Writing in the WSJ’s “Opinion Journal,” Dorothy Rabinowitz gives Bill O’Reilly a run for his money as this week’s Pundit Who Has No Idea What S/he Is Talking About. Playing populist with the Yates trial, Dorothy preaches “instructive” morality — illuminating the societal scourge that is [cue sinister music] the cult of victimization:
[The Yates family was] appalled, they declared, that the jury had come in with a verdict of guilt for a woman so disturbed that she drowned her five children. Apparently, the more horrific the crime, the greater the proof that the perpetrators should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. By this reasoning, Mohamed Atta and his colleagues would certainly have escaped prosecution had they lived.
By “this reasoning,” Dorothy? Why is that? Were Atta and his colleagues paranoid schizophrenics? Had they recently been removed from powerful anti-psychotic medication by their psychiatric clinician? Had they even ever been to a psychiatrist? Had they been institutionalized? Twice?
Of course not. Because they weren’t ill. They were just politically naive and morally bankrupt. Which is why your argument is sheer nonsense, Dotty. And you should be ashamed of yourself for not acknowledging the distinctions you surely recognize.
There can be no doubt that Andrea Yates suffered severe mental illness, and no doubt either that she knew what she was doing when she killed her children. Still, her husband, Russell Yates, declared himself ‘offended’ that his wife had been brought to trial at all. Mrs. Yates’s lawyer declared, his client had been victim of a ‘witch hunt.’
No doubt? Hell, then why’d Texas bother wasting money on a trial then, Dotty? Shit — should’ve just drowned her in the tub right when they found her.
Since the sentencing Mr. Yates has gone about reciting the litany of offenses committed against him and Andrea. Yesterday he proclaimed his intention to sue the doctor who had treated his wife. Perhaps with time and contemplation, this latest exemplar of the victimology craze will sit down and figure out just who the actual victims were–all five of them.
More obfuscation. Of course the children were victims. But you can have multiple victims here, can’t you, Dots? Christ! See what you’ve wrought, Oprah?
Perhaps with time and contemplation, we’ll recognize that not all mental “illness” is the kind that Dr. Phil can cure in an hour. And that people like Russell Yates — while himself not perfect — needn’t surrender his right to question a doctor’s treatment of an illness just because the illness doesn’t manifest itself in scabs or tumors, or just because some FOXNews blowhard is shouting for him to “take it like a man.”
Personally, I’m supremely critical (not to mention incredulous) of the whole “therapeutic” culture. But to tie together severe mental illness (like schizophrenia) with things like low self-esteem or depression (which is what Dotty’s trying to do here), is to engage in the flip side of the cult of victimization — namely, to show no mercy or understanding to the sick, or to those who live with and care for them.
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