B.r.i.a.n P.e.t.e.r.s.o.n, pictured above being led off to 2 years of imprisonment on a manslaughter plea bargain in the death of his newborn, will probably not learn his lesson because the rationale behind his discomfiture is all wrong. (BTW, he's handcuffed under the coat. Why do they let him hide the handcuffs? What tiny sensibility is that meant to assuage? If he's going to jail, then lets see the cuffs!)Here's the story: it's one of those prom baby flush-away things that make such lucrative if nauseating news these days. He and his girlfried, one A.m.y G.r.o.s.s.m.a.n, conceived a child ... not difficult to do, gawd noze. However, they were embarrased (em-bare-assed ;-}) that her liberal, well-to-do parents might admonish her or perhaps, worse still, undermine her self-esteem. There was, of course, no threat of a belt as there might have been in a family where ethics count more than self-congratulation and where either of them might thereby have instantly understood that the only way to deal with this awkwardness was to take responsibility for it. So, they hid the pregnancy apparently successfully. There's clue number one to the real nature of this mess. When "momma" came due, the pair of miscreants hied off to a motel where they "birthed" (as modern mystifiers might call it) the unwanted fetus, cracked its skull, wrapped it in plastic, and deposited in a dumpster. But A.m.y, whose brainpower is evidently rather on the light side, had to see a doctor who was not so easily fooled as were A.m.y's none-too-observant mammy and pappy. He wanted to know where the ex-fetus was. Discovered, she fessed, tried to pin it on B.r.i.a.n, and found both herself and her witless boyfriend locked up facing a potential d.e.a.t.h p.e.n.a.l.t.y. There's clue number two.
Shock and outrage all around, expensive lawyers, contrived interviews on fancy-schmansy news shows, the whole nine yards. And the upshot is that they copped a plea. She got six more months than he did because -- and here is clue number three -- the judge saw right through her and realized that, the conceits of butter-don't-melt-in-female-mouths-feminism aside, the real rat here was the girl not dough-boy, the potsy boyfriend.
Clue number one: what family doesn't notice that their scrawny teenage daughter is nine months pregnant ... why it must be either a family of idiots, or a family of "liberal" child-rearers. (Now I put liberal in quotes because I see absolutely nothing liberal about raising idiots who think that they can get away with mulching an unwanted baby, and because I am, ouch to admit it, a liberal who nevertheless believes in the judicious, loving application of the belt by rationale parents upon bare-butted, deserving offspring.) Poor A.m.y never tasted a belt, but I hardly care about that. If B.r.i.a.n had been regularly butt-warmed, he might have realized both that they wouldn't get away with it, and that it was WRONG, and that therefore, irrespective of the unsatisfactory heterosexual nooky he'd be passing up, he should do something to stop it.
Clue number two: sorry to all the baby-mourning, breast-beaters out there, but this wasn't murder, it was stupidity. But stupidity is like honey on a warm day ... a little bit in the wrong picnic basket makes everything sticky. What confounded dribbling idiocy induced the DA even to mention the death penalty? Good grief, a little balance, folks! Infanticide is a very ancient practice, a sort of late birth control across the eons. (That's not meant as a justification, but rather a statement of the facts of the case.) Slap the morons upside the head, sure, but hanging? The function of that judicial hyperbole was precisely to overinflate the monstrous egos of prosecutors, to seize a moral high ground that didn't need seizing, and to lead us away from any rationale conclusion about what this meant. In the long run, of course, given our social fabric, the manslaughter plea was just right.
So, clue number three, it was the judge that got it right. He saw through the would-be womanly whining and pegged A.m.y as the one who concocted the whole motel scenario ... and doesn't the motel show you a little too much about their minds because, given how trashy they planned to act, they searched out the one locale permanently associated with trash ... and in New Jersey, to boot!
But let me carry the judge's thinking to its logical conclusion: young men of the world, revolt against procreation! The planet is awash in babies that we do not need, and tieing yourself to the female gender not only ruins your life but it also compromises you in this planetary suicide. My proposal: young men, abandon the women, and go gay ... and save the planet in the meanwhile.
As to the punishment of our hapless B.r.i.a.n P.e.t.e.r.s.o.n ... don't you think a course of say 20 consecutive bare-butt beltings, minimum 30 minutes each, spaced one week apart, would better serve both B.r.i.a.n and society more than two years as somebody's puppy in the pen?
(BTW, outraged baby-mourners, please spare me the email and make a contribution to P.l.a.n.n.e.d P.a.r.e.n.t.h.o.o.d instead. I delete flames without reading them.)
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