Child Endangerment – How the Other Half Lives
Timing is everything and this article comes right on cue (The Virginian-Pilot, 7/12/09).
I posted a piece recently on the mind-boggling sense of entitlement expressed by Judith Warner of the New York Times and the woman she wrote about, Professor Bridget Kevane of Montana State University.
Kevane had been charged with child endangerment for taking five children to a local mall and leaving them attended only by two 12-year-old girls. When the girls ditched the other kids, aged eight, seven and three, Macy's employees called mall security and Kevane was eventually charged.
Kevane wrote a lengthy justification of her actions and she and Warner joined editorial hands to inveigh against the Macy's people and the officers. But, not content with that, Warner claimed that Kevane's experience indicated that hatred against educated, affluent women is "spiralling out of control."
My response to that was that the officers were simply applying the law evenhandedly and that Warner and Kevane are so used to their privileged status that equal application of the law strikes them as abuse. Interestingly enough, the prosecutor in the case said that she was just applying the law equally, irrespective of Kevane's education and status.
So now comes the article linked to above. I'd like Warner and Kevane to read it. It tells how the other half lives when it comes to the police and child endangerment charges. For example, it tells about a couple who left their toddler at home alone for a short time because the baby sitter was running late. Their child was taken from them by CPS and they received 12-month suspended sentences. But of course they're not affluent and educated.
Warner and Kevane need to read that article. If they do, maybe they'll see how privileged they really are and stop pretending there's hatred of their kind "spiralling out of control."
| More from Robert Franklin, Esq.
Stumble It!
