lost producer Carlton Cuse, weasels out of any real responsibility for what they're showing on screen. He's basically saying, it's TV, it's not real life, it doesn't matter. That's a cop out, and I don't like it. Damn! My guiltless pleasure just became a guilty pleasure.

Televised Assisted Suicide in the U.S.

In the comments below, Dethmama asks whether assisted suicide has ever been televised in the U.S., as they have just done in Britain.

This is by no means a comprehensive answer, but I was reminded of 60 Minutes' interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian from 1998, during which they televised the euthanasia of a man with Lou Gehrig's disease. (It was an actual euthanasia; Dr. Kevorkian was responsible for the act of death.) 

The interview was what led to Kevorkian's imprisonment for second-degree murder. He served about nine years of a 10–25 year sentence. 

I can't find the actual clip of the first interview, but I found this clip from a follow-up interview that shows most of the original piece within it. However, CBS' site won't let me embed it, so you'll have to follow the link to view. 

There are some marked differences between the U.S. piece and the British piece:

*First, the U.S. piece is as much about Kevorkian as it is about assisted suicide. 

*Second, I'm really struck by how the British piece gives the dying man a voice. And I realize someone with advanced Lou Gehrig's disease cannot speak well ... but there are other things that could be done—talking more to family, photos of his past, stories, etc. 

*Third, the British piece showed us an assisted suicide done through legal channels, so we are well positioned to confront the issue. The shock value of breaking the law, doing things behind closed doors, with shady methodology, all of that is gone. Dr. Kevorkian lost his medical license in 1991. Thus, he didn't have access to the usual cocktail of barbituates used for assisted suicide. What we see in the U.S. piece are his makeshift means. In the British piece, the man's death feels peaceful; he says goodbye to his wife. I see a death with dignity. In the U.S. piece, I see a more haphazard way of ending suffering. 

Today Show on Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

The Today Show had a segment this morning on the importance of keeping up-to-date carbon monoxide detectors in your home. As you would expect, the story began with the tale of a family who almost died due to carbon monoxide ... luckily they realized something was wrong and called 911 when they all came down with the same dramatic symptoms at the same time.

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I don't want to minimize the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning. Obviously, having a detector in your home is not a bad idea. And it's a terrible, avoidable tragedy if anyone dies by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

I'd just like to point out—I can't remember the last time I saw a major news show do a segment on the importance of keeping smoke detectors up-to-date. And according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, every year, accidental carbon monoxide poisoning kills 170 people, on average. In contrast, in 2006, fire claimed the lives of 2,580 people—that according to the Center for Disease Control.

This all reminds me of Amanda Ripley's book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why, which I blogged about earlier this year. She came up with an equation about what elicits fear:

Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness

Both fire and carbon monoxide poisoning rank fairly high on this scale, but the carbon monoxide poisoning is especially potent. If you watch the NBC clip, you can imagine being the family, sleeping at home, and not even knowing a "silent killer" is attacking. The scale of destruction is low, but the suffering is high, it's unfamiliar to many of us, and it's certainly uncontrollable in many ways—that sense heightened by the fact that carbon monoxide is tasteless, odorless, and invisible. And with something like a poisonous gas that randomly seeps into the air, fairness doesn't even come into play. It gets pretty high marks on the fear scale.

What? A TV show using fear to hook in viewers? You're shocked, I know.

Anyway, get a carbon monoxide detector if you want. But if you're concerned about utility, check your smoke detector batteries first.

Assisted Suicide in Britain

Controversy has flared up over assisted suicide in Britain this past week.

This catalyst was a televised assisted suicide—the suicide of Craig Ewert who was 59 and suffering from motor neuron disease.




Ewert took a fatal dose of barbiturates in a Zurich clinic in 2006, although the documentary covering his decision and final act was first shown just last week.

Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain. According to the NY Times, about 100 Britons have committed assisted suicide in the past decade or so—by traveling to Switzerland or other locations where assisted suicide is legal.

I'm really glad the show aired. You all know I support death with dignity and assisted suicide, but beyond that, even for people who are against this movement, discussions like this get us all thinking and talking about death. And the more it comes into the open, the less alien it becomes. And I hope, the less frightening it becomes.

Ewert's wife was quoted in the New York Times saying, “For Craig, my husband, allowing the cameras to film his last moments in Zurich was about facing the end honestly,” she wrote in The Independent, a British newspaper. “He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don’t face their fears about it.”

My thoughts exactly.

U.S. Life Expectancy—Not as Good as it Should Be

From The Today Show ... the U.S. lags behind 27 other developed nations in terms of life expectancy, according to the annual report from the United Health Foundation. Dr. Nancy Snyderman credits it to obesity, smoking, and lack of health insurance.

According to the same study, we spend more money on health care than most of the nations that outrank us in terms of life expectancy. So where's the disconnect?

One popular theory, and one Dr. Snyderman hints at in the piece, is that America spends a lot of money on heroic measures, using expensive new equipment and experimental procedures, more often than just focusing on preventive medicine.

Another theory is that we spend too much on the last years of life, putting too many health-care dollars into prolonging life by a few months or years with dramatic, expensive effort, rather than keeping ourselves healthier while younger.



You can go here to see the original study results and a state-by-state ranking.

Life and Death for Fictional Characters

OK: Spoiler alert for Indiana Jones, Sex and the City movie, Harry Potter, Lost if you're not caught up.

A few weeks back, we had a lot of discussion about narrative and fictional characters. I'd like to come back to that theme to talk about a trend I've noticed in recent years. We seem to be unwilling to kill off our beloved fictional characters.

When the Harry Potter series finished last summer with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there was massive speculation about whether book seven would end with his demise. Would Voldemort do him in? Would the two finish off each other in a final showdown? Would Harry lose to he who must not be named and would evil wizardry win the day? Well, no one really thought that would happen; it was a childrens' book after all. In a 2006 interview, about a year before the book was released, J.K. Rowling said she might kill Harry. So fans did open the novel wondering whether Harry Potter would still be alive when they closed it. But despite a good scare near the end in which Harry has a near-death experience, Harry survives the battle with Voldemort and goes on to marry his long-time love.

Similarly, before the recent Indiana Jones sequel came out in theaters, many fans wondered if this would be the movie in which Indiana Jones finally died. It has been 19 years since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Harrison Ford is now 65 years old, old for an action star. The series seemed to be introducing a new generation of archaeologist/adventurer in Shia LaBeouf's character. And on top of that, one of the remarkable things about Indiana Jones as a hero has always been his fallibility—he's never seemed invincible or naturally strong. He comes across as an everyday man who is put in extreme circumstances that push him to his limits and force him to act in amazing ways. It would have fit his character arc very well for audiences to see him die on screen. But he does not die either.

Rumors popped up before the release of the Sex and the City movie that one of the beloved characters from the well-known TV show would die when the story hit the big screen. Early speculation especially centered around Samantha, who suffered breast cancer in the TV show. Producers and writers decided to keep all of the characters alive and well.

There are also TV shows like Lost that frequently blur the lines between life and death. Claire seems to recently have died, but she didn't even get a death scene. Instead, she just left her baby behind and got up and walked into the woods. Now she is with her father, Christian Shephard, who has become some type of Angel of Death on the show. Charlie visited Hurley, even though Charlie had drowned. Boone keeps finding ways to come back. So does Mr. Friendly. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, so that even once a character has died in the present, we still see them as part of the show in flashbacks, and they may still exist in the present but have died in the future (as with Locke). Death is not treated as a permanent goodbye on Lost.

I wonder if this zeitgeist has something to do with our country being at war. We're under such stress and and see so much turmoil and death in reality, we don't want to feel it with our fictional characters. We want our fictional characters to have happy endings. And now that the economy has taken a turn for the worse, it's all the more motivation for things to work out in the land of not-so-real.

Dr. Oz on Death

Today, Oprah has a show all about death and the way we in America talk about it. It's a rerun, but I didn't get a chance to post about it the first time it aired. I'd like to mention a couple of points from the episode. First, I really like the description Dr. Oz (Oprah's resident medical expert) gives of the general problem our country has with talking about death. He says:

"We do not do death well in America. Americans like to win, and we see death as losing. ... Death is an integral part of this amazing life that we have the ability to live."

Hear, hear. Also, one of the people featured in the show is a young woman named Kris who has cancer that is at a point at which it cannot be cured. Essentially, she must live long-term with the cancer that will most likely one day kill her. It's quite moving to watch her discuss all of the things she has learned from this experience. Kris phrases it thus: "Cancer is my guru."

Kris discusses her decision to marry her boyfriend, despite her medical situation. She didn't want her health condition to stop her from living life. After all, none of us has any certainty really. But one thing she did change was the traditional vows. Kris and her groom did not say, "Until death do us part." Kris explained on the show that she thought that would be too melodramatic. And she's probably right. In her case, it would have been very immediate and had an aching literal feel. It's so impressive how light-hearted and present she is about her situation.

TLC did a documentary on Kris titled Crazy Sexy Cancer. I didn't watch it because I found the name to be in such poor taste, and the advertising for the special was just silly and didn't convey this woman's attitude or strength at all. I wish now that I had seen it. Here's a link to the documentary's webpage though.

And here's a link to the webpage for today's Oprah show, although as I've said before, I don't love linking to Oprah's website. I think it's outdated in its organization and use of technology. The content is good though, so it's still worth a visit sometimes.