Give 'em what they dish out
I've really been down on people lately. I may have to either give up reading the news or start a campaign to make the Gilbert & Sullivan tune Let the Punishment Fit the Crime become federal law.
Earlier in the week we got to read again about the loving father in California who a number of years ago avoided paying child support by hurling his 4-year-old daughter off a cliff into the Pacific. Don't send the guy to prison, that same cliff is still available.
Today there's the story of a woman in her seventies in a Cleveland suburb using a shovel to beat a baby deer to death. The doe, who hadn't been taught in deer school that humans always come first, had the audacity to stroll into the crone's garden. She claimed she was frightened by it. Yeah, sure. After her upcoming trial that same shovel could be put to good use.
(The photo above was taken by a lady willing to share with a pair of does and their mother that pay a daily visit to her yard in West Virginia.)
In a local court a man was handed a two-year prison sentence for possession of cocaine. He wasn't selling it, he wasn't a pusher, he just possessed a small amount. Now had he been a nice young man from an upstanding middle class white family he would have been placed on probation and sent to a rehab facility. But he made the mistake of being black. Now he has two years of studying the art of being a real criminal ahead of him at taxpayers' expense. Another great victory in the war on drugs.
But does the punishment fit the crime? Was this even a crime, or is it an example of why we have more people locked up than any other country? Maybe we need to rethink our entire approach to drugs. The present one doesn't seem to be working all that great.
Then there's the woman who locked up a boy of three in a stifling hot, vermin infested attic or the teenager who microwaved a kitten. The attic would make a fine place for the woman but it would take a big microwave for the kid. I imagine there is one somewhere.
Earlier in the week we got to read again about the loving father in California who a number of years ago avoided paying child support by hurling his 4-year-old daughter off a cliff into the Pacific. Don't send the guy to prison, that same cliff is still available.
Today there's the story of a woman in her seventies in a Cleveland suburb using a shovel to beat a baby deer to death. The doe, who hadn't been taught in deer school that humans always come first, had the audacity to stroll into the crone's garden. She claimed she was frightened by it. Yeah, sure. After her upcoming trial that same shovel could be put to good use.
(The photo above was taken by a lady willing to share with a pair of does and their mother that pay a daily visit to her yard in West Virginia.)
In a local court a man was handed a two-year prison sentence for possession of cocaine. He wasn't selling it, he wasn't a pusher, he just possessed a small amount. Now had he been a nice young man from an upstanding middle class white family he would have been placed on probation and sent to a rehab facility. But he made the mistake of being black. Now he has two years of studying the art of being a real criminal ahead of him at taxpayers' expense. Another great victory in the war on drugs.
But does the punishment fit the crime? Was this even a crime, or is it an example of why we have more people locked up than any other country? Maybe we need to rethink our entire approach to drugs. The present one doesn't seem to be working all that great.
Then there's the woman who locked up a boy of three in a stifling hot, vermin infested attic or the teenager who microwaved a kitten. The attic would make a fine place for the woman but it would take a big microwave for the kid. I imagine there is one somewhere.
posted by Dick Stodghill | 8/01/2009 11:14:00 AM
2 Comments:
Dick, 06 Aug 09
Glad that bag of s--t doesn't live near me, I know where I’d stick her shovel.
A cottontail has been living in my back yard for the past three years. It comes to me when I call it. Of course I do provide it with food that it can’t buy at the local PX, things like fresh fruit from Chile and Mexico during the winter months. During the summer it gets fresh US grown fruit, at least I think it’s grown here.
About 15 or so years ago I visited a person (no longer call him a friend) I had worked with several years prior. When I arrived he was busy shooting Mocking birds (State bird of Texas) because they had the audacity to eat some of his precious strawberries rather than them going to the PX and buying their own. Needless to say I haven’t seen him since.
The human race sux and I include myself in that mess.
I haven’t forgotten; I still owe you an Email.
Chet Headley
I'm afraid you're right about the human race, Chet.
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