By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--December 25, 2016
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-- BombThrowers
National Public Radio mainstay Diane Rehm, who did Hollywood a disservice by missing her calling as a horror movie voice actor, has at long last retired after nearly four decades of boring and infantilizing helpless Washington, D.C. area taxi fares.
Her retirement Dec. 23 is an early Christmas present for Americans.
The fossilized crypt-keeper of taxpayer-funded NPR, a pillar of the left-wing media establishment, is beloved by wrong-thinking people across the fruited plain. She also helped starve her husband so he would die prematurely which makes her a heroic figure — a trailblazer of sorts — in feminist circles.NPR loves to imagine itself as an oasis of civility compared to nasty commercial talk radio. NPR host Diane Rehm has written haughty op-eds about how Rush Limbaugh et al are a blight on the radio. But wondering if Donald Trump is mentally ill? Apparently, that’s civil and educational. Rehm launched an hour-long discussion of Trump’s dysfunctional mental state on Thursday based on a Tuesday New York Times article about psychologists breaking the “Goldwater Rule” and diagnosing a dangerous presidential aspirant as nuts. Rehm began by declaring this subject was a fertile topic for debate: “In a break with professional protocol, some psychiatrists have offered public negative views on Donald Trump’s mental fitness to be president. Others in the field say diagnosing from afar is unethical and usually inaccurate.”
REHM: So how would you tap the mood among Democrats? Is it very similar to that of Republican primary voters who are out there saying, you know, we want something new, we want something different? O’MALLEY: It’s somewhat similar, though in our party, we don’t have the sort of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment that Donald Trump seems to adept at tapping in the ranks of the Republican Party.He later added, “I have proposed going even further than the president in extending executive action, as we forge a consensus, to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And I am opposed to the xenophobic, racist rants from people like Donald Trump, who want to take away the birthright of American-born kids and all the rest that goes with that sort of resurgence of the Know-Nothing Party.” Rehm could always be counted to push the Left’s crisis-mongering talking points on the issues of the day. For example, in 2012 she asked, “Are we creeping towards a wiping out of the availability of birth control?”
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SANDERS: How often do we have serious discussions about the fact that the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world? We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. We have more and more billionaires while the middle class sinks. You tell me. You follow the media. Is that an issue that is widely discussed? REHM: All I can tell you is that on public radio, I hear a fair amount of that. On public television, on Jim Lehrer’s program, I hear a fair amount of that. But certainly, I’m glad you’re here. You’re reaching millions of people in this country and around the world. […]Rehm is also a hero to the Left because she helped to starve her husband John to death. She became a crusader for so-called right-to-die laws that would legalize the abominable practice known as assisted suicide. Of course there is not now nor has there ever been a “right to die.” Something that is a biological certainty cannot be a right. She became a celebrity fundraiser for a group called Compassion and Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society. But it’s clear that John Rehm’s death wasn’t solely about easing any pain or suffering he may have been experiencing. His artificially accelerated demise was about her. As Tim Graham writes, “Rehm is mad her husband died when she was not present. It was not then just his right to die, but her preference that he die exactly when she wanted it.” Graham points to a fawning 2015 profile in the Washington Post that gave Rehm’s side of the story.
She spent the night with him, and in the morning she went home for a quick shower. Then she received a call — come fast, he’s slipping away. She missed his death by 20 minutes. She is still angry about that. If he could have planned his death, she and his family would have been there. “That’s all I keep thinking about,” she said. “Why can’t we make this more peaceful and humane?” In “a long interview in her office,” Rehm asserted “I feel the way that John had to die was just totally inexcusable…It was not right.” She also said “Kevorkian was before his time…He was too early. The country wasn’t ready.”Angry? Upset because her husband’s weakened body — she put him in this state, by the way — couldn’t hold on while she stepped out for a shampoo? Perhaps she would have preferred a death ceremony as in Logan’s Run or Soylent Green? Treating death so cavalierly is a danger that Americans don’t quite appreciate yet. This helps to explain why states like Oregon have legalized “medical aid in dying” which allows a medical doctor to chuck the Hippocratic Oath and prescribe lethal medication to someone with a terminal illness who claims to want to check out of this life early. Rehm has helped to glamorize the idea that people whose existence inconveniences us should be put down like an occasionally incontinent house pet. This is not hyperbole. This past July a man named Mark Langedijk was lawfully killed in the Netherlands by his physician by lethal injection. Mark Langedijk was just 41 years old at the time of his death. And what dread disease threatened to make the remainder of his days a living hell? Alcoholism. Yes, alcoholism. That’s it. That’s the very low bar that earned Langedijk a death sentence. The Daily Signal reports:
Mark received 21 hospital or rehab admissions over eight years of getting help for his addiction. Due to the Netherlands’ euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide law that allows a person with “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement” to be euthanized, Mark’s solution to his addiction and request to die was granted. “My brother suffered from depression and anxiety and tried to ‘cure’ it with alcohol,” Marcel Langedijk told The Independent. Marcel said his brother took the “humane” way out.In addition to pushing left-wing policies that are destroying America, Diane Rehm has cheapened the value of human life. And you tax dollars helped her do it.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.