Who You Gonna Believe, Me Or Your Lying Eyes?

I think that the biggest reason why so many people have been passionately engaged in the Terri Schiavo case is the video footage that millions have seen. I think pretty much anyone who sees it thinks–she’s not dead. Severely disabled, yes. Dead, no. Deliberately starving her would be a terrible thing. That’s how I reacted to it, anyway.
Predictably, mainstream news outlets are trying to defuse the video’s impact. Like this Reuters report: “Schiavo Videotape Misleading, Experts Say”:

Studies of people whose cerebral cortices are damaged in the way Schiavo’s is show that their eyes will respond to stimuli such as movement or a human face, but there is no way for them to be conscious of what they are seeing.

Have you ever noticed how much faith liberals have in “studies”? And I believe it is undisputed that Terri Schiavo has never been given the tests normally used to diagnose a persistent vegetative state, apparently because her husband refuses to allow them.
There may have been a time in my life when I had more faith in experts and studies than in my own eyes. But that was a long time ago.
For our younger readers, by the way, this post’s title is a famous line by Groucho Marx, whom Deacon introduced me to many years ago. At first I thought it was just a joke; now I think it’s a good summary of much of American politics.
CORRECTION: A couple of readers say that it was Chico, while pretending to be Groucho, in Duck Soup, and that I didn’t get the quote quite right. I’ll defer to Deacon for the final word.

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