Now that the media is firmly hooked up to the feeding tube known as Terri Schiavo, there are a lot of “experts” out there with newfound “consultant” status. These people crop up all the time, sometimes reappearing in new guises, but this new set is particularly repellant. I’ll tell you why - plus, Adam Felber does some REAL INVESTIGATING - in a moment.

First, though, I want to call some attention to media exile Randall Terry. He’s back, serving as a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents. You might have forgotten Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. He’s the guy who lobbed fetuses at pregnant women, staged violent anti-abortion protests, threatened to “execute” abortionists in 1995, and largely disappeared after one of his longtime friends did just that in 1998. Activities since then seem to include declaring bankruptcy, soliciting donations to improve his own house, getting censured by his church for being too eager to impregnate single and married women, and neglecting to pay child support to his first wife. He stands as one of the few people that the media ever deemed Too Crazy to serve as a spokesman for anything.

But that was pre-9/11 thinking, back when declaring America a “Christian-based” nation and that Islam “dictates that followers use terror and killing” wasn’t considered mainstream politics. He’s back now. You can see him on any number of news channels, loudly asserting that Terri Schiavo is currently reading scripture while sipping Chardonnay and conversing with a crisp Oxford accent.

But Terry’s not who I’m focussed on today. This is better:

I was watching MSNBC last night, and the always-smiling Joe Scarborough came on to do his show, this one clearly geared towards offering up the hard-news premise that Terri Schiavo Should Live! [In fairness, the preceding program was likewise devoted to investigating why exactly everyone ought to believe that Terri Schiavo Must Die!] One guest that Joe was particularly looking forward to was “Nobel Prize-nominated neurologist, Dr. William Hammesfahr.” Hammesfahr, who was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1999, is very much in the news lately. See, the Nobel Prize-nominated doctor has examined Terri Schiavo, finds her to have a lot more compos in her mentis than her husband gives her credit for, and believes he can help her. And he was nominated for a Nobel Prize, as Joe Scarborough pointed out every time he brought up the name.

So it was a little disturbing for us all when the Nobel Prize-nominated neurologist came on and seemed, well, a little bit wacky. Clearly, all Scarborough wanted from him was some sage pronouncements about how the court-appointed doctors’ evaluations of Terri Schiavo might be inaccurate. But the good doctor (who was, in 1999, nominated for a Nobel Prize), went a bit farther than that. In fact, he went on to assert that Terri Schiavo didn’t have a heart attack in the first place, that her parents had told her not to go home with her husband that night…

“Wait a minute,” said Scarborough, with the leery look of a man who sees his interview starting to come off the rails. “You’re not suggesting that Michael Schiavo was trying to murder his wife?”

Yes. Yes, the Nobel-nominated doctor was suggesting just that. He began to elaborate as Scarborough’s eyes darted from side to side as though they were looking for a convenient way to escape his face. The interview ended shortly afterwards.

That’s when Adam Felber, satirist, turned into Adam Felber, investimagative reporter. Using a state-of-the-art research tool known as “Google,” I was able to uncover what had escaped the attention of the crack team of investimagators at MSNBC.

First, visiting the Nobel Prize’s own website, I discovered that names of actual nominees for the Prize are “kept secret for 50 years.” A couple of phone calls and some in-depth mathematical work helped me calculate that 1999 was in fact less than 50 years ago. What was going on here?

Further investigation produced this: From Hammesfahr’s website, the actual nomination. It was written by his Congressman and friend, Representative Michael Bilirakis (R., FL).

My favorite detail is the first sentence, wherein Bilirakis submits Hammesfahr “for the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine.” Clearly, Hammesfahr is underbilling himself - he was actually nominated for two Nobel Prizes in the same year. In the same sentence, to be precise, which is probably some sort of record.

[Was Felber done Uncovering Truth? Not hardly, gentle readers. As a sidelight, I’d like to point out that the previous year Bilirakis had gone before Congress to announce he’d nominated another of his constituents, Dr. Paul Dreschnak, for a “Nobel Peace Prize.” It is not clear what sort of formal role Congressman Bilirakis serves on the Nobel Committees in the fields of Peace and Medicine. And Peace Medicine.]

From this point, our story devolves into a bizarrely complicated set of interconnections that define the new genre known as “Florida Gothic.” For instance, it turns out that some conservatives are currently reviling Rep. Bilirakis’ son, “Gus” Michael Bilirakis, who serves in the Florida legislature. Apparently, “Gus” played a role in rewriting the Florida law that now includes “feeding tubes” in the definition of “life prolonging procedures,” which is a key component of the recent court decisions. Suspiciously, Gus also served on the board of Terri Schiavo’s hospice. Confusingly, Gus also just voted for a bill that might prolong Schiavo’s life. Presumably, there’s a Nobel Prize nomination for Gus in here somewhere.

So what’s going on here? I’m proud to say that I have no idea. I do know this, though: We’d like the Schiavo case to be about the Right to Live vs. the Right to Die. But it’s not. It’s a giant, incestuous, silly mess, full of self-aggrandizing quacks, self-righteous maniacs, and under-informed and grandstanding politicians and reporters. I’m not sure what the right thing for Terri Schiavo is, but I’m certain that if I was asked to determine which of the players in this case deserve to be euthanized, she’d be nowhere near the top of my list.