This is lighting up Twitter. Colmes also uses the incident in a blog post today, linking to this 2005 WaPo article:
In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.
Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
“That’s my little guy,” Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father’s hand.
Is nothing off limits?
Here’s my position on mourning, Obama at Dover:
President Obama made a trip to Dover Air Force Base to be present when the coffins of troops and DEA agents were returned from Afghanistan.
I have no problem with it.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that everyone mourns in his or her own way.
I reject the attempts by some on the left to use this event as an excuse to attack George W. Bush, who chose to mourn in private with the families of soldiers killed in action, rather than greeting coffins in public.
I similarly reject attempts by some on the right to use this event as an excuse to attack Obama, who chose to mourn at the scene of returning coffins with photographers recording an event he considered important.
To each, his own.
Video via Mediate:
The other thing this shows, once again, is how low the media will go against whoever the Republican nominee is, and how easy it will be for me to jump to that person’s defense, even if not the person I supported.
Update: Santorum reacted today on the campaign trail, via National Journal, Question on Newborn Has Santorum Fighting Back Tears:
In a dramatic moment on Monday, Rick Santorum fought back tears and his wife Karen grew misty-eyed when a voter asked them about criticism of their 1996 decision to bring home a newborn who died soon after childbirth.
Santorum choked up as he described the family’s decision to bring home their child Gabriel after the newborn died in the hospital. Noting that his wife worked as a neo-natal nurse, Santorum said: “It was so important … for the family to recognize the life of that child and for the children to know they had a brother.”
The exchange was prompted by a voter who said she had heard liberal Fox News commentator Alan Colmes criticize the decision to bring home the child. “To some who don’t recognize the dignity of all human life, who see it as a blob of tissue … this is somehow weird, recognizing the humanity of your son. Somehow weird, somehow odd and should be subject to ridicule.”
Earlier, as Santorum spoke, his wife Karen was heard to say: “It’s so inappropriate.”
Santorum concluded his response by restating his commitment to pursue an anti-abortion agenda. “I will stand and fight,” he said. “I will hope to be able to look into the eyes of the American public and say ‘Be more welcoming, open up your heart to love more, to love all life.”
Update No. 2 – The pressure must have been pretty intense:
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Comments
Was running around the house when this aired,thought I was hearing things. Sorry to find out my hearing is just fine. These people will stop at nothing, shameful.
Is there any wonder why Colmes was dropped from “Hannity and *”? Liberals have no sense of shame.
Vile and shameful. It makes you wonder how some of these people can look at themselves in the mirror.
Alan Colmes is a pig. Why Fox still gives this guy a forum is beyond me.
Having seen both my older sister and my wife devastated by miscarriages earlier than 20 weeks … I find Alan Colmes’ negative judgment of Rick Santorum at such a painful moment truly astonishing. Not only that Mr. Colmes would feel that way … but that he would also try to use this to score political points against Santorum. Despicable.
Colmes is also a doctor, I believe. One thing for certain, he is a twit.
I’m glad Colmes got called out on this immediately.
Alan Colmes has to get a long extension ladder just to scratch a snake’s belly.
He’s always so over the top that I’ve long suspected it must be a schtick. (re: him and Hannity)
He’s a liberal’s liberal.
Still, I don’t know how he lives with himself sometimes.
Not new . I have seen similar ‘attacks’ in the past -which is how I learnt about it.
I think it is nothing to do with returning coffins .
My personal opinion is that ‘mourning’ has got to have give & take. However there must be some restraints .& thus socially acceptable customs because dead bodies are a severe health hazard.
This was a non viable foetus. I would think it a private time between parents only.Then it is goodbye -not dragging it around town.
My opinion of the Santorum family is still -those shorts! I am not buying the family halo thing .
.
Birds of a feather?
Care to elaborate ?
Are you endorsing/defending Colmes?
They did not “drag it around town.” They took the baby home so their kids could see Gabriel Michael and say goodbye. Death is a part of life – I don’t know that I would have handled it that way but I will support him and his wife in their decision to have their living children understand what happened to little Gabriel.
Yes, birds of a feather.
Whether it was a “viable fetus” or not is of no consequence. This was a child the family was looking forward to, was happy about. The loss was just as major as if the baby had been 4 weeks older – which would have meet everyone’s definition of viable.
What the Santorum family did was no different than families having wakes for deceased relatives.
Yeah Yeah Yeah. But don’t these people understand “private’? Why should visitors to his state office have to peer at a dead foetus pic ?
What is so special about him . He does not have the key to life & I note he has co- joined this loss with abortion.
Two completely different things.
Perspective needed all around.
Your first comment was so poorly written that it was hard to understand exactly what you were saying. Your subsequent comment makes it clear that you and Colmes are disturbed birds of a feather.
Actually I am very much up on Pennsylvanian foetus . I took the time to read the Grand Jury in the case of Kermit Gosling. Lots of pics there
THen there is Penn State. No pics yet.
Something is very wrong in the kingdom of Pennsylvania.
Bigger than weird Santorum family rites.
Why should they look at a picture? For the same reason that they’d look at a picture of someone’s 2-year-old or 20-year-old child who was now deceased. This was a baby; he only lived 2 hours, but had someone killed him in that time that person would have been convicted for murder. And in the big picture what’s the difference between a life of 2 hours and one of 80 years?
Wakes are pretty ghoulish too, don’t you think?
It never surprises me when a Dem/Lib goes to lower and lower depths. They have a fleet of backhoes on retainer just for that purpose. >:-(
It is astounding how liberals can continue to set new low standards, then fail to meet those standards.
Colmes is a rude, interruptive, supercilious, know-it-all, and mouthy individual. This time he has hit the Olympics of Callous and Unfeeling. For shame. Please write Fox News to register your disgust?
Sorry. Can’t watch. Alan Colmes.
Colmes is one of the most despicable people on TV today. And that says a great deal. Why Fox keeps him on the air is absurd. He belongs on MSNBC with all the other lunatics…
Hearing Alan Colmes rant about what is outside of the mainstream is pretty rich considering he’s an Upper West Side liberal ideologue who has no clue what mainstream is.
Alan Colmes couldn’t find the “mainstream” at Niagara Falls!
I am glad the fellow from National Review wouldn’t take that garbage! Like I said elsewhere, the MSM will cease any remaining pretense of objectivity in 2012. Alan Colmes just gave us a little taste of what is to come…
To call this belief contempt doesn’t even come near it. I can’t contemplate loosing a child and this intellectual waste criticizes how a family deals with that. Please Fox show some standards and dump him. Don’t worry, MSNBC will pick him right up.
Well, until today, I thought Comrade Colmes was a half-decent Lefty.
So, in one week, I get to scratch off Ann (the Shriek) Coulter and Comrade Colmes.
Not bad at all.
Colmes’ post says much more about Colmes than about GOVERNORS JOURNAL NAMES SCOTT WALKER GOVERNOR OF THE YEAR. Andrew Cuomo is runner up.
Posted at 2:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds
Santorum. I’m waiting to hear which liberals will denounce Colmes’ crossing the line from the political to what should be respected as an intensely private grief.
If Chelsea Clinton was off limits to the press, why isn’t the death of a child of a Republican politician equally off limits?
Colmes was booted off Hannity shortly after his Palin post blamimg Sarah for Trig being born witth Down Syndrome.
This is a perfect example of liberal “sensitivities”
Not a fan of Rick Santorum, but I will defend him, this was an extremely vulgar disgusting attack on him and his family. Alan Colmes has a deranged mind to make such a disgusting comment about a little child that passed away and the santorums want to grieve in a way that they choose for their family. People like Colmes why I’m no longer a demonRat. Disgusting people.
I agree with others who have commented, I used to think Colmes was somewhat decent, he isn’t. Fire him Fox, he can go on Keith Olbermann’s show.
Anybody who thought Alan Colmes was a decent fellow must not have been watching Alan Colmes over the past decade. He belongs right up there with Ueberdork…
I clicked over to Colme’s blog – why didn’t you warn us, Professor? The comments posted to that entry are so despicable that they make Colmes look positively wholesome! What a sick world those people inhabit.
It’s frightening to know that some of those people are allowed to walk around unsupervised… and they vote.
The jerks who are the most incensed all seem to follow the same pattern. It wasn’t a cherished child that was lost… it was a “thing”.
Nice family you have there Rick, be a shame if we have to break their kneecaps to get you to get rid of you. This wasn’t an attack on Santorum, but on Santorum’s family. The attacks on Cain weren’t about him but about hurting his family and causing them to doubt him. And Bachmann’s husband, natural and foster children? Perry’s parents?
All I can say is after the treatment given to the Palin family, what did we expect?
I suppose Ann Romney’s MS will become a similar point of ridicule soon.
It’s sad to say but the only thing that will ever sort out the insect souls of people like Colmes is an up-close and personal punch in the mouth. Nothing else will matter and it can’t come too soon after this emission of slime.
I doubt that I would have handled it that way, but then, it really is not my goddamn business. Colmes acted like a pig in bringing it up. Shame on him.
Alan Colmes, like the rest of his liberal fascist sadist ilk, are sad and pathetically lost in their souls and conscience, if they even have one, in all it’s form..
Feeling sorry for Mr Colmes, not animosity or hatred, though the only consideration of afterthought and feeling, is about the extent of his worth, as even that amount of consideration and afterthought, is truly more than he deserves..
[…] Death, and the mourning of a death, is one of those subjects that shouldn’t be used as political fodder. I agree totally with Professor Jacobson, to each his own. […]
Ok Still a few hours left in the day.
Will someone mention Santorum sponsoring Sandusky as “”Congressional Angel of Adoption or some such sh*t.?
At least Colmes apologized – not so Santorum.
That will happen right after the Nobel Peace Prize committee members apologize for bestowing their award on Obama, who has killed more children with drone attacks than Sandusky has ever met.
You know, I haven’t always agreed with Santorum’s policies. But that doesn’t have a dang thing to do with what we’re talking about. Please try to stay on topic.
My first thought was – does Alan Colmes have any children of his own? Because what parent would ever think what he thought? Well, no surprise, but as far as I can determine he does not and is free to indulge himself 365 days of the year and sneer at weak human traits like compassion and love.
There’s a woman in Denver who takes professional photos (for free) of parents with their babies who die shortly after birth. Far from being maudlin, the photos I’ve seen are beautiful, radiating love and peace. For every crank like Colmes, there are actual human beings like this photographer who understands.
I’ve got to say that I find what Santorum did to be creepy and ghoulish. But then I find much of the way Catholics relate to death and the dead ghoulish. Wakes, relics, burying people in the church instead of in a cemetery where they belong. If you can stomach those things then taking a dead body home and playing with it can seem appropriate too.
A cartoon avatar for a cartoonish comment.
Exactly.
This is the new Liberal tactic. Destroy any Conservative who dares face them, and destroy his/her family as well. Liberals know that the Family is where the Conservative derives its greatest strength.
They did it to Sarah and her family. They will do it to everyone else. That is the tactic of thugs and dictators: to destroy the family, since it is the Last Bastion in the defense of individual rights against the might of the State.
Thus, the Family must be destroyed, and the Liberal State will stand as Sovereign.
I’m sure Colmes got an Atta-Boy from other liberals for his original comments. They fit the same profile of disgusting people.
People used to have funerals in their homes. Why is it any different than that? Seeing the body is a way to get closure and say goodbyes. In this case they never got a chance to say hello, so I can see why they made the choice that they did. This is a very personal issue and each family should make their own decisions.
I can’t find the link but I recently read an article about a mother who held her premature infant for hours who had been declared dead by the doctors, but it turns out he was not dead and he is now alive and healthy. It is not abnormal for a parent to stay with the dead infant and in this case thank God the mother did. I have not studied any science behind this, but how do we really know that the entire being is dead just because there are no vitals. Maybe the baby did hear the lullubies and even if not, maybe the mother needed to sing her child a lullaby before letting him go so she could have closure.
Rick S’s wife wrote and published a book on this when Rick was in the Senate. Don’t you think she did that at least in part for political purposes?
And perhaps Rick S shouldn’t be so vocal in opposing what others do in the hospital and bedrooms/homes if he doesn’t want others doing the same to him.
This isn’t just about Santorum. We have a culture that ridicules the idea that a premature baby is a human being. I don’t care what people do in their bedrooms.
Having a private funeral for your premature child is just so sick right? Sicker than whatever it is that the abortion clinics do with all of the little bodies? I have never sought an answer to that question and I don’t think I want to know. I will just hope for the best, I don’t think I could handle peeling the candy coating off of that one.
ella8, show me something where it is recommended by doctors/nurses/caregivers (rather than being an option) for the dead baby to be taken home and held by the siblings. (This is different than the recommendations for the parents).
Children go to funerals and say goodye to the deceased. Why is a private funeral at home any different? It does not matter what the technocrats recommend, each family mourns in their own way.
ella8, do you think most parents expect their children to hold the corpse at a funeral? That’s apparently what happened at home.
And please show me a situation where someone ridiculed a born (as opposed to unborn) premature baby as not being a human being.
Do you think most people would agree that jimbo3 knows better how the Santorum family ought to mourn a dead child than the Santorums themselves?
Behold the Nanny Stater in all his glory.
I talked to my grandmother and kissed her after she passed. She was a grown woman, so holding her would not be appropriate. I have never mourned the loss of a baby, but I would think holding them would be an appropriate way to mourn.
Ok . Ok.
A family member works in Palliative care & every day handles dead & dying people. Sometimes I can smell it & she has come down with staff infections.
There are protocols . Even if someone dies at home the authorities must be notified . An experienced person cleans the body & prevents infection. Generally it is required that the body is removed in a few hours to sanitary conditions. (refrigeration ). If the body is open to viewing chemicals must be injected.
Of course this s controlled by county /state health rules. Pennsylvania does not look to me to be up on these hings. I would be interested to know what The Amish do. Or what theydo in the Ghettos of Pittsburgh.
As to foetuses- the guidelines have changed as the technology has improved. A foetus of 18 weeks generally requires a funeral. Before that it is still a problem to dispose of. Just think about it.
As for Grandma/pa – The Griswalds were a bit un PC.
If you really believed that you would have to peel the candy coating from your eyelids and see abortion.for what it really is. What makes the born and unborn any different? The real issue here is that if a family mourns the loss of a 20 week old clump of cells (fetus, contents of the womb, parasite) then they are putting a human face on that child. It just doesn’t blend well with all of the sugar and euphemisms that the left holds so dear to their hearts.
Henry, I’ll be happy to stay out of Rick Santorium’s decisions if he’ll stay out of others’ decisions related to abortion and homosexuality.
I agree with you; Rick is the Nanny Stater in all his glory.
I don’t suppose a few Transylvania jokes would lighten things up.
Ella,you’re now making this into an abortion issue. And one big difference in this case vs. 99.99% of the others is that this baby did survive for a while outside of the womb.
[…] https://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/alan-colmes-mocks-how-rick-santorum-mourned-dead-child/ […]
I cannot bear to look at Alan Colmes. Even with the mute button on. I have never seen such arrogance that he showed and the lies he told (with a straight face yet). He twisted everything to fit his agenda. I quit watching Hannity/Colmes ten or more years ago. Those two are exact opposites. One is so boorish and offensive (Colmes) and the other so maudlin (Hannity). I hated Hannity trying to persuade those insentive liberals to aa more sympathetic way of thinking. He practically groveled, begging them to change their minds. I was embarassed for him.
The mask slips and reveals that jimbo endorses Colmes’ behavior because he dislikes Santorum’s positions on homosexual marriage and abortion. Disgraceful.