Saturday, January 12, 2008

Crime & Punishment – 21st Century Style


A terrible crime has been committed but the culprit has been apprehended. The public can breathe a sigh of relief as the dastardly perpetrator has been captured and removed from society. Justice is served once more and this criminal shall not harm us again. The world is safe at last.
Who is this dangerous individual? Did this person circumvent our Constitution or cause the deaths of thousands of our citizens? Was this person a member of the government found negligent in his or her duty? Did this person commit treason by outing a spy or secretly torturing prisoners then cover it all up?
No, this crime was so heinous as to make the front pages of the Nation’s newspapers and the lead story on many news programs for days. It even pushed Brittany Spears back a few minutes on cable news programs.
I am of course speaking of the infamous Marion Jones. Ms Jones admitted to the awful crime of drug induced enhancement of her natural born talents in order to succeed and break records in the world of track and field.
Do not get me wrong, I believe that if we as a society have laws against certain acts we find reprehensible then by all means we should prosecute the people who break those laws. But we must be consistent in our prosecution.
Marion Jones proved an easy target. First of all she is a woman. Secondly the sport from which she is being removed and her records expunged is not our National pastime. She is also not a current or past member of the Bush administration. So while she did a heck of a job on the race track she will now cross the finish line in jail. Instead of receiving the Medal of Freedom she will be stripped of her Olympic medals.
And while it was in fact a crime it was nowhere near the crime of the century. One can only hope that we will treat all crimes in the same manner because while records were made to be broken, laws were not.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This one was published by Newsday on Thursday January 17th. They liked it so much that they put Ms. Jones' photo next to it and placed the entire missive in the center of the page.