Demagogue

Patricia Heaton, the woman who played the bitchy wife on "Everybody Loves Raymond," apparently sees herself as something on an expert on the Terri Schiavo case.

And to show just how serious Heaton is about the situation, she granted an exclusive interview to Entertainment Tonight to discuss it.

And thank god she did

Patricia, who is a mother of four boys, says she has thought about this a lot. "As an actor, I visualize these situations when I'm doing a role and in this situation, I've thought about, day in and day out in a hospital with my own child and it's very difficult, very difficult."

As someone not blessed with the precious skills required to act on a television sitcom, I am totally incapable for comprehending the moral difficulties raised by this case or feeling any sort of empathy for anyone. But fortunately Heaton is.

Heaton went on

"People on death row have more appeals than Terri," Patricia told our MARK STEINES. "And she's committed no crime except that she can't speak."

Nice non sequitur - but since Schiavo's case has gone before at least 19 judges in the last several years, I don't know what the hell Heaton is talking about.

Heaton doesn't know what the hell she is talking about either, judging by things like this

I think I've always had a heart for people with no voice. And Terri literally has no voice. There's a long history of this kind of treatment in other cultures. We know that the Nazis felt the same way about the disabled, that before they started taking the lives of Jews and Catholics and homosexuals, they started with the disabled.

Yes, that is exactly the same thing: Schiavo's apparent desire not to be kept alive in persistent vegetative state is very much like a state-orchestrated attempt to create a master race.

They do both involve the word "state" after all.