NEWS: The Doctor is Out

CULTURE: The Doctor is Out

Doctor Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician who assisted in the deaths of hundreds of terminally ill people, will be released from prison on parole in June 2007, Michigan state corrections officials said today. Kevorkian was sentenced to a 10-to-25-year prison sentence after 60 Minutes filmed him administering a fatal injection in 1998. A jury found him guilty of second degree homicide.

Kevorkian has pledged to refrain from assisting in any more suicides upon his release from prison and is reportedly himself terminally ill with Hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion.

Still, he'll most likely remain a divisive figure. The 78-year-old former pathologist, whose medical license was revoked after his first two assisted suicides, was a complicated public figure. Even those who agree with his views that terminal patients have a right to do could easily find objectionable about the Doctor.

Despite his somewhat meek appearance, his eccentricities were striking. He appeared at a court date wearing a powdered wig. He disconcertingly gave his assisted death tools names reminiscent of Transformers robots; Thanatron and Mercitron. He released a jazz flute album with a band called the Morpheus Quintet. But oddest of all was his artwork.

The argument that Kevorkian is a kind soul who was doing good, albeit controversial, work doesn't entirely fall apart when you consider his paintings, but it does get hit hard. Consider the painting "For He is Raised," used for the cover of the band's Acid Bath's Paegan Terrorism Tactics album, which depicts a battered Christ hatching from a painted Easter egg surrounded by oversized bunnies. Or his painting "The Gourmet (War)," which has a Roman soldier propping up a headless body so it appears to feast on its own decapitated, apple-stuffed head.

It's weird shit. Very dark. Presumably he had time to work on some more sketches while he was in prison. Upcoming gallery exhibit, anyone?

He should have never been in prison.

I cannot parse that.

It's like a Mad Lib.

Since when is a person's artwork grounds to judge their character? For example, The Abduction of Ganymede:

Peeing toddler? Rembrandt was such a perve!!
Kevorkian's work is really rather tame compared to many, past or present.

And not half bad, considering he's an amateur.

Paegan Terrorism Tactics was a great album. It's a shame Acid Bath broke up.



I have nothing else to say about this topic. I'm indifferent towards Kevorkian though I do support the so-called "right to die".

Ditto.