Since they’ve resorted to sending me emails, I guess CNN really, really, seriously wants everyone to know who’s “hosting the first Republican Presidential primary debate in the “First-in-the-Nation” primary state of New Hampshire on Monday, June 13 at 8 p.m. ET from Saint Anselm College. The debate will be moderated by John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent and anchor of John King, USA….”
Tonight’s particpants vying for the chance to lose in 2012 are Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, RonPaul, Pawlenty, Romney, and Santorum. (The Fox “inaugural debate” slate back on May 5 — don’t ask me why that wasn’t the “first”, I am not now nor have I ever been an RNC member — was Cain, Gary Johnson, RonPaul, and Pawlenty.) CNN is “providing viewers a social experience to engage with the live broadcast” (liveblogging, twitter, facebook) but none of you can afford to pay me enough to sit through that unedited farce.
On the other hand, this is what the BBC had scheduled for Monday evening:
Terry Pratchett’s BBC documentary reopens debate on assisted dying
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When his own time comes to die, the author Sir Terry Pratchett has said, he would like to be sitting on a chair on the lawn at his home, with a brandy in one hand and a glass of life-ending chemicals in the other. “And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.”
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The question of his own death – and the right to choose its timing and manner – has become more pressing for 63-year-old Pratchett since his diagnosis in 2007 with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
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Now the vastly successful fantasy writer has made a documentary about the subject of assisted dying, for which he travelled to Switzerland to film the final moments of Peter, a British man suffering from motor neurone disease who had chosen to end his life at the Dignitas clinic…
I hope the whole documentary gets posted online afterwards, not least because Pratchett is one of the living writers I most admire.