Outside the Beltway

Another Reason to Wonder if Michelle Malkin Is All That Smart

Steve Verdon · Friday, March 31, 2006 · 4 comments

The guest blogger Allahpundit is guest blogging form Michelle and points out that today is the anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death. Allahpundit says,

Michelle’s Schiavo archive runs to eleven pages on Google, but for me it’s this short post that resonates the most.

The link to another post by Michelle points to this article by economist Steven Landsburg. In that article Prof. Landsburg writes the following,

Now, Michael Schiavo, it seems to me, is in something very like the bluenose position here. If he had a use for his wife’s body—if he wanted to cook it up for dinner, let’s say—then I’d have more sympathy for him. (On the other hand, I don’t think we should make a habit of letting people cook their spouses up for dinner, because it creates very bad incentives with regard to keeping your spouse safe and healthy.)

Which is precisely what Michelle Malkin also quotes, but under the heading “Dehumainizing Terri” and also with the implication that it is tasteless. On that last part, the quote by itself is tasteless, but there is a tiny weenie problem for Michelle Malkin (aside from the fact that Michelle is missing the gallows humor here): Landsburg ultimately comes down on her side of the issue. At the end of the article Landsburg writes the following,

You could argue in response that Michael Schiavo has signaled an equally strong desire to bury her (by turning down an offer of $1 million and by some reports $10 million), but I see an essential difference between the two desires. One—the desire to feed—is like the desire to read Saletan or, more precisely, the desire to read some other writer in whom I personally see no merit. The other—the desire to prevent others from feeding—is like the desire to censor, and I recoil from censorship even when a strict cost-benefit analysis recommends it.

Earlier in the article Landsburg had noted that as a libertarian he would recoil at the notion of banning the reading of author he does not like. In short, he thought that siding the parents wishes would have been better for everybody involved since Michael Shiavo’s interests were to essentially “throw away” Terri, and Terri’s wishes were no longer relevant since she was no longer concious. So while it might have been useful to point to Prof. Landsburg’s gallows humor and feign outrage and disgust, perhaps Michelle would have better served to read the damned article to end and find out that Landsburg is on her side (and the same goes for Allahpundit…next time read the damn article all the way through and engage brain).