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MJ~Leben u. Sterben~u das Geschehen danach!
04.12.2011 um 11:11Man The Hell Up, For God's Sake
Sunday, December 04, 2011
So last Tuesday Michael Jackson's doctor was sentenced to four years maximum in prison. Personally, I think he got off lightly. He's a relatively young man. Four years will blow over fast, but hopefully not before he, once and for all, accepts responsibility for his role in the singer's death. If he's lucky he'll come out wiser and humbler for the experience. At any rate, he'll have the rest of his life to atone, so that there'll maybe come a day when he won't be known as the guy who killed the world's greatest entertainer. Of course, the family and we the fans of MJ have to live with this irrevocable fact: our beloved gloved one, our eternal Peter Pan, will still be dead.
I think the thing that galled anybody who followed the trial was the disgraceful way that the good doctor's team tried to sully Jackson. Michael Jackson, if we're to believe the defence team, was an inveterate pill popper, a junkie, and Dr Murray only accommodated his requests. How vulgar a defence! In which universe was that argument ever going to fly? Primum nil nocere. First, do no harm, Dr Murray. That's one of the first precepts of medical ethics all medical students are taught in medical school. If Michael Jackson had crawled into Dr Murray's office on his hands and bloodied knees, begging for something the doctor knew would be harmful to him, he was obligated to say no, to save Michael from himself.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifestyle/Man-The-Hell-Up--For-God-s-Sake_10302415
Sunday, December 04, 2011
So last Tuesday Michael Jackson's doctor was sentenced to four years maximum in prison. Personally, I think he got off lightly. He's a relatively young man. Four years will blow over fast, but hopefully not before he, once and for all, accepts responsibility for his role in the singer's death. If he's lucky he'll come out wiser and humbler for the experience. At any rate, he'll have the rest of his life to atone, so that there'll maybe come a day when he won't be known as the guy who killed the world's greatest entertainer. Of course, the family and we the fans of MJ have to live with this irrevocable fact: our beloved gloved one, our eternal Peter Pan, will still be dead.
I think the thing that galled anybody who followed the trial was the disgraceful way that the good doctor's team tried to sully Jackson. Michael Jackson, if we're to believe the defence team, was an inveterate pill popper, a junkie, and Dr Murray only accommodated his requests. How vulgar a defence! In which universe was that argument ever going to fly? Primum nil nocere. First, do no harm, Dr Murray. That's one of the first precepts of medical ethics all medical students are taught in medical school. If Michael Jackson had crawled into Dr Murray's office on his hands and bloodied knees, begging for something the doctor knew would be harmful to him, he was obligated to say no, to save Michael from himself.
And, speaking of people getting off easy, also on Tuesday, word came that Norway shooting suspect Anders Breivik, the self-described anti-Islamic zealot, was declared insane. The ruling apparently means that prosecutors considered him psychotic when he gunned down and bombed 77 people, many of them teenagers at a camp, in the usually peaceful Norwegian country, this past July, in what is generally seen as the country's worst peacetime massacre in history.
I find this ruling puzzling. Deluded, yes; insane, I don't think so. I know I'm not a qualified psychiatrist, but wouldn't randomness be the activity associated with the insane? He knew exactly what he was doing. I think 'criminally insane' is a tag mental health workers affix to monsters they don't want to admit roam freely in our midst. The massacre was meticulously plotted and carried out against people he saw as deserving of punishment — and let's face it; it had to be if he could have taken out so many people before being stopped - as the panel of forensic experts had pointed out shortly after the incident. Even a district judge had ruled Breivik was mentally fit to stand trial. Now, this monstrous mass murderer was never going to get the death sentence because Norway abolished the death penalty in 1902. Nor was he ever in danger of languishing in prison for life, since life imprisonment is another concept that doesn't exist in Norway's "non-aggresive" legal system, which considers the idea of punishment barbaric. The maximum term is 21 years. As it stands, however, Breivik, he of the perpetual smirk, may be out shortly; apparently even the most cold-blooded of murderers are fully eligible for parole after just a few years. I don't know; perhaps it's my Jamaican blood-thirstiness or an unhealthy reliance in the God of the Old Testament inculcated in me, but I can't see how this judgement can be seen as just. I'm not usually an agitator for capital punishment because of the attendant room for error in the verdict. But I admit it: I'm not so sure now. In a brutal and savage case like this, when there was never a doubt as to the killer's identity, it's unconscionable that this self-confessed murderer is so cowardly hiding behind a mentally unfit defence. If he was man enough to mastermind the bombing and shooting spree, then he should be man enough to accept responsibility for what he did. After all, it's not as if he'll pay too high a price anyway. Maximum-security prisons, like just-completed Halden Prison, for murders and rapists a few miles from the Swedish border, are reportedly kitted out with IKEA-like furniture, with cells that come with flat-screen TVs, private baths, and inmates able to take cooking classes and work out with personal trainers in the deluxe gym that has a rock-climbing wall. Oh, and there's a professional music studio for prisoners who form groups there and want to rock out. Guards don't even carry guns and often freely mingle with the inmates. Norway apparently thinks that prison is meant to reacclimatise the prisoner to society so that institutionalisation doesn't make him have a freak-out moment like that scene in The Shawshank Redemption where the old man hangs himself, unable to fit back into society after spending so many years locked away.
I find this ruling puzzling. Deluded, yes; insane, I don't think so. I know I'm not a qualified psychiatrist, but wouldn't randomness be the activity associated with the insane? He knew exactly what he was doing. I think 'criminally insane' is a tag mental health workers affix to monsters they don't want to admit roam freely in our midst. The massacre was meticulously plotted and carried out against people he saw as deserving of punishment -- and let's face it; it had to be if he could have taken out so many people before being stopped - as the panel of forensic experts had pointed out shortly after the incident. Even a district judge had ruled Breivik was mentally fit to stand trial. Now, this monstrous mass murderer was never going to get the death sentence because Norway abolished the death penalty in 1902. Nor was he ever in danger of languishing in prison for life, since life imprisonment is another concept that doesn't exist in Norway's "non-aggresive" legal system, which considers the idea of punishment barbaric. The maximum term is 21 years. As it stands, however, Breivik, he of the perpetual smirk, may be out shortly; apparently even the most cold-blooded of murderers are fully eligible for parole after just a few years. I don't know; perhaps it's my Jamaican blood-thirstiness or an unhealthy reliance in the God of the Old Testament inculcated in me, but I can't see how this judgement can be seen as just. I'm not usually an agitator for capital punishment because of the attendant room for error in the verdict. But I admit it: I'm not so sure now. In a brutal and savage case like this, when there was never a doubt as to the killer's identity, it's unconscionable that this self-confessed murderer is so cowardly hiding behind a mentally unfit defence. If he was man enough to mastermind the bombing and shooting spree, then he should be man enough to accept responsibility for what he did. After all, it's not as if he'll pay too high a price anyway. Maximum-security prisons, like just-completed Halden Prison, for murders and rapists a few miles from the Swedish border, are reportedly kitted out with IKEA-like furniture, with cells that come with flat-screen TVs, private baths, and inmates able to take cooking classes and work out with personal trainers in the deluxe gym that has a rock-climbing wall. Oh, and there's a professional music studio for prisoners who form groups there and want to rock out. Guards don't even carry guns and often freely mingle with the inmates. Norway apparently thinks that prison is meant to reacclimatise the prisoner to society so that institutionalisation doesn't make him have a freak-out moment like that scene in The Shawshank Redemption where the old man hangs himself, unable to fit back into society after spending so many years locked away.
If this criminally insane judgement is withheld, it means that Breivik would not even be sent to prison. He'd be indefinitely detained at a psychiatric hospital. Any way you take it, he has an exotic vacation to look forward to. So how about not adding insult to injury and disrespecting the memory of the 77 lost ones and simply owning up to what he did?
