Posted on 09/25/2002 5:51:25 AM PDT by Elkiejg
There's that word again: Choice. She made a bad choice. Who's that? Susie for picking vanilla when she really wanted chocolate? Jeffery for picking the cat's eye when he really wanted the steel marble?
No, Madelyne Toogood, the not-so-good mother now famous for beating her 4-year-old daughter while the nation watched via a department store video camera that captured her rage. Her attorney, Steven Rocket Rosen, told reporters that his client had made a bad choice.
"These things happen in life," said Rosen, explaining the inexplicable. "Again, it was a very poor choice."
Yes, indeedy, pummeling a tiny child 15 to 20 times and tearing at her hair falls directly into the file folder of "Bad Choices." Might we add another page to the folder? How about using the word "choice" to describe actions that bring pain and suffering to others.
I can tolerate choice when it comes to self-inflicted insults: sex with the wrong consenting adult. More wine than your body can process before the alarm sounds. That cigarette! The red dress. But when it comes to abusing a helpless creature, choice doesn't quite cover it.
Madelyne Toogood's bad choice was becoming a parent when she apparently has no capacity for empathy or self-control. Otherwise, she's a bully who doesn't deserve to own a raptor, though such a pairing would at least level the playing field somewhat. Not to be judgmental or anything.
Judgment avoidance is, after all, the impetus behind the popularity of the word "choice." When people are making choices, they're not committing sins or offenses or heinous crimes. They're just exercising their God-given right to pursue whatever and, hey, sometimes stuff happens. Bad choices.
I'm not sure when our cultural preference for choice over responsibility took hold, but I first became aware of it when my son was in elementary school. The drill went something like this: Teacher calls home to tenderly report that "Johnny made a bad choice today. He talked without raising his hand."
Her saccharine Nurse Ratchet voice is full of tolerance, understanding and concern. It's not that your child is a bad child. In fact, in Choice Nation, no child is bad. They just "act" badly sometimes and make bad choices for which they are forgiven. No wonder some grow up to be monsters.
Ironically, smart children see right through this facade of false sweetness and are confused by the mixed message of happy-but-mad. What's up with that?
What's up is Rosen's prescription for innocent by reason of bad choices. It's true she did it, yes, but ...
Choice's beauty and horror is that it confers moral equivalency on any and all actions. Speaking without permission; assaulting a child. In such a world, choice is a subterfuge for fault, and reasons become excuses.
Fast-forwarding a few days to Toogood's surrender and admission of guilt. CNN's Gary Tuchman is interviewing Rosen and Toogood, and more or less congratulating Toogood for coming forward and being honest. Speaking to Rosen, he says:
"The candor we're hearing from your client and from yourself are very unusual. ... She's basically admitting she's guilty of this crime," though Toogood is pleading not guilty to felony child-beating. To which Rosen responds: "And she's been up front and honest, and I'm proud of her." Note the keywords here: candor, honest, proud. Please. This woman is caught on tape, her meltdown witnessed by millions, and she decides not to pretend she didn't do it. Only in Choice Nation is an admission of guilt in the face of overwhelming and irrefutable evidence considered noble.
Sorry, but you don't get credit for making good choices -for being a good person -when in fact you have no choice whatsoever. Goodness is measured by what you do when no one's looking. Nobility is doing the right thing when no living soul bears witness.
Whether Toogood deserves to lose her child permanently is debatable, depending on factors not captured on that film, including whether Toogood is a candidate for rehabilitation. Whatever the result of an investigation and her prosecution, let's be clear on one thing. What she did was bad, period.
Or using the word choice to describe the killing of another human being as in Pro-choice?
- This wouldn't have been a story if the camera's had caught a drug deal on tape, in fact civil libertarian types would have been screaming that the store camera was an invasion of privacy.
- That if the mother was of some foreign ethnicity apologists would be saying that this was a cultural thing.
- That if the mother was of some other ethnicity or gender preference some people would be saying that it is cruel to remove the child from her heritage.
- That if the mother was of some other ethnicity or gender preference some people would be saying that it is bigotry that is causing such a major uproar.
In my opinion this issue has not died down because the family of the little girl is precisely who they are, perceived "white trash" therefore fair game for the indignant among us.
I'm told she was profoundly disturbed : something I had kind of figured out for myself. I went along with the "forgive and forget" routine-mostly because it was expected of me; but, in later years, found myself almost eager to make the same mistakes with my own children. The realization appalled me : just barely enough to pull myself back from the brink.
"Mom" passed away a few years ago. I'd like to say she became mellow and loving at the end; but, in truth, she was as vicious as her circumstances would permit.
Ms Toogood may have had such a mother : It is said, with some justification, Child Abuse is provably the sort of sin that is "passed on" from generation to generation ; but, at a guess, I think her conduct may have been drug/alcohol related - not that it makes things any better !
It takes courage to look reality square in the eye.
Madelyne's POOR choices begin every day when she wakes up and mingles with law abiding citizens, her bad choices are now going to be protected by a lawyer as if it is a "lifestyle", it will then morph into a "mental illness" brought on by an uncaring White society...she is a perfect victim whore...
You are silly to suggest that a parent who is over-zealous in a spanking is no DIFFERNT then this piece of common white trash criminal? She needs to pay her debt (and she has a LONG list of them) to society...she needs 3 years in jail, where parenting and anger management skills are taught, and she needs a skill to earn an honest living...anything less than that is an insult to law abiding Americans. OHH and tie the baby batterers tubes...
Her hubby needs to go back to Montana and stand in front of the judge he flipped off when he skipped the state...maybe a 3 year pen pal relationship would be the BEST thing for those three kids, and place the children in a loving morally sound home...
I don't want to sound like I condone what what Toogood did. I mean she was whalloping on her kid pretty hard. But my parents grew up in the Old World (1930s Poland), and my Mom tells me that my sweet, dearly departed grandparents use to beat on her and her siblings like crazy. My grandmother's rule for punishment: if one kid did something wrong, all the kids had to line up and be beat with a stick until they couldn't cry anymore. My grandfather at times would lose his temper because one of the baby kids fell and started crying in the house, but instead of comforting the crying kid he'd run outside, find my mother, and beat her for not watching the baby constantly. The neighbors were no better to their kids.
Again I have to say, that Toogood should not have been beating her kid, but I have to admit it amuses me to think that my very religious little old grandmother would have served a few humiliating years in jail if she had to fall in line with the child discipline standards of today.
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