Much Ado About Death
by Shelton Hull
If accurate figures were available as to the exact number of idiots, marks,
morons, and ignorant shits populating our country and world, those of us who were
not among them might be flung into a deep, merciless despair that could very
well send our society into a sort of infantile paralysis of the spirit.
Lucky for us, no one can count that high anymore, but estimates begin in the
low eight figures and run up to the 100 million who voted for Bush and Gore.
The summer heat can be used to excuse isolated outbreaks of stupidity, but
not the general condition. I would like to announce that, after several
minutes of intensive study, I think I may have found the single least
intelligent person in the United States today–at least, the stupidest
person the mass media could find so far this century.
His name is Russell Yates. His wife, Andrea, has confessed to drowning their
five children–Noah, John, Paul, Luke and Mary–in a bathtub, one-by-one.
Why? Because she was depressed, that is, “suffering” from post-partum
depression, which occurs when women who’ve had children look at their bodies
afterward and realize that they’re finished being attractive. I’m kidding,
sort of. Women (and men) are so thoroughly regimented with the “mating
instinct” that many are shocked to discover that, not only don’t children
erase all their problems, but they bring new ones and exacerbate the old. In
one moment of stark, delusional clarity she saw the facts of her life–five
kids, another coming, permanent domestic torpor–and rebelled in what seemed
then the best way. She’s not stupid, just crazy.
Russell Yates? Mmm…I don’t know. I’m tempted to just call him a flat-out
fucking moron, and so I will. He exposed the business of being him in
alarming fashion the day after losing all his dependents. Standing before a
tree ringed with teddy bears (of all the stupid things to send a man who
just had five kids killed), and holding a professional photograph of his
family (the kids with smiles not unlike Jack Nicholson’s in Batman), he
stuck up for Andrea on national television. “She’s a good person…I still
love her…I’ll be there for her,” and other hilarious bits of dutiful
drivel. He gave us the facts of her mental illness: Childbirth was hell for
her. Her P-PD was of unprecedented duration. After her fourth child, she
attempted suicide and the kids were taken by relatives. And her loving
husband’s response, from a pool of nearly unlimited medical options, was to
knock her up twice more! “She’s not the type of person who would do this,”
said another member of her fan club. Then how does one explain the fact that
she did it? Hmmm…?
It’s sad, I guess, but clearly these kids have been saved from what could
have been a very problematic life. People who advocate banning abortion have
no idea what that would do to society. This world is not morally pure. We
are not good or bad people–we are people, and as such are products of our
environment, which includes family, peers, the media, all imparting
conflicting data about the nature of “normalcy.” The only difference between
anyone is what areas of that environment we choose to draw from, what
prejudices and superstitions we integrate into our personal psychic
arsenal. Something told Russell that he needed more kids to be a man, even
though each successive one brought increased turmoil to the woman he loved.
Something told Andrea that she had to continue as she had, however much she
hated it, until, on June 20, she snapped. The kids were her prison, and
liberation neccesitated their destruction.
It’s hard not to sympathize with people so deeply disturbed; that is, until
they go off on a homicide trip. Now I wish Gore had won the election, so GWB
could sign her death warrant personally. Russell, having neglected his
responsibility to protect his kids from danger, should be immediately
sterilized. Harsh? Mean-spirited? Absolutely! I’d prefer having never heard
of them–all I wanted was to see if Fox News, CNN or the networks had 30
spare seconds to say goodbye to the departed John Lee Hooker, who’s touched
a lot more lives than Mrs. Yates. Of course they didn’t, because they were
too busy pushing a mass murderer and her accomplice.
The Yates story was bookended by a murder that is not yet officially a
murder, that of Chandra Levy. California Democratic congressman Gary Condit
had been screwing the girl, whose internship with the Bureau of Prisons
ended just days before she vacated the Earth, probably not by choice. All
evidence points to a seamless, sanitary extraction, which might be related
to Levy’s relationship, which Condit only confessed to after over two months
of aggressive media speculation. The smart money’s betting that he had her
killed so as to keep his indiscretion out of the news. Great job, Gary!
I wish her well, but I’m too smart to be hopeful for someone who always held
her head at a particular angle in pictures–I can see how a professional
liar could turn such vulnerability into rank debauchery, then discard her
like a line-item veto. Chandra Levy is dead, and will never be seen again.
Perhaps I’m wrong to jump to the most insidious conclusion about this
matter, but I think the Lewinsky affair of 1998 made a certain point
(already understood by the Kennedys) about how one deals with a recalcitrant
mistress.
By all accounts, Ms. Levy’s fascination with the pig-faced congressman only
grew in recent months after her internship had ended. Like Monica, she made
the unfortunate assumption that time had upped the level of intimacy in her
relationship. She’d begun to talk to friends about the man whom she “loved,”
even though she knew he was married and in a job where further advancement
is predicated on at least the illusion of moral purity. Thinking her
feelings to be mutual, she upped the ante by making contact at times and in
places any professional sex object knows are inappropriate (though she never
exploded at a Secret Service checkpoint like a certain other groupie).
Anyone in this position who desired to maintain his tenuous grasp on power
had but one choice: Chandra Levy had to disappear. Unlike Bill Clinton (who
obviously can do anything he wants and get over–he’s a special case), Gary
Condit has neither good looks, a wellspring of personal charisma nor the
near-absolute power granted to popular presidents in their second term. He
was a lower mid-card Democrat with no national persona, known only for
having voted to impeach Clinton. Oh it’s true–it’s damn true. It’s only a
matter of time before someone digs up tapes of his floor speeches from that
period, which could “go down” as the most ill-advised excoriation in modern
political history. However it ends, the scandal will almost certainly end
his career, if not his life as a free man.
Of course, he’s only part of this: poor Chandra was surrounded by
idiots–friends, family, colleagues–who didn’t glean a sliver of sense from
the Lewinsky angle. They knew of her “intimate relationship” with a married
man twice her age on the other side of the country and ignored dynamics that
seem obvious now that the girl is gone forever. (I’‘d love to interview some
of the boys back in Cali who had crushes on Chandra–if any did–but got
nowhere because they weren’t “cool” enough, weren’t “mature” enough, didn’t
“wear suits” because, after all, they weren’t congressmen. I bet they feel
like Al Gore right now, if not Ralph Nader)
Assuming that she didn’t just split for somewhere her ID, wallet, clothing,
ATM and credit cards weren’t needed, decided not to attend her own college
graduation and simply forgot to contact anyone she’s ever met (and hasn’t
noticed her face on TV these hundreds of times), I’d say she’s in a
Condition we’ll all be in eventually. Get your hankies ready, rubes! One day
girls will learn to stop fucking old men–probably just in time for my
retirement. Ironically, if Condit’s not involved, then the publicity
surrounding his (immaterial) sexual liaison with a girl younger than his own
children may be the best chance Chandra Levy has of ever being found.
It’s all very depressing. If I had children, I might drown them now.
