Saturday Audience Participation
Update: The child was not stillborn. He died a few hours after a live birth. I have updated the post to reflect this error.
There's another controversy with Rick Santorum. He took home his short-lived child, which liberals finds "weird". Both Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson have given their dismissive take on the issue. Both rather heartlessly mocked Santorum over what he did, which the American Pregnancy Association actually advises:
With the loss of your baby, your family members will also grieve. Your baby is someone’s granddaughter, brother, cousin, nephew or sister. It is important for your family members to spend time with the baby. They suggest bathing the baby, taking photos as a keepsake, or even singing it a lullaby. Go figure that, knowing they’ll have only a precious few hours to share with a lost child, some people want to do what they can to capture the moment.I'm pro-life so I tend to side with the pro-lifers on this issue, but I have to admit it still seems a little strange. Nonetheless, the kind of sarcastic vitriol the left has expressed in this story just shows how debased they really are.
Today's questions: Is taking home and playing with your short-lived or stillborn child "weird" or "crazy"? Should we look at this as normal? Is it strange, but you'll give grieving parents a pass because of their emotional state? Can the left sink any lower than mocking someone who has lost a child?
69 comments:
Liberals find babies and anything to do with them "weird", since they don't make many of them.
I'm pro retroactive abortion, but holy shit is that attitude heartless.
There is no normal behavior for when you have a still-born child because in our society it's a highly unusual situation. Honoring the dead child as best as you can is entirely appropriate.
Expecting someone to treat a dead child as medical waste is emotionally retarded, and thinking people should isolate themselves from death by leaving everything to the undertaker is cowardice and unnatural to booth.
When the Santorum family did is pretty much what some major medical organizations recommend.
The left would face death the way they always do: hiding it and pretending like nothing happened.
Consider the UK where they hardly have funerals anymore, they just quietly burn the body. Talk about losing your humanity.
Isn't Euguene Robinson a black?
"Can the left sink any lower than mocking someone who has lost a child?"
I assume you are asking this rhetorically, because the answer is emphatically yes. Yes they can!
Imagine the response if:
-Any prominent conservative anti-feminist figure were to be raped
-Any prominent NRA official were to be shot
-Any prominent black conservative were to be physically harmed by prole hooligans
It would be too delicious to resist! You'd never hear the end of it!
The major news outlets might show some restraint and decorum... and they might not. That's a hard one to call these days. Comedians and bloggers and internet forums and authors and what have you? They'd declare a new holiday.
As for the thing with the dead baby:
http://acidcow.com/pics/1453-the-migration-of-pictures-after-death-26-pics.html
What Rick Santorum did is not weird in the sense that it would take some sort of diseased mind to come up with it. It was apparently culturally acceptable in the West to do this sort of grieving and remembrance only a century and some change ago. It is weird in the sense that nobody else does it now, but as ADS said, this sort of situation is rare nowadays.
Consider the UK where they hardly have funerals anymore, they just quietly burn the body. Talk about losing your humanity.
Shades of Fahrenheit 451.
"Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he's on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man's a speck of black dust. Let's not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn them all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean."
Is taking home and playing with your stillborn child "weird" or "crazy"?
The Santorum child was not stillborn. It was born alive, lived for a few hours, then died. That is not "stillborn".
Your question is still worth addressing, but it is not applicable to the Santorum case.
There is no normal behavior for when you have a still-born child because in our society it's a highly unusual situation.
Not only is it a highly unusual situation, it's a situation which did not occur in the case of the Santorm's. Their child was born, not "still-born". Then it died.
As is so often the case, people take lefty lies and distortions as the starting point for any discussion.
FYI the child was not stillborn he lived for 2 hours, meaning at least mom & dad got to interact with it, much worse than stillbirth in my mind.
It seems pretty creepy to me, but that's just me. I grew up on a farm in the country, so death was familiar, but also followed by the unpleasantness of decay. So you learned not to shirk from death, but not to let it hang around either -- you put it in the ground and moved on. So my attitude at funerals is: let's pray, get the casket closed, and head to the gravesite. But I've also never lost a child or anyone closer to me than a grandfather, so my feelings on the matter might change.
In any case, trying to score political points by ridiculing people for doing whatever will help them get over such a devastating experience -- however weird others might find it -- is pretty low.
This doesn't strike me as a pro-life v. pro abortion issue. It strikes me as a traditional worldview v. modern worldview issue.
Before modern medicine, births would have been at home. That means that the whole family would see, hold and bury any stillborn or short-lived child. Santorum seems aware of that and motivated by that traditional practice.
The contrasting worldview is that things like birth and death take place out of sight in sterile, controlled environments. And therefore, having your family view a dead child is "creepy".
I have to sympathize with anyone who shows an awareness of and respect for a traditional way of doing things and acknowledges that there is value to the way things used to be done.
I have respect for Santorum in this issue. Very few have an honourable attitude towards their own dead nowadays. The biggest parasites and inhuman beings in the world aren't stillborn babies, it's leftists and their beliefs. Liberals don't like babies inside the womb and they don't like them out of it either apparently.
Today's questions: Is taking home and playing with your stillborn child "weird" or "crazy"? Should we look at this as normal?
------
I tell you what it is, none of our business. It's up to them to grieve in the way they see fit.
We had some friends who called immediately after giving birth to a stillborn child. The baby died in the final days of a full-term pregnancy, strangled by the umbilical cord. Our friends had dressed it up and were talking to it and grieving - indeed, as recommended by the hospital psychologist. They sent digital pictures while we were talking (this was the late 90s, pre-Skype). Was that weird? You bet. However, my wife and I had talked to these friends quite a lot during the pregnancy, since we had just had our first child, too. As unsettling as the experience was, it struck me as a natural and healthy human interaction. People who are overly freaked out by grieving need to grow up.
I think burying the dead child, in a proper, marked grave, is appropriate; one wouldn't do anything else with any other dead children, so why do any different with a stillborn one?
Anything else, is beyond my comprehension, and strikes me as odd, even creepy. (I'm a Christian, and pro-life, but that's just strange.)
It seems "weird" to leftists like this because the Santorums didn't deliberately kill their "unviable" child by puncturing its head, suctioning its brains out, dragging it out of its mother, and then tossing it out into the parking lot so they could run it over with their car.
Behavior like that wouldn't raise an eyebrow.
I think burying the dead child, in a proper, marked grave, is appropriate; one wouldn't do anything else with any other dead children, so why do any different with a stillborn one
For the last frickin' time, the child was NOT stillborn.
I'm pretty much pro-choice, but to denounce someone for the way they grieve the loss of a child is beneath the lowest of creatures. Why would they make this an election issue? Do they not realize how heartless this makes them look? The linked article speculates that it could have been calculated to give Santorum more sympathy and mess with Romney. That's the only sensible explanation but it is downright evil, if it is true. (BTW, I don't throw the word evil around lightly, unlike ONE.)
I feel that LIberals don't view conservatives as human. The way that they treat American culture with disdain and mockery and all other cultures with reverence and wonder is hypocritical.
Anything else, is beyond my comprehension, and strikes me as odd, even creepy. (I'm a Christian, and pro-life, but that's just strange.)
I have friends who conceived twins. A bit less than six months into the pregnancy one of the twins died in the womb - (this is the proper definition of "stillborn") and the other was delivered prematurely. The child who was born is alive and well today. And to this day, several years later, the couple still mourn the death of their other child on the anniversary of its death each year.
The couple in question are full-blown lefties of the sort who marched against "Bush's war for oil" and support the "Occupy" movement.
There's another controversy with Rick Santorum. He took home his stillborn child ...
Perhaps you could update your post to correct this erroneous statement and try to reign in the "stillborn" myth.
My brother was stillborn when I was a young child. He died in the 40th week of pregnancy.
I was utterly heartbroken and devastated, the worst thing I've ever gone through in my life. I remember wanting to see him so badly, but didn't ask if I could. At the graveside service, I remember hoping desperately that I could take a peek into his tiny coffin.
A bit over a year ago, a non-genetic-connected member of my extended family and her husband lost their six-month-old to SIDS, and they, too, took the infant home to grieve; additionally, she held the body during the open-casket service; I initially thought it was unusual but never, even reflexively or vaguely, felt any negative thought toward the act.
Mainly, I was ------ as would most be I presume ----- filled with genuine sympathy for her and her family.
Man, I tell you: I've been to funerals, but there is something really devastating about seeing a infant resting in a casket. That'll get to you.
I saw a vid of Robinson being questioned about the remarks on Morning Joe; he was apologetic (as was Colmes too), but a bit 'smirky' in the process, which I felt was unbecoming; I think any decent adult would leave this piece of bio out of any partisan debate or posturing.
To me, to do anything otherwise is beyond the pale.
"Can the left sink any lower than mocking someone who has lost a child?"
I assume you are asking this rhetorically, because the answer is emphatically yes. Yes they can!
Imagine the response if:
-Any prominent conservative anti-feminist figure were to be raped
-Any prominent NRA official were to be shot
-Any prominent black conservative were to be physically harmed by prole hooligans
Anonymous says,
"It would be too delicious to resist! You'd never hear the end of it!.....The major news outlets might show some restraint and decorum... Comedians and bloggers and internet forums and authors and what have you? They'd declare a new holiday."
Anonymous,
Maybe so, and that would be unfortunate.
But: I would bet that i've encountered over a dozen instances in the last year on this blog and other pro-white blogs, commenting about how they get no deeper pleasure then when a 'DWL/SWPL/LIBTARD/etc., ad infinitum gets raped/killed/maimed/robbed/etc. by a NAM.
Lack of grace is a bipartisan offense.
Personally I find taking home a dead newborn to be somewhat odd, and it's certainly not something that I'd hear about any of my family members doing. As someone else has already suggested, the usual course of action is a proper burial of the child in a marked grave.
However, that being said, nobody should be mocked for the course of action they take in such a heartbreaking scenario. Everyone grieves differently, and as odd as the Santorum family's actions were at least it shows they care and are probably decent people. It's cruel to mock their decision, especially when people do far "weirder" things than that. Like single mothers dumping their children off at the grandparents' house so they can hit up the club till 4 a.m, for example.
Why would they make this an election issue?
It might be a semi-deliberate tactic on the part of these people. This sort of public conversation and critiquing regarding a matter that should be limited to family and close friends serves a purpose.
What it does is to inform anyone who might even think about running for office one day that this is the sort of thing they'll be expected to tolerate.
Would you,or anyone else with a shred of what used to be thought of as common decency,be willing to confront these verminous cretins in public? I doubt that I have it in me to put friends and family through the possibility of that sort of thing.
I understand Colmes has apologized for his comments.
Don't know about Robinson
1) It's not strange to have some time with the body before a funeral. It would be strange, inhuman, and even a little weird to dump the body asap.
2) I don't see why liberals would mind anyway. It was just medical tissue! Remember, it was not a person and was never a person, period. Just a bunch of cells. A lot of mothers bring home the placenta and bury it below a tree. Why not even eat it? Give me a single good reason why pro-aborts could logically argue against eating it? Lots of nutrients in that clump of cells.
My blog was deleted so I'm testing my Wordpress account.
Lack of grace is a bipartisan offense.
By "bipartisan," you mean Leftoids and Pro-Whites, then? You know, roughly half the population, plus, oh, 0.1%? Most people mean Leftoids and Conservatives when they say "bipartisan."
Article on this issue:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1393932
Come to think about it - this is really disgusting. I do think it's a little creepy, but there's absolutely no reason to criticize a grieving parent, especially with the mocking tone liberals have taken with Santorum.
I guess throwing an aborted baby in the trash is so much more "progressive."
Santorum's situation isn't common any more,but to see just how common it was,and how relatively little time has passed since it was a pretty common thing,I'd urge anyone to go pay a visit to any cemetery that's more than a hundred years old.
If you stroll around for a few minutes,you'll see quite a few grave markers that have names like "Infant","Baby Daughter",and similar inscriptions. These will be in the older part of the cemetery,but not limited to the very oldest part. I noticed this the last time I visited the grave of my paternal grandmother.
I didn't see too many of these types of monuments that were dated after the late 1940's,but from what I could observe,the child mortality rate was much higher prior to that time. Before the 1940's,though,there were quite a few infant burials,or burials of children who died at a very young age.
Maybe the easy availability of antibiotics had something to do with this.
I don't think we really know how we are going to react until the moment is upon us. The Santorums had other kids at home who were probably really excited about the baby and that matters, too, as to how it is handled. Anyway, typical, intolerant, and gratuitously callous "liberals" criticize the parents grieving the loss of a child.
Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I guess folks who don't love, don't understand those who do. They are so hateful that they just react based on the who more than the what. FWIW some abortionists that do late term abortions for people with kids with serious defects also provide them with the opportunity to dress the dead baby and hold it, take a dignified picture etc. I bet those illiberal "liberals" wouldn't criticize those grieving families, oh, hell no, because they want defective kids dead (and healthy ones,too). So, of course it is okay. But if a conservative religionist does it, well then they are weirdos.
It is the same old Who? Whom?
Maybe the easy availability of antibiotics had something to do with this.
Something, but mostly it was vaccines and sanitation.
"Exercise: great for overall health, but does almost nothing for weight loss."
Prolonged daily exercise, like working as a field hand or coal miner, does a great job of keeping you fit and lean. My neighbor, a rancher who works outside 15 hours a day, eats huge high-carb meals and probably has about 7% body fat. His two brothers, who have sit-down jobs, are fat. But just going for a jog every morning or lifting weights a few times a week won't do it. I would also be willing to bet that taking a 20-mile walk every day would keep you fit no matter what you ate.
Lefties are assholes. If a person grieves a baby that was born alive and then dies a few hours later that's bad? Lefties have absolutely no respect for the dead. Next thing you know they're going to tell you we shouldn't have funerals because life is worthless and we're all going to die anyways. Unless it's over-obsessive and creepy, a family having a ceremony in honour of a dead stillborn baby is appropriate.
Prolonged daily exercise, like working as a field hand or coal miner, does a great job of keeping you fit and lean.
Nope, sorry. Another lie from the nutritional/health establishment.
Read Taubes' "Why we Get Fat" - he cites an enormous amount of research suggesting that it's almost entirely what KIND of food we eat, not "calories in/calories out" or how much we exercise.
I've read it, One. I'm speaking from experience, mine and others'. Some people will get fat no matter how much they exercise. But many can and do stay lean despite consuming a high-carb load. By the way, now that I'm not engaged in strenuous physical activity all day long, I have to go low-ish carb. Before, I could eat anything and as much as I wanted and burn it all off.
I'm sorry, but taking a dead fetus back to your house, introducing it to your kids, and sleeping in the bed with it IS weird. In fact, it's bat-shit crazy. And, I'm about as far from "liberal" as you can get.
@OneSTDV,
So, you don't buy the 'exercise raises your metabolism' logic?
"Personally I find taking home a dead newborn to be somewhat odd, and it's certainly not something that I'd hear about any of my family members doing."
I was unfamiliar with it, but after-the-fact I learned that such a form of grieving was quite prevalent a few generations ago, and to this day certain religious denominations engage in it. In the clip on MSNBC I cited on which Robinson was questioned about his remarks, Scarborough pointed out that present-day grief counselors frequently recommend holding or taking-home-to-say-goodbye infant mortalities as a healthy way of coping. This all was news to me.
If my boy had died at such a tiny age I don't think we would have taken any photos of him. I would have sung him a lullaby. That is all I'l say.
The way people are treating the Santorums over this issue is disgusting.
It probably reminds certain people too much that their infant (as well as all other infants) was indeed a human being, unique in all the world, who deserved to be remembered as such, and was worthy of some measure of dignity and kindness.
I tell you what it is, none of our business. It's up to them to grieve in the way they see fit.
You're darn tootin' it's none of our business - so why do we even know about it? Could it be that Mrs. Santorum wrote a _book_ about the whole thing, perhaps in the hopes of positioning herself as pro-family and pro-life, as suffering heartache and overcoming loss, and hopefully aiding her husband's political career? In which case, if they brought it up, and placed it in the public sphere, then isn't it fair game for others to comment on?
And let us have more integrity in the use of "left." I'm pretty far to the right of the left, but all we have are Colmes and Robinson making comments about the issue. This is by no means the entire left! Let's stop blaming them all just because two of them are ungracious.
For the record: I have no problem whatsoever with what the Santorums did. I just have a problem with people who put things on public display, and then say it's none of our business. (Sarah Palin enjoyed doing this, too.)
The way people are treating the Santorums over this issue is disgusting.
It's pure partisan sniping. If the Santorums were liberal Democrats, all the talking heads in the mainstream media would have minded their own business and said nothing. Two separate rulebooks: one for your side, and a completely different one for the other side.
Please google "memento mori photographs."
It once was common for the family to spend time with dead loved ones, including stillborn infants before burying them.
Spending time with the dead by holding a wake is also part of Catholic tradition.
As other commentators have noted, what is strange is that today we are so eager to put our dead loved ones out of sight.
@Svigor,
I messed up the font and emphasis in my 'bipartisan' comment.
I simply meant to say that ungracious and inappropriate references are NOT committed just by those on the left.
(It's really not something I think the opposition or anyone else should bring up, even though ------- as another commenter noted ------ Santorum and his wife first raised the issue (though that could be because he knew it would inevitably would be discussed once he entered the race and his profile increased).
Actually, it probably or even undoubtedly came up early in his career before he was in the Senate. Still, I say leave it alone now, regardless of who brought it up.
If political opponents can't create a mutual graciousness over something like this, then we know for CERTAIN that they never will.
If he took the child home and tried to have sex with it or declare he wanted to marry it, the left would have declared Santorum a hero.
If he took the child home and tried to have sex with it or declare he wanted to marry it, the left would have declared Santorum a hero.
LOL. Good one. But no, just ask Larry Craig how consistent the left is when it comes to defending right-wingers who are sexual perverts.
Yes, the Left can sink lower. They admire Mao, Chavez, Castro, etc., whom they regard as brilliant world leaders. So far is the US, their natural impulses have been checked so that mockery, OWS, and union violence are all that is on duisplay.
They admire Mao, Chavez, Castro, etc., whom they regard as brilliant world leaders. So far is the US, their natural impulses have been checked so that mockery, OWS, and union violence are all that is on duisplay.
Except when White House insider Anita Dunn cited Mao as an example of someone who overcome great hardship and ultimately found success.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi1zg2NOCn8
Of course, the left said it was taken out of context and it was just craaaazzzzzy talk anyway.
The politics of the left have created millions of stillborn aborted children tossed in trash bins like common waste and rubbish. When a family treats their dead day old child like a person and not just a bit of inconvenient medical waste, the lies of the left are taken to task.
For abortion rights to continue any day old dead child cannot be really human so anyone who treats a child as such must be derisively mocked for their foolish and marginally creepy emotional attachment to medical waste.
-NW
Anon @ 3:25 -
Why would they make this an election issue?
It might be a semi-deliberate tactic on the part of these people.
Nothing semi-deliberate about it. If you watch the video of Colmes, you see that he came prepared to say what he was going to say, regardless of what questions he was asked. None of his remarks was responsive to the actual questions.
At the Dusk in Autumn blog, attitudes toward death were discussed once and it seems that the Santorums' actions have a lot to do with them being Catholic.
Catholics seem to be more comfortable with death than Protestants and both are vastly more comfortable with it than New Age types.
Google the Sedlec Ossuary if you doubt this at all.
Google the Sedlec Ossuary if you doubt this at all.
Lol, yeah ossuaries illustrate a bit too comfy a relationship with death.
I simply meant to say that ungracious and inappropriate references are NOT committed just by those on the left.
Well, no doubt. But rates vs. binary has always been front and center in these circles, so...
quick OT@OneSTDV:
Well, you were right: the 'Tebow Miracle' is dying as I write this. By 6 p.m. CST it'll be official.
svigor - sorry that happened to your blog. It has surprised me for some time that that so many alt right bloggers are using free hosted space.
I use Webair (gratuitous referral id: http://hits.webair.com/cgi-bin/redir?pd_link=i2-a33299-o3158-c48363 ). Using software like Qumana Blog Manger one could easily post to both a hosted (blog-- site) and their own domain in minutes. The only problem would be with the commenting.
As for Santorum, I have been saying this would happen for months, they only reason they didn't attack earlier because he was so far behind and they had to save this "juicy morsel" for if he got near the top. It's probably been killing them for months, that they had to sit on this.
RE: quick OT@OneSTDV:
Well, you were right: the 'Tebow Miracle' is dying as I write this. By 6 p.m. CST it'll be official.
I'm officially eating my earlier words ----- and glad for it!
rjp, could you run that by me again? I'm a noob. I put the ID your mentioned into my browser window and it just made faces at me.
I suppose I will have to get my own domain pretty soon. I suppose I shouldn't post any more until then.
"As for Santorum, I have been saying this would happen for months, they only reason they didn't attack earlier because he was so far behind and they had to save this "juicy morsel" for if he got near the top. It's probably been killing them for months, that they had to sit on this."
Yes, but as it's been pointed out earlier in this thread, Santorum himself has raised the issue during his campaigns and uses the incident to firm up his conservative bona-fides.
I don't know who initially raised the issue and when, the media or the Santorum camp ------ but he does routinely use it on the stump and someone else said Santorum's wife actually noted it in detail in a book she wrote.
That of course doesn't justify salacious treatment of it by the opposition ------ but I think it's fair to say the 'sensitivity factor' has been alleviated on this by Santorum himself.
Olave d'Estienne not sure what is up with my Webair link, and prefer to login via name/url but then the posts have to be okayed.
Maybe the easy availability of antibiotics had something to do with this....Something, but mostly it was vaccines and sanitation.
It was far more diet than vaccines. Most diseases killed the weak; well-fed mothers and infants created the modern population boom. In fact, there were massive drop-offs of several diseases even before their vaccines were invented as people got healthier. Vaccines do a fine job, but lots of nutrients/calories for mom is what kept the majority of infants out of the graveyard, not vaccines.
I guess you people have never attended an Irish wake?
If you see the Alan Colmes video on this, you'll see just how much of an asshole is the sissified Colmes.
It's not what I would have done, but if he lost a child, I'm not going to tell him how to grieve. That's between him and his family.
Besides, as many commenters have said, it used to be fairly common to have children die. I used to walk through the old Boston Common, which has a Colonial-era graveyard--right by Emerson College and the Loews movie theater. You can actually see the gravestones with the Colonial-era skulls, and, yes, there are many children and babies there. Makes you realize people used to have 12 kids just so 3 of them would reach adulthood.
Nice place to visit if anyone wants to see a relic of our deep past--as deep as it gets in our country, anyway. Boston makes you realize that American history 'must be country wide', as Mr. Gilbert said.
I think it's weird to think it weird.
I say that despite having really no problem with abortions, either socially or personally. I think they're often the best thing to do when there's an unplanned pregnancy.
But when the baby is planned and wanted, of course it's not weird to grieve.
Hell women frequently grieve over miscarriages.
RJP, thanks for the kind word. I already had a defunct blog at Wordpress and I downloaded all the old blog's material from Google's cache, so no biggie.
We just lost our child. This week he was still.born. I hate liberals and your dark path to.hell
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