Thursday, March 31, 2005

QUESTION

During the years that Reagan had Alzheimer's, did any conservative ever question his diagnosis? Did anyone on the right say that the diagnosis might be wrong, even though it presumably had been affirmed by a number of experts, or that it might not have been made in good faith? And why don't I recall any right-winger questioning the irreversibility of the disease? Why didn't the people who think Terri Schiavo could have made a miraculous recovery, a recovery impossible to explain by the laws of medicine, believe the same thing about Reagan?

I recall that a little while back it was noted that fights over brain-damaged patients only seem to take place in the case of young women. And I'm also thinking about Peggy Noonan's notorious Elian column. Noonan said Reagan would have believed that Elian was the beneficiary of a God-given miracle in the form of a rescue by dolphins -- and Reagan would have believed it because "he was a man."

Is that it? Did the right-wingers not look to the skies for a miracle to save Reagan's brain because "he was a man," and miracles happen only to nubile women and little children?

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UPDATE: Some good points are made in the comments. (Scroll past Mark the Troll and my futile attempt to reason with him.)

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