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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (8163)3/11/2005 3:43:13 PM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
Jeff Jarvis on Judge Lefkow and the dangers of insanity.

......Everybody knew he was nuts. He was dangerous. The danger turned out to be all too real. But nothing was done to help him or protect others.

Now, of course, we say we can't find ourselves in in a real-life version of Minority Report, preemptively arresting people before they've committed the crimes we somehow knew they'd commit.

But look at the case of Ross: He was clearly insane; he was dangerous; nothing was done; the only way this story could end was the way it ended: in needless tragedy. Yes, society failed him. But it sure as hell failed Judge Lefkow's family more. The priorities are wrong.

Look at today's tragic shooting of a judge in Atlanta. I doubt that this is about insanity; it's about raw criminality: A man on trial and facing forever in jail with nothing to lose is able to grab a gun because he was dressed in civilian clothes without handcuffs or shackles, they're saying on TV now -- so he wouldn't look guilty to a jury. Two good people are dead and others are injured when their safety should have come first; they needed to be protected from a dangerous and deseparate man. The priorities are wrong.

I'll even bring Michael Jackson into this -- not on a legal basis but on a cultural basis. The guy is clearly nuts. You know it. I know it. But we won't say it out loud. It wouldn't be politically correct. Now I'm not saying that Jackson should be arrested because he's nuts or even forced into treatment -- God knows what kind -- just because he's nuts. I wouldn't know how to adjudicate that. But I am saying that our treatment of him in his family, among his handlers, in his industry, and in media does him -- and possibly the children he has entertained -- no good. To use a bit of PC language myself, society has enabled his obvious insanity by not daring to call him insane. To me, this, too, is about the wrong priorities.

This is not just about getting help for the insane or keeping the dangerous in handcuffs. It's about an attitude that gives priority to the safety of the sane.

buzzmachine.com
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