0 comment Sunday, August 31, 2014 | admin
I did not follow the Casey Anthony story closely, though I was aware of the basic storyline, but I was shocked when the verdict was announced, like many people.
This is the classic tabloid fodder story, and I am mentioning it simply because it sums up so many bad trends in our society. It is symptomatic of a great many things, some of which are topics I blog about.
First, Casey Anthony is a beneficiary of the bias in our legal system in favor of women. In cases involving murder, it seems women are less likely to be convicted, and less likely to receive the death penalty if they are convicted. I've remarked on this before. Andrea Yates is an example, and Susan Smith got a much lighter punishment for killing her two sons than a father would likely get for the same crime.
''Infanticide in the industrialized nations is as common or more common as the killings of adults, and the vast majority of these infants are killed by their mothers, according to the World Health Organization.
A custodial mother is five times more likely to murder her own children as a custodial father, adjusting for the greater number of single mothers, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
And women are getting away with it. Among women convicted of killing their infants, two-thirds avoid prison completely and the rest serve an average of only seven years. The average prison sentence for females in the U.S. is only about 70% that of males for most violent crimes. A man convicted of murder is 20 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a woman.
How do women get away with it? For one, their victims tend to be the helpless, or semi-helpless, such as children, the elderly, and infants. Thus there's less struggle in their crimes, and less evidence left behind. Also, they tend to use "hands off" methods such as smothering and poisoning, which are less traceable. Female murderers tend to be older than male murderers, and thus are looked upon with more trust and less suspicion. When killing husbands or other adults, women often hire others to do the killing.''
And of course, being young and relatively attractive is not a detriment. People tend to sympathize with a young woman, especially as defense attorneys have a practice of making said young women look demure, sweet, harmless and wholesome in court.
To be fair, it's true they do something similar with male defendants, dressing them up to look respectable and clean-cut, even if they are known thugs. But women benefit more from the makeovers. Female jurors tend to be more easily swayed by this kind of manipulation, and men find young damsels in distress sympathetic sometimes too, as apparently this alternate juror did.
In my personal opinion, defense attorneys are among the most amoral and unprincipled people in our society; it is all about winning the case and adding a notch to the belt, and/or 'sticking it to the system.' Many defense attorneys (and I have known some) are hard-core leftists who think the system should be brought down, period. I do realize that our legal system requires that every defendant be defended, but many defense lawyers go above and beyond, and in some cases have crossed the line into the unethical if not illegal.
When I first heard the verdict, I immediately thought that the jury was probably disproportionately female, and it looks like seven out of twelve were women.
Several blacks were on the jury, and the men selected seemed in a few cases to be not exactly conventional White males. Juries are selected carefully; these things are no accident.
But when you read the Daily Mail article you get a sense that the whole tone of the jury was set by the women:
'We were crying and not just the women. It was emotional and we weren't ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial.'
The juror, who is single and has no children, added: 'They picked a great bunch of people, such high integrity. And there was high morale," she said. "We all joked. We are like a big group of cousins.'
Imagine such a case back in the era when only men could serve on juries; would the jury behave this way?
To me, this case illustrates so many things: feminization of society, the influence of the 'therapeutic culture' with its emphasis on emotion and subjectivity, and then there are factors like the perpetual adolescence of many Americans. This young defendant in saner times would have been considered as a mature woman at 25, not as a 'kid' as her behavior implied. Then there's the fact that she had a child without a father in the picture, much less marriage. Then, the 'wiggerized' way of life, for lack of a better term, that is so widespread among the under-30 set. Then we have the tabloid media culture, where stories like this one are so exploited and hyped.
The fact is this woman will likely profit by her actions; she will be interviewed by daytime TV and tabloid papers, and worst, she will probably go on to have other children.
The dumbing-down of our society is a part of this story, and I refer to the moral dumbing-down that has taken place, not merely the disastrous educational system. Many people don't seem to care about the innocent victims (such as Caylee Anthony) and somehow identify with the Casey Anthonys of the world. That is troubling.
This is the classic tabloid fodder story, and I am mentioning it simply because it sums up so many bad trends in our society. It is symptomatic of a great many things, some of which are topics I blog about.
First, Casey Anthony is a beneficiary of the bias in our legal system in favor of women. In cases involving murder, it seems women are less likely to be convicted, and less likely to receive the death penalty if they are convicted. I've remarked on this before. Andrea Yates is an example, and Susan Smith got a much lighter punishment for killing her two sons than a father would likely get for the same crime.
''Infanticide in the industrialized nations is as common or more common as the killings of adults, and the vast majority of these infants are killed by their mothers, according to the World Health Organization.
A custodial mother is five times more likely to murder her own children as a custodial father, adjusting for the greater number of single mothers, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
And women are getting away with it. Among women convicted of killing their infants, two-thirds avoid prison completely and the rest serve an average of only seven years. The average prison sentence for females in the U.S. is only about 70% that of males for most violent crimes. A man convicted of murder is 20 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a woman.
How do women get away with it? For one, their victims tend to be the helpless, or semi-helpless, such as children, the elderly, and infants. Thus there's less struggle in their crimes, and less evidence left behind. Also, they tend to use "hands off" methods such as smothering and poisoning, which are less traceable. Female murderers tend to be older than male murderers, and thus are looked upon with more trust and less suspicion. When killing husbands or other adults, women often hire others to do the killing.''
And of course, being young and relatively attractive is not a detriment. People tend to sympathize with a young woman, especially as defense attorneys have a practice of making said young women look demure, sweet, harmless and wholesome in court.
To be fair, it's true they do something similar with male defendants, dressing them up to look respectable and clean-cut, even if they are known thugs. But women benefit more from the makeovers. Female jurors tend to be more easily swayed by this kind of manipulation, and men find young damsels in distress sympathetic sometimes too, as apparently this alternate juror did.
In my personal opinion, defense attorneys are among the most amoral and unprincipled people in our society; it is all about winning the case and adding a notch to the belt, and/or 'sticking it to the system.' Many defense attorneys (and I have known some) are hard-core leftists who think the system should be brought down, period. I do realize that our legal system requires that every defendant be defended, but many defense lawyers go above and beyond, and in some cases have crossed the line into the unethical if not illegal.
When I first heard the verdict, I immediately thought that the jury was probably disproportionately female, and it looks like seven out of twelve were women.
Several blacks were on the jury, and the men selected seemed in a few cases to be not exactly conventional White males. Juries are selected carefully; these things are no accident.
But when you read the Daily Mail article you get a sense that the whole tone of the jury was set by the women:
'We were crying and not just the women. It was emotional and we weren't ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial.'
The juror, who is single and has no children, added: 'They picked a great bunch of people, such high integrity. And there was high morale," she said. "We all joked. We are like a big group of cousins.'
Imagine such a case back in the era when only men could serve on juries; would the jury behave this way?
To me, this case illustrates so many things: feminization of society, the influence of the 'therapeutic culture' with its emphasis on emotion and subjectivity, and then there are factors like the perpetual adolescence of many Americans. This young defendant in saner times would have been considered as a mature woman at 25, not as a 'kid' as her behavior implied. Then there's the fact that she had a child without a father in the picture, much less marriage. Then, the 'wiggerized' way of life, for lack of a better term, that is so widespread among the under-30 set. Then we have the tabloid media culture, where stories like this one are so exploited and hyped.
The fact is this woman will likely profit by her actions; she will be interviewed by daytime TV and tabloid papers, and worst, she will probably go on to have other children.
The dumbing-down of our society is a part of this story, and I refer to the moral dumbing-down that has taken place, not merely the disastrous educational system. Many people don't seem to care about the innocent victims (such as Caylee Anthony) and somehow identify with the Casey Anthonys of the world. That is troubling.
Labels: Biased Media, Criminal Justice System, Feminism, Feminization Of Society, Therapeutic Culture