“Ju know, they say eet was the hoosbands fault,” announced the thirty something Mexican immigrant who was cutting my hair that day, two months before 9/11 changed the world. The big story of the moment was not about terrorists or toppled buildings, but about Andrea Yates, the Houston area mother of five that snuffed the life out of all of her children a mere half hour from where I live. And my stylist, using up every word of almost English in her repertoire, was attempting to ‘splain to me how the whole mess could rightly be hung on the man.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, unsurprised at the stupid remark, but too far into the haircut to get up and walk. “Who are they?” I was instantly pissed and made no effort to hide it.
She looked a bit nonplussed, then shrugged and said, “Somebody say eet on the noose.” She sounded less self assured; feebly attempting to distance herself from the remark. Apparently, the language barrier didn’t prevent her from picking up the tone in my voice.
I didn’t bother trying to educate her. It was clear she had been in America for a short time, just long enough to learn how to cut hair and trash men in a second language, but she was already beyond redemption. The absence of a tip and my repeat business would have to serve as my first and last retort.
I am sure by now she can rattle off misandric invectives in impeccable English. After all, she has the entire western world for a classroom.
Canada has made some recent additions to the lesson plan.
Ontario’s Elaine Campione was really mad at her estranged husband, so she murdered their two daughters, Serena 3, and Sophia, 19 months, by drowning them both in the bathtub. It was reminiscent of the Yates case, only the attempts to issue this woman a pussy pass were significantly less veiled, and, so far, less successful.
In The Canadian Press’s coverage of the trial, which resulted in two convictions for first degree murder, the first three words of the article were, “An abusive husband.”
We can at least credit them for cutting to the chase. Before telling us about the crime, the accused, the verdict or the sentencing, The Canadian Press wanted to make sure that we knew who the guilty party really was. I mean, surely it wasn’t the woman who held the heads of those two little girls under water till their tiny lungs filled with water and the life slipped from them forever. No, never. Not in Houston and not in Canada.
“You know, they say it was the husbands fault, eh!”
The judge in the case was apparently offended in equal proportion to The Canadian Press. Justice Alfred Stong was quoted as saying, after the verdict was read, “It is more than disconcerting to think that if Ms. Campione had not been so abused, so used and discarded as a person, her two daughters could still be alive.”
There was, however, a peculiar reality that seemed to escape both reporters and Justice Stong. The “abuse” of Campione by her husband was only alleged. There was no proof offered the court that he ever laid a hand on her, not that it would have justified her actions if he used her for a daily punching bag. But that is a really big if. Unlike her killing her own children, the allegations about Mr. Campione amounted to nothing more than finger pointing by a murdering lunatic. The only proven abuse in the case at all was that of the murders, committed and admitted by the mother, who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Traits. (Quick, call Dr. Palmatier, she’ll be shocked to know a borderline did something evil.)
Unfortunately for the press and the Canadian legal system, the jury in the case annoyingly listened to the evidence and voted for a conviction in accordance with the law. Pesky thing, the law. One might think that Canada will do something about that as soon as possible. After all, how can that father, who didn’t murder anyone, who wasn’t even charged with a crime, just be allowed to walk free?
I mean, aside from his dead children, he is probably laughing it up right now.
Oh, were this the isolated case. But it is not.
It was pretty much the same with murdering Canadian mother Penny Boudreau, who strangled her daughter to death and half stripped her when dumping her body to make it look like a sex crime.
The headline from Mail Online?
‘Mummy, don’t’: Woman kills her only daughter, 12, after boyfriend says, ‘It’s the child or me’
As far as going to disgusting levels in search of a pussy pass, this one takes the cake. Lots of people with step children or who date people with children come to stand off’s in the relationship regarding the kids. Be careful what you say though, guys. If she kills them you are likely to end up in a headline with blood dripping from your name.
Your vilification will be a lot more important to the press, and perhaps even the courts, than in finding truth or justice.
It’s one more reason to steer clear of single mothers.
But the more overarching problem here can be summed up in two words.
Dead children.
What we excuse, we enable. And what we enable, we get, in ever increasing amounts. When enabling women to excuse, rationalize, justify and shift blame, even over their most heinous acts, we will pay for it. Sometimes the dues are paltry. Sometimes payment comes in little caskets.
Read the news story on the Campione case. What you will find is a press and a judge doing everything in their power to coddle and pity a murderess. You will read statements by politicians pledging to investigate in the aftermath of this tragedy. There will be reports on the Canadian mental health system. There will be cries for even more attention and support for “abused” women, if that is even possible. There will be the expected and obligatory condemnations of abusive men.
And the kids will keep dying.
Until our justice system starts considering what this means, it should be impossible to listen to anyone in government who talks about “the best interest of the child,” without laughing directly in their face.
Or perhaps spitting in it.
Much of the trial information, even as related in the highly biased Canadian news story, points to the distinct possibility that Campiones real motive for killing her children was because her husband was going after custody. He may well have been doing everything in his power to protect them from a mother with a history of presenting a danger to her children.
If so, he would appear to be the only person in Canada that ever had an interest in that at all.
Where was this man’s help? Where is the outrage that he has lost his children? Where is anyone who even gives a shit?
We don’t have time to give a shit. We are too busy babysitting and holding the hands that killed two innocent children.
And we are too busy pretending that we are actually doing something else.
