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June 26, 2001
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Mothers Who Think
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RUB
A DUB DUB - FIVE KIDS IN A TUB
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Mothers
Who Think
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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. |
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| 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. |
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| **
SQUIRPTH ** |
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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.
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| **
SQUACKTH ** |
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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: |
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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.
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| 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 |
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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.”
|
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| WHO
WANTS ICE CREAM ? ! ? ! ? ! |
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| GLUB
glub GLUB glub
GLUB glub GLUB |
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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.
|
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| YESSUH,
MR. BENNY |
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| 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
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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.
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| Clockwise:
Worthless, Retarded, Ineffectual, Unprofitable |
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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. |
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| Inconsequential,
Expensive, Unimportant, Embarrassing |
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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." |
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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? |
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BILL
COSBY IS... GHOST DAD
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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. |
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( Posted by Spigot )
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