It's Crazy Uncle Day!

The Top News Stories section of my Excite Homepage this morning reads like a week's worth of Oprah programming. Mark Foley claims a priest molested him. EvilCrazy Pennsylvania Gunman claims that he--while a child himself--had been involved in molestation acts.

Of course, Foley's attorney says

"Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate" e-mails and instant messages, Roth said. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct."

Uh-huh. Sure. Because everyone who has ever been molested is in the habit of calling press conferences at random moments and announcing the most painful fact of their childhood for no reason. Nice work, Attorney. Especially with the crafting of that sentence. "As a child my client was horribly afflicted by a severe trauma at the hands of some Catholic Priest--you know how THOSE PEOPLE are--but that has no bearing on him sending a few emails to some 17-year-old boys he didn't even touch." It sends several messages.

1. Foley had it worse than the pages, at the hand of a recognised enemy. (Man, the poor Catholic Church. Why are they the Nazis of the aughts?)

2. These emails are not as big a deal as the actual physical act of pederasty.

3. I'm not supposed to write what I'm going to write as soon as I'm done with this sentence.

But you know me, so I am gonna write it. I don't do the Open Letters To Whomever as well as Auntie, and I surely don't wish to encroach upon her territory. But I sure wish that the evil freaks of the world would understand something. I'm about Oprahed out. I don't really care if you grew up in some backwoods cabin on the edge of a swamp where some snake-handling stepfather forced you to skin squirrels as a baby and used you as his plaything. Or that your daddy was an emotionally remote day-trader who never said he loved you. Or that your first grade teacher humiliated you for not being able to tie your shoes.

You are a grown-up person. You are responsible for the choices and actions you make. This world is full of grown-up people. Many of whom have things in their past that would curl your hair, turn it gray and make it fall out of your head. Yet we are all out here getting past it. Some of us are in therapy. Some of us drink a lot of coffee or liquor. Some of us eat too much ice cream. Some of us jog. One way or another a great majority of the wounded souls of this universe have found a way to move past their bad pasts without finding the need for cruelty to others.

Don't get me wrong. I have deep compassion for what happened to you. I think it's wrong. But in the words of some wise teacher "It's our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." I happen to believe that. I happen to believe that when you make the choice to do evil you alone are responsible for that choice. And you should be held accountable.

So if you're out there and you're crazy and you decide to shoot up a roomful of people or drive a car full of your babies into a lake or talk to young boys about their penises then just know that I don't want to hear one word about priests or uncles or stepfathers or whathaveyou. It was your choice to make. You made it. Congratulations. YOU are now officially the Sick Bastard of this generation.