www.ChadRiden.com:
Chad's jokes, parody songs, standup mp3s and videos

Comment on this column in the Mangy Forum!

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

I may be a cold, heartless bastard.. but I think our society is too nice to insane people. A little too much leniency is given to people just because they're "crazy." I'm not talking about wacky eccentrics or goofy morons who act silly, I mean people who are really nuts. We encourage crazy. The message we send out is "whatever you do is ok if you're insane," and I think that's bullshit.

Andrea Yates

As I type this, closing arguments are underway for Andrea Yates, the Texas woman on trial for capital murder who claims she was legally insane when she drowned her five children last year. As is so often the case, the defense attorneys are using the old "insanity" defense. They fully admit that Yates killed her children, mind you.. but when she did it she was "crazy." Under Texas law, if the jury believes she knew right from wrong they cannot find her legally insane.

We're talking about a woman who methodically drowned her children one after another in the family bathtub.. a jury in Houston will deliberate to decide if she's legally insane.. and that's the craziest thing I've heard in a long time. OF COURSE she's crazy, she killed her kids! Who cares if she "knew right from wrong?" What's the difference?

Either way, she killed her kids.. plain and simple. She is on trial for murder and she readily admits that she did it. Case closed, she's a murderer.. give her the chair and let's move on.

They say, "but she's insane! She needs psychiatric help!" No. Why bother? This planet is overpopulated as it is. Do we need to salvage this person? Do we need an extra body that bad? Hell, no.

Say we rehabilitate her. What is she going to do in the future that's so damn great that we have to keep this woman around? Make a pie for the bake sale? Was she out there curing diseases or settling international disputes? No, she was a mother of five. That was her job.. and ya know what? She flipped out and killed her kids. Sounds to me like she doesn't have any work here left to do. On to the afterlife.

We try way too hard to "fix" people. Some people are fucked up, plain and simple. We don't need to integrate them back into society! Interacting with people isn't exactly a murderer's strong point. There are, however, other ways they could be beneficial to us:

A) Use the crazies for biological / pharmaceutical / medical experiments. Stop testing new drugs and methodologies on animals and people without health insurance. Use a convict! It's a perfectly good human body just wasting away in a jail cell.

B) Organ Transplants. How many people are on the waiting list for a much needed vital organ? Death Rows across the nation are overcrowded. Bonk 'em over the head, slice 'em from head to toe and divy up the goodies. Thanks, boys!

C) Slave Labor. Sure we already kinda do that, but I want to step it up a little. I know convicts work for the state and various corporations for almost no pay.. but who cares if prisoner #61521855B made 250 license plates yesterday? The Egyptians made their slaves make cool things like the pyramids. Who is gonna give a crap when they dig up a license plate 3000 years from now? Put our prisoners to work making something memorable. If we work 'em too hard and they die, there's another organ transplant donor for ya.

I can just hear the people whining that I'm an insensitive meanie.. but, look: these people can be productive and contribute something to society. If they're so "insane" then they won't miss their kidneys, lungs and heart when the time comes. See? Everybody's happy!