Re: Survivor was Politics and Links

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> I don't like " Survivor " , mainly because shows like

> that give me the uneasy feeling described here:

> http://www.cripcommentary.com/cc062100.html

I understand your concerns. I think that I've been

fascinated by it because I've been studying the group

dynamics taking place there.

The article states, " Here, in a nutshell, is the message:

The strength of a group depends on, and justifies,

getting rid of its less powerful members. " So I would

refute the whole nutshell and argue that it isn't always

the weak who are voted off, but almost as often, it is

the strong, precisely because they are the biggest hin-

drance to others winning the money. I can't give specific

instances, because I'm not committing those to memory,

but there have been many times when a few banded

together to oust whoever they perceived as the biggest

threat.

The writer is disabled, and naturally sees and relates

to things in that context. In one season there was, in

fact, a deaf girl who went quite a ways and reached the

last few episodes before finally being voted out, and it

wasn't on account of her disability.

The paragraph about Dr. Kevorkian reminded me of the

tactics that says uses.

In some quarters, disability is seen as a crime deserving not only

confinement,

but death. Jack Kevorkian recently received a " citizen activist award " from a

supposedly progressive foundation. His contribution to human progress? He

helped to kill over 100 people, most of whom had non-terminal disabilities.

It

is true that these people requested " suicide assistance " from Kevorkian; but

if they had been able-bodied, and depressed over some situation other than

disability -- divorce or unemployment, say -- their request would not have

been

considered a mitigating factor. Kevorkian would have been prosecuted and con-

victed much earlier in his career, had he been killing the nondisabled. His

victims

were denied the equal protection of the law, simply because their health

status

got them branded undesirable members of society.

Something unfair about that, if those people had been healthy and able-bodied,

Kevorkian would not have been trying to " help " them. I don't see how bringing

Kevorkian into it was appropriate, or added anything to the writer's argument

against the Survivor show. I think it's an example of how people will use

any-

thing to rationalize and justify how they feel or what they do about certain

issues. (And I hope that knows that I don't exclude myself from the

statement I just made in the last sentence.) :-)

Clay

[Guest guest]

> Something unfair about that, if those people had been healthy and

> able-bodied, Kevorkian would not have been trying to " help " them.

Actually, he would have. His end plan had been to make it so that it

was possible to do that kind of thing to everyone; he just apparently

thought that doing it to disabled people first would make it easier to

ease in the other stuff. And he was correct, and it does tie into the

other points in the article.

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> > Something unfair about that, if those people had been healthy

> > and able-bodied, Kevorkian would not have been trying to " help "

> > them.

> Actually, he would have. His end plan had been to make it so

> that it was possible to do that kind of thing to everyone; he

> just apparently thought that doing it to disabled people first

> would make it easier to ease in the other stuff. And he was

> correct, and it does tie into the other points in the article.

I don't see that, but that may be because I'm not aware of his

" end plan " . I tried to keep up on the story, as I used to live

in Pontiac, Mich., but this wasn't in the papers. Tell us.

Atually, I was about to add that I thought that bringing up

Kevorkian was similar to making the old Hitler comparison,

which isn't ethical in debate, but you seem to be saying that

the comparison is valid. What is this " other stuff " ?

Clay

[Guest guest]

> > > Something unfair about that, if those people had been healthy

> > > and able-bodied, Kevorkian would not have been trying to " help "

> > > them.

>

> > Actually, he would have. His end plan had been to make it so

> > that it was possible to do that kind of thing to everyone; he

> > just apparently thought that doing it to disabled people first

> > would make it easier to ease in the other stuff. And he was

> > correct, and it does tie into the other points in the article.

> I don't see that, but that may be because I'm not aware of his

> " end plan " . I tried to keep up on the story, as I used to live

> in Pontiac, Mich., but this wasn't in the papers. Tell us.

You might consider this a biased source and/or disagree with its

conclusions, but it contains many quotes from him about his overall

plans, and you can look up the references yourself:

http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/fctkev.htm

Note that I'm only showing it to you for the quotes, and not to

persuade you of its overall conclusions.

> Atually, I was about to add that I thought that bringing up

> Kevorkian was similar to making the old Hitler comparison,

> which isn't ethical in debate, but you seem to be saying that

> the comparison is valid. What is this " other stuff " ?

Actually, I think the Hitler comparison is *rarely* valid, not

completely unethical in all situations. Most of the time it's

over-the-top hyperbole (i.e. someone saying " You want to be efficient?

HITLER wanted to be efficient!!! " and I've *seen* comparisons like

that), but when discussing issues that actually have to do with him,

it can be relevant. The problem is that the comparison is so overused

that people have a knee-jerk response to it even when it's *validly*

used.