A World Gone Mad?
In recent news we have the criminalization of the childish prankish patting on the butt by a couple of 7th graders. In Swat somebody’s butt, and yours belongs to the the D.A. Mark Steyn comes down hard on the ludicrousness of this action.
Do you know Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison?
If you do, don’t approach them. Call 911 and order up a SWAT team. They’re believed to be in the vicinity of McMinnville, Ore., where they’re a clear and present danger to the community. Mashburn and Cornelison were recently charged with five counts of felony sexual abuse, and District Attorney Bradley Berry has pledged to have them registered for life as sex offenders.
Oh, by the way, the defendants are in the seventh grade.
The fact that the butt patting prank like many young peoples inventions is widely participated by all 7th graders does not penetrate in tiny mind of the district attorney. Also interesting is how the school officials used persuasion to get false testimony.
Of 14 other students interviewed by officer Roache, seven (boys and girls) told him they had engaged in bottom-swatting themselves. Two of the “victims” said they had done it to others. At the initial hearing, a couple of female students spontaneously testified that they’d felt very much pressured to conform during their interviews with the vice principal and the police officer. “Well, when the principal asked me stuff, I kind of felt pressured to answer stuff that I was uncomfortable, and that it hurt, but it really didn’t,” said one girl.
The real problem here is the lack of significant public rage on the antics of a society seemingly going mad. In regard to that, Mark closes with these statements.
A world that requires handcuffs and judges and district attorneys for what took place that Friday in February is not just a failed education system but an entire society that’s losing any sense of proportion. Without which, civilized life becomes impossible. So we legalize more and more aspects of life and demand that district attorneys prosecute ever more aggressively what were once routine areas of social interaction.
A society that looses the state to criminalize schoolroom horseplay is guilty not only of punishing children as grown-ups but of the infantilization of the entire citizenry.
