Yes, folks, the bathtub thing (
http://www.nationalreview.com/balance/balance062801.shtml)was a parody. See the paragraph at the end of the column:
Author's note: After writing this parody, I asked my research assistant to do a search of commentaries on Ms. Yates' monstrous act of filicide. I was astonished to find that this is hardly even a parody of the left's reaction to the murders. If you want to be especially sickened, read Anna Quindlen's rant against society and stress in the current Newsweek. Her column is so over the top, at the end she is forced to write as an afterthought: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not making excuses, for Andrea Yates." Sure.
That makes
his column a parody. But what about the Anna Quindlen column he refers to? Interest piqued, I searched it out. It's titled
Playing God on No Sleep and a more sickening piece of trash has rarely been published in this great nation.
Here's a key snippet:
Every mother I’ve asked about the Yates case has the same reaction. She’s appalled; she’s aghast. And then she gets this look. And the look says that at some forbidden level she understands.
The rest of her column is more of the same, making the banal point that motherhood is a tough job, underappreciated and sometimes lonely. Apparently if people could just
understand the stress she was under, what Ms. Yates did isn't that horrific after all.
FWIW, I'm one of the few people in this country who could truly
understand what Ms. Yates was feeling. Like her, I had five babies in short order; mine are even closer together than hers were. Talk about stress? We moved five times during the five years I was giving birth to those five babies, three of those times from one state to another. Not one of my babies was born in the same town as any one of the others. During those years, we were so broke we would have had to
save up to be poor. After my youngest child was born, I battled a severe case of depression that lasted for more than a year. So yes, I
understand how that woman felt in ways that most people in this country could only guess at.
But stress is no excuse for cold-blooded murder.
The truth is,
because I understand what Ms. Yates was going through --
because, not in spite of -- because I understand it, I condemn her all the more. Because I am living proof that stress like that does not have to end with a bloodbath.
Rosie, and Couric, and Quindlen -- and all the handwringing left-leaning professional sympathizers -- have forgotten, if they ever knew, that
understanding something horrible isn't the same as
excusing it.
Five little children are dead, and nothing is going to bring them back to life. Should we pat the murderess on the back and say, "yes, yes, we understand"? Let her off with a warning: "Now don't go killing any
more children"? This is the way that civilization dies.
What Ms. Yates did was monstrous. And there's no excuse.
pax
