Christopher Reeve died yesterday at the age of 52. Although Reeve attained iconic stature due to his low-key performances in the Superman films, his film career was, let's face it, pretty uninspired, except for the legions of Somewhere In Time fans. I myself am partial to Reeve's performance in 1987's Street Smart opposite Morgan Freeman.
But it was the Christopher Reeve who emerged subsequent to the 1995 riding accident that left him paralyzed that most people will remember; the tireless advocate for people with spinal cord injuries, who most recently became the most high-profile advocate for stem cell research because of its promise in helping people with just this sort of injury.
The last thing George W. Bush wants is for stem cell research to become a front-burner hot button issue in the waning days of this presidential campaign, because it simply underscores the inconsistency of his position, which is designed solely to appease his fundamentalist base. Bush doesn't object to the many embryos that are the by-products of in-vitro techniques being destroyed, but God forbid we should use them to help people. And we all know that he has absolutely no reverence for the lives of the soldiers he's feeding into the meatgrinder of Iraq, nor for the Iraqi children our bombs are killing.
The fact of the matter is that Bush's stand on stem-cell research makes no logical sense. Until today, he was reasonably successful at keeping this a side-burner issue, thanks to the short memories of Americans who have already forgotten Ronald Reagan. Today, everything's changed.
I hope Michael J. Fox is ready for his close-up.
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