Terri Schiavo's Brother Rips Olbermann At D.C. March for Life

January 22nd, 2009 10:24 PM

Thursday’s March for Life protest in Washington D.C. had a media-bias angle when Bobby Schindler, brother of the late Terri Schiavo, ripped into MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann from the podium for suggesting his sister’s death (after removal of her feeding tube) was "legally and morally correct." In other words, Keith was the March for Life’s honorary "Worst Person in the World."

Olbermann rehashed the "far right" end of the Terri Schiavo controversy on the January 6 edition of Countdown, awarding the bronze (or "Worse" person in the world) to the Dobsonian theocrats:

The bronze tonight to Tom McCluskey, vice president of James Dobson‘s lobbying outfit Family Research Council, protesting the nomination of Thomas Perrelli by the president-elect to become the number three man at the Justice Department. Why? Because Perrelli was one of the lawyers who represented Michael Schiavo as he tried to end the Gothic nightmare induced by the far right, as he struggled to have a court order enforced to remove the breathing tube from his wife, Terri, whose brain function has ceased.

The careers of Senate Majority Bill Frist and his House counter-part Tom Delay crashed in large part because they took this private tragedy into Congress and exploited it politically, even as 70 percent of this country told them to stop their cynical manipulation of this beleaguered family. Now these Dobsonian theocrats are protesting an appointment at the Justice Department because the man was on the morally and legally correct side of the debate.

In an earlier e-mail to Lifenews.com, Schindler suggested:  "News media bias promoting the killing of the severely disabled like Terri is well known, but it's not often that a media commentator so openly displays his vicious hatred of those who simply love life as Keith Olbermann did."

A sizeable number of members of Congress also addressed the crowd, included Republican enators David Vitter of Louisiana and Sam Brownback of Kansas. Representatives included Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), Todd Akin (R-Mo.), Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Steve King (R-Iowa), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Gregg Harper ( R-Miss.), Henry Brown (R-S.C.), Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), Mary Fallin (R-Okla.), Phil Roe (.-Tenn.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Jack Kingston ( R-Ga.), Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), Pete Olson (R-Texas), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). I’d say Pence and Franks were the best.

Jennifer Harper of The Washington Times previewed the inevitable media skipping past this massive protest, and she interviewed me for Thursday's paper:

"Anyone climbing on a bus from somewhere else, thinking they're going to wave into a network news camera, is going to be very disappointed. In the last 20 years, despite large annual crowds, the liberal manufacturers of TV have simply never found the March for Life to be the slightest bit newsworthy," said Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, drawing a comparison to a liberal antiwar activist.

"Everyone knows that a single Cindy Sheehan in the summer seems to be worth more than 20,000 pro-lifers in January."