Polls distort Terri's life and death

So many people take the word of pollsters for making decisions for everything from who to vote for, which referendums to vote for or against, and even on whether to kill a human being by dehydration/starvation. Few question those polls, even though they have no idea what was truly asked, or even if the question was honestly accurate in what it was stating.

Awhile back, I wrote a little bit about the blatant propagandizing that goes on today, and has been for many years.

Nat Hentoff is a Jewish atheist columnist who has been writing for years, and is pro-life. He has written on Terri Schiavo and so many other subjects, it is hard to not find words by him somewhere online. His latest is on the POLLS that so many people based their decisions on, and yet were so far off in what was truly going on in her situation. MANY went on TV to talk about this case as 'experts', but never read anything BUT the media reports and the polls!

In tracking down his column today, I also came across a transcript of an interview that was done the same day Terri died... and the other expert (law expert Jamin Rasking) being interviewed with him, even said this!

JAMIN RASKIN: Well, let me first say that Nat Hentoff, whom I respect a lot,
obviously knows a lot of the details of this case. So I speak from the perspective of someone who has followed it only in the newspapers.

HOW DOES ONE go about making an expert opinion, which many take as Gospel, when one does not know anything about the topic being discussed, in this case, a disabled woman's very LIFE hung on this public false information!

I have read the documents, the discharge summary from the first hospital, etc. So did Nat Hentoff. And he also read the questions that pollsters were asking, as I did. I stopped answering them when I saw that they were so one-sided, so wrong, so much ... propaganda.

Hentoff discusses several polls in this article, including ABC's statement for their poll, and then explains the error in it.
"Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 16 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness, and her condition is irreversible."

and makes this point as well as many others:

In the March 24 Newsday, before Terri died, Cathy Cleaver Ruse, of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accurately and bluntly revealed the inexcusable incompetence of the pollsters:

"The (ABC News) poll also says the family disagreement is whether she would have wanted to 'be kept alive.' But Schiavo is not dying — or wasn't, while she was being fed. So the question isn't whether she should be 'kept alive' or 'allowed to die,' but whether to stop feeding her, in which case she will die."

And so she did.

He also quotes another blogger:

The ABC News poll, for example, led to this penetrating response by a valuable blogger, Ed Morrissey (captainsquartersblog.com): "Since when does ABC conduct push-polling for euthanasia?"

I urge you to read his entire column....