Over the weekend, President Obama spoke at the commencement at Hampton University. In his address, the President stressed the power of education and chastised the media for trivializing information:

And meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter.  And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- (laughter) -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.

While I don’t think that electronic devices are inherently non-informative, I do think that many commercial firms exploit information and pervert its true import. Since the demise of Court TV, unfortunately, CNN’s TruTV (its successor) has turned into a purely exploitative cable channel.

Today its In Session begins “coverage” of another trial that should never have occurred, Oregon v Jeff and Marci Beagley. In Session anchors will undoubtedly raise their voices in outrage and rail against the parents who let their 16-year-old son decide whether or not he wanted to see a doctor in his illness.

For many years, states have required parents to provide adequate medical care for their children. Most cases like the Beagleys’ are handled in family court (where there are no juries) as negligence. A typical situation might be, for example, that a public-health official would have the family summoned before a judge, who would hear testimony of physicians about the child’s condition and chances of recovery with and without medical care. Then the judge would issue an order that the child must be placed in the care of a physician. If the parents refuse to comply, they’re found to be in contempt of court and jailed, and the child is then put in the temporary custody of health-care officials.

By the age of 16, though, a child has reached the “age of reason” (usually the legal age is somewhere between 5 and 11). In some states a 16-year-old is at the age of consent for sexual activity. In some states a child of 14 must consent to his own medical treatment. Sixteen-year-olds are routinely tried as adults.

Oregon’s Death with Dignity Law

There’s a very great irony that the Beagley case was tied in Oregon, where the state permits people to commit suicide under the care of a physician.

So, let’s try to puzzle out what “The State” must believe Jeff and Marci Beagley did wrong:

Well, obviously the crime was not calling a doctor when their near-adult son developed a “urinary tract blockage.” I have no idea what that condition was specifically, but it sounds a bit like kidney stones. So, this must mean that if you have a kidney stone and decide to try to pass it without a doctor’s intervention, you are committing a crime in Oregon.

Worse yet, the parents made the mistake of asking their near-adult son if he wanted to see a doctor. They should have left him alone in the bathroom, I guess, to deal with the problem as he wished.

If the parents did not know their son was ill, they would also be innocent, I suppose. And if the parents were not members of a church that holds as a principal tenet that all ailments must be left up to God, their ignorance of his illness would have been simply stupid, not homicidal.

Ad Absurdum

Clearly what the Beagleys ought to have done, given the Death with Dignity Law, was to call a physician, tell him their son was terminally ill, and ask him to sit by the bedside stroking his hand comfortingly and with dignity while he died.

Sidebar to In Session: Please stick with live coverage of real murder trials, or send reporters to cover the Supreme Court, or send reporters to Chicago to cover all the shenanigans going on here.  Enough already of family tragedies.