The Simpsons and the Boston Bombings

Oliver cobbled together all of his giftcards and money received for his birthday and bought himself the new Simpsons' Kwik-E-Mart Lego set. He put the whole dang thing together yesterday and this morning, and I have to say it's enchanting. I'm not a Simpsons' watcher, have never really gotten into it, but that's mainly because I've never gotten into cartoons, even as a kid. I do appreciate the humor that I see every now and then, and I still remember the episode when Marge and Homer go to marriage camp and the counselor declares that "it's all his fault" when Homer fails to show up at a therapy session. The other episode I remember is when Homer finds himself on death row and then realizes that he's actually part of a reality show. When I looked it up this morning on Wikipedia, I saw that the title of that episode was The Frying Game, and shortly afterward, I saw on the news that the Russian guy who bombed the Boston Marathon got the death sentence for his crimes. While Oliver screwed together a few more tzotchkes on his set, I told him this news, and his response was Awesome! My stomach curdled, to tell you the truth, even as I continued to read about the verdict, including the words of Sister Helen Prejean who evidently spoke in Tsarnaev's defense. Here's the thing: the institutionalized killing of another human being is nothing but revenge. Let's call it like it is. Strapping a human being to a bed and then injecting him with poison in the dead of night while people watch is more vile than a pathetic excuse of a young man packing a backpack full of nails and dropping it at the finish line of a marathon, blowing off the limbs of innocent people and killing three people. It's more vile because it's a collective effort by an institution and carried out under the guise of justice. It makes me sick, and it's not a reality show.

Le Silence

Le Silence, Odilon Redon

Le Silence is the title of the above painting by the French artist Odilon Redon. I won't ever forget the moment I saw it, nearly thirty years ago, somewhere along the coast of France in a museum with a retrospective of his paintings. I'd never heard of Redon and still don't know much about him, but that painting made me stop and stare and has always resonated with me.

Well, I'm not going to be silent about this -- this question I've had all morning -- this thought:

A man was executed last night in the state of Texas for murder. His clemency appeal had been denied by the Supreme Court of the United States. The man had an alleged IQ of 61. He was mentally retarded. The accuracy of the IQ number was evidently in question, and the man was perhaps not as significantly mentally retarded as originally determined.

In the state of Pennsylvania, a top Republican operative made a joke to a crowd of 200 people about Obama supporters being "mentally retarded." Evidently, not a single person objected. Here's the joke: I was very embarrassed. I was in this parking lot and there was a man looking for a space to park, and I found a space for him. And I felt badly — he looked like he was sort of in distress. And I said, ‘Sir, here’s a place.’ And he said, ‘That’s a handicapped space.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, I saw that Obama sticker and I thought you were mentally retarded."  You can read that story here.

During the last week, I've been arguing, fruitlessly, in the comment section with a man who insists on calling me a libtard. You can read a bit of that here.

What kind of state is Texas that kills a man who is mentally retarded? What kind of country do we live in that allows the death penalty when every single other western, industrialized, so-called "civilized" country has banned it?

What kind of country is this where people support an openly bigoted corporation that sells processed fried chicken sandwiches behind the mantle of "freedom of speech," defends the right to carry semi-automatic guns in the name of liberty from tyranny and kills a mentally retarded man in the dead of night and calls it justice?

Why should we be proud of ourselves?

Why are we silent? How can those of us who agree that this action is obscene -- the state-sanctioned, institutional murder of a mentally retarded man --  change it? How can we turn aside or laugh, even uncomfortably when people continue to use the mentally retarded, people like my daughter Sophie, as the basis for their jokes and criticism?

I think we need to scream:

The Scream, Edvard Munch

Jim Roddey, Pennsylvania's Allegheny County GOP Chair

info@rcac.net  Telephone: 412-458-0068
(Mr. Roddey's phone: 412-512-6747)
The Republican Committee of Allegheny County
100 Fleet Street, Suite 205
Pittsburgh, PA 15220

And I realize that it's stupid to argue with others on a conservative blog. I don't want to say I'm like a fly to shit, because that would imply I think conservative views are shit. I really don't.

This is what I told my children

when they glanced at the front of the paper this morning and asked, what happened here? And I told them that that man was executed in Georgia, the state in which I grew up, the state where their grandparents live and that many people, including the man himself, believed he was innocent and had been tried unjustly.

I told them that the Supreme Court decided that he should be killed, despite these claims of his innocence.

I told them that the state of Georgia killed him with lethal injection, a poison that is put in his veins, late at night. I told them that a person killed him, actually put the poison in the needle that went into his veins and killed him. I told them that was the job of that person, to kill him. I told them that while many people were upset over this, many people were glad.

I told them that the death penalty is something that our country, America, should be ashamed of having and that killing a person, no matter what they have done is wrong.

I told them that most countries in the world have thought long and hard about this issue because it's difficult to know what to do about people who break the law and do terrible things, but most countries have decided that it's wrong to kill in return and have gotten rid of the death penalty. I told that there are still millions of people in our country that believe the death penalty is justice, that torture is right and necessary, and I told them that killing and torturing our enemies is absolutely, unequivocally wrong.

I told them that I do not respect those people who believe otherwise about these particular things.

I told them that despite being ashamed that our country institutionalizes killing, I believe that eventually we will abolish the death penalty because it is the right thing and the right thing happens, eventually.

And then I sent them off to school.