Why the Schiavo story was a really scary Tales From the Crypt episode

[El Fuego]

In Tales From the Crypt, the protagonist's demise always has something to do with their particular vice or sin, so it's like a cautionary tale.

Terri Schiavo was a naturally heavy girl. She weighed 200 pounds in high school, and starved her way down to a tiny 105 pounds on a liquid diet. She got the husband she wanted by being small and pretty, and then became bulimic to stay petite. Of the seven deadly sins, her's is vanity.

So she always starved herself to stay thin. And how did she die? Forced starvation. That's pretty ironic.

And the really scary part is that she was obviously very vain, and her final fate was to become famous and be shown on television throughout the whole world while she is in a vegetative state without control over what she looks like. Any woman will tell you that if they're about to have their 15 minutes of fame, we want lipstick, dammit. For a vain woman, a fate worse than death.

The Cryptkeeper himself wrote this one.

[Ilsa]

1. I thought about alot that myself, about her public image

for the last years of her life. I wonder how she would have cringed, having her image plastered all over tv and tabloids, having her gown yanked up to show her feeding tube in her belly on Fox News, when she was obsessed with her appearance.

We all have human frailties. She receives no judgement from me on the irony of circumstances of her tragic debilitation and death.

Interesting parallel, though. I haven't thought about that show in awhile.

[Nite Owl]

2. I had thought about that too.

Such irony. It was so disrespectful of her parents to let those pictures be aired.

[El Fuego]

3. I was thinking the same thing about her parents. (nt)