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|
June 26, 2001 |
| Mothers
Who Think
|
RUB A DUB DUB - FIVE KIDS IN A
TUB |
Mothers Who
Think
|
| Surprise!
Another mom doped up on pills and postpartum
depression successfully dispatches her
children. |
She
sits in a jail cell, in a state of deep psychosis
and twenty-four hour suicide watch. With her
bug-out eyes, stringy hair and pallid skin, she
serves as an icon American males can recognize
almost immediately. Andrea Yates represents
every crazy, schized-out manic depressive you've
ever accidentally considered propositioning for an
evening of drunken, forgettable sexual
intercourse.
The
crazy girl at the coffee shop, telling lies to
whomever might listen. The loudmouth techno-bopper
taking off her clothes at Burning Man. The lady in
that one cubicle with all the plants who likes
to read. Get involved with any of these people
and you'll regret it for the rest of your
life.
Everyone
has an Andrea Yates lurking somewhere in his or
her past. If you don't remember which one she is -
you are that Andrea Yates. |
|
| But who -
who - could be so unfamiliar with the
monotony and daily irritations of family life that
Yates's recent actions appear in some way out of
character for any human being? Drowning your kids
in a tub? Since when is that such a big
deal? Were he alive today, Bill Hicks might
suggest the miracle of infanticide is about as
“unnatural” as eating a bean burrito and having a
big, thick turd slide out of your ass. Let's look
at the numbers. |
 |
| ** SQUIRPTH
** | |
Yates is 36.
Married eight years. Five kids ages 7 and under -
that's a new one every 18 months. She attempted
suicide after the 4th child before plowing ahead
with number five.
Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3;
Luke, 2; and Mary, 6
months.
Hey -
nice biblical names. Were these murders
part of some haphazardly thought out baptismal
ceremony gone ridiculously askew? Never has there
been more supporting evidence that the family who
prays together dies together. |
 |
| ** SQUACKTH
** | |
 |
The
Houston Chronicle was kind enough to draw
readers a detailed map to Mr. Yates' house. Less
than an hour after the story broke, his driveway
became an impromptu memorial. People left cards,
toys, teddy bears adorned with bows and ribbons on
his front lawn - not for one second wrapping their
minds around the fact that there are no longer
any children living at that address. What the
fuck is Dad supposed to do with a
wheelbarrow full of stuffed animals?
Right away, CNN and
Fox News both offered exclusive home video
of the Yates family during a past birthday
celebration. Look everyone!! The kids were
alive but now they're dead!! Can you feel the
eerie??
The
viewer was encouraged to juxtapose these images in
his mind like a first-year video activist cobbling
together a documentary on the industrial
disintegration of Flint,
Michigan.
Thanks
a bunch, you insensitive clods. Why not just
design a Shockwave game so visitors can chase each
kid across the screen and drag him to an animated,
bubbly bathtub. Can we all slip on the virtual
reality gloves and molest them as
well? |
| If
you can believe it, Fox chose to showcase
alongside the Yates feature an interview with TV
personality, mother, and QVC spokesmormon Marie
Osmond: |
 |
OSMOND
When I was doing "The
Donny and Marie Show," I mean, I literally, you
know, would get 350 pages of script to memorize in
two and a half days. I would take that home and
work till 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning and be back
at work at 6:00.
ZAHN
And you
were sexually abused.
OSMOND
Yes,
I was.
ZAHN
As a
child.
OSMOND
As a
child.
|
 |
| Conspicuously
absent was a plug for Osmond's collector's series
of pudged-out porcelain dolls. Each one
appears infused with themes of postpartum
depression or some level of early sexual trauma.
|
| NO DADDY NO |
WHAT'S DUCK TAPE |
W-WHO'S THERE??? |
FOREVER
OBESE | |
 |
In 1992,
Susan Smith drowned her kids: Michael, 3, and
Alex, 14 months.
Remember how she drove her burgundy Mazda Protégé
to the shore of John D. Long lake in Union, South
Carolina? Michael and Alex were strapped in their
car seats,
sleeping.
Smith
climbed out and released the emergency brake. The
car, with its headlights still on, slid down a
75-foot boat ramp into the lake. The car didn't
sink right away - it remained on the surface,
bobbing up and down. In a few minutes, it filled
with water, and Smith watched as it submerged.
This she did
hoping her boyfriend Tom Findlay might love her
more. Smith, then 23, had received from him
the equivalent of a Dear John letter, in
which he expressed a lack of interest in taking on
the responsibility of caring for her two small
children from a previous
relationship.
His
letter was kind and straightforward. He thought
she was “a great person.” |
 |
| WHO WANTS ICE CREAM ? ! ? ! ?
! | |
 |
| GLUB glub GLUB glub GLUB glub
GLUB | |
|
Smith claimed
her children were abducted, and went so far
as to invent an imaginary black man (see police
sketch, right) whom she described in rich detail:
forty years of age, dark knit cap, dark shirt,
jeans and a plaid jacket. Her statement was far
more enthralling than Yates's shopworn I just
killed my kids.
"I was
stopped at the red light at Monarch Mills and a
black man jumped in and told me to drive. I asked
him why was he doing this and he said shut up
and drive or I'll kill you. He told me to get
out. He made me stop in the middle of the road.
Nobody was coming, not a single car. I asked him
why can't I take my kids? The man said I
don't have time. The man pushed me out of the
car while pointing a gun at my side. When he
finally got me out he said Don't worry, I'm not
going to hurt your
kids."
She described how she laid on the ground as the
man drove away, both of her sons crying out for
mom.
Smith's
subsequent interviews with police were filled with
embarrassing blunders. She referred to Michael and
Alex in the past tense, indicating an awareness of
their passing. An FBI agent who administered her
polygraph test noted she made “fake sounds of
crying with no tears in her
eyes.”
Furthermore,
the light at Monarch Mills remains green
unless cars are traveling in the opposite
direction. |
 |
| YESSUH, MR.
BENNY | |
| Like Andrea
Yates, Smith crumbled. In her written confession,
she filled two pages with loopy script,
rounded-off letters, and little hearts. When
investigators dragged the car from the lake, they
discovered the Mazda's windshield had cracked from
severe water pressure and a sudden change in
temperature. The car seats, and the bodies of
Michael and Alex were found dangling
upside-down. |
ESSENTIALLY QUITE
IRRELEVANT
|
Insurance
adjusters know the truth. The suggested Blue
Book value of a 1992 Mazda Protégé - with air
conditioning - is maybe $4,790. The Blue
Book value of your life can only be
assessed after you
die.
Your
worldly possessions will be sold: homes, bank
accounts, stocks and bonds, automobiles, computer
equipment, stereo and CD collection - everything.
Calculate the proceeds, subtract any debt
consolidation, subtract lawsuits or designated
bequeaths to living relatives. Imagine the final
sum returned to the state. That dollar value alone
is considered your worth. Nothing else is
factored into the
equation.
White, college-educated older men are “worth” the
most. They've had forty, fifty years to develop a
rich suite of formidable assets the government can
liquidate, back taxes already accounted for. Hit
someone like that while driving your Mazda Miata,
and guess what? Your life is pretty much
over.
How
does the state place a value on the estate of a
dead child? How can cold, critical
numbers be assigned to the unexplored
possibility of a young person's life tragically
cut
short??!$(*&/!1
Answer:
they aren't. |
 |
| Clockwise: Worthless, Retarded, Ineffectual,
Unprofitable | |
Potential
worth is an illusion. Children and babies of
any race are valued at next to
nothing, unless they're heirs or
they've been set up with a trust fund of some
kind. They might be useful for parts - if the
organs can be harvested quickly - but as of today,
there's no uniformly defined dollar value
associated with that
process.
Five children dead? Auction off their
stuffed Pokemons, their diapers, their Marilyn
Manson shirts and Tickle Me Elmos and
you're left with a sum easily overlooked. Christ,
I've got as much in my back pocket. If Susan Smith
is guilty of anything, it's littering. Andrea
Yates was just rocking out to the rhythms of her
internal chemistry - and possibly audiotaped
lectures by one of today's top experts on killing
children. |
 |
| Inconsequential, Expensive, Unimportant,
Embarrassing | |
Peter
Singer is a tenured professor of bioethics at
the University Center for Human Values at
Princeton.
He
argues parents should be able to kill their
newborns up to 28 days after birth, if they
have a defect. That's more or less equal to the
time it took superstar Sandra Bullock to get clean
and sober. Singer writes:
| "When the death of a
disabled infant will lead to the birth of
another infant with better prospects of a happy
life, the total amount of happiness will be
greater if the disabled infant is killed. The
loss of a happy life for the first infant is
outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the
second." | |
These
days, it's safe to say the definition of
disabled expands and contracts to fit most
anyone's temperament, even angry young mothers
like Andrea Yates, who did in fact believe each of
her five children was in some way developmentally
disadvantaged.
Who's
to say who's right? |
|
BILL
COSBY IS... GHOST
DAD
|
What if everything went according to plan?
Mr. Yates, a NASA employee, has unwittingly
architected a brilliant maneuver of uncompromising
serendipity - a scheme which miserable,
overwrought fathers across America will soon be
emulating. The premise: leave a mother ill with
psychosis in charge of your children, and soon
you'll be afforded the opportunity to start life
all over
again.
Since
the drownings, Mr. Yates has done something every
single day which astounds experienced journalists.
He's been addressing the press. Not just
talking, either - talking and talking and
talking. He speaks freely, off the cuff,
looking directly into the camera, declaring love
and support for his wife. And why not? What's he
got to lose by doing so? He has the option of
never dealing with her again.
At every opportunity, he finds the strength to
offer a statement. His thoughts, his feelings, his
plans for the next few days and the future. In no
uncertain terms, here's a guy who's just won
the lottery. |
| Whether you call
it the Texas Tragedy or the Houston
Massacre or the Crazy Lady Polka, the
moral of this story is clear. Moms and kids just
don't mix. Are you a disgruntled dad who
longs for a vacation? Hide the Prozac. Hide the
Wellbutrin, the Zoloft, the Lithium. Keep her in a
constant state of knocked-up. Leave the cutlery
out within easy reach, and make yourself scarce
for a good half-hour. The results just might
surprise you.
| |
( Posted by Spigot )
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