Monday, March 05, 2007
Jeffrey Dahmer Wasn’t a Cannibal
Okay, try this statement on for size:
Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t a cannibal. He just bought the wrong cook book and made a few bad choices.
Because, to an admittedly ridiculous extreme, that’s what Joy Miller is saying about her daughter, 19 year old bank robber Ashley Miller.
“I want [people] to know that her and Heather both are not bandits,” Joy Miller told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday.” “They’re little girls that made a bad choice.”
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it has to be said: it’s the choices that you make that define who you are. If you’ve chosen to rob a bank, that pretty much makes you a bank robber. Excusing your little bank robber is making a choice, too. It’s choosing to be a bad parent.
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This is one of my pet peeves. “I’m not a X, I just chose all the same things that an X would choose!” Yeah, OK. Spending a lot of time paddling on De Nial, are we?
It doesn’t excuse the kid, but you do have to feel sorry for her. With morally ineffectual parent(s), it is a lot more difficult to come to an understanding of proper morality.
When parents assume that their kids are little angels--that kids are inherently good creatures who need no moral guidance--they are abdicating the responsibilities of parenting. What the hell good are they?
The father of the second girl has a quote in that story that makes a lot more sense to me.
If they are are little girls, what does that make the mother, a big girl?