Shortly after courtroom killer Brian Nichols escaped from custody in an Atlanta courtroom, I blogged on the two women in this fatal misadventure — the female deputy from whom Nichols wrested the gun used in his killing spree, and Ashley Smith, the purpose-driven woman who talked Nichols into surrendering. Would there have been four few funerals in Atlanta if a big, strong guy had been the deputy that day?
Ann Coulter addresses the same problem in a column headlined, “Freeze, I’ve Just Had My Nails Done“:
“I think I have an idea that would save money and lives: Have large men escort violent criminals,” Coulter suggests.” Admittedly, this approach would risk another wave of nausea and vomiting by female professors at Harvard. But there are also advantages to not pretending women are as strong as men, such as fewer dead people. Even a female math professor at Harvard should be able to run the numbers on this one.”
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, it seemed that we could once again talk about there being jobs for men (fireman, policeman, etc.) that women simply weren’t brawny enough to perform in a way that prevented loss of life. But Political Correctness quickly reasserted itself, and it once again became forbidden to state the obvious. “How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists?” asks Coulter.
Like me, Coulter noticed that the media looked everywhere for a meaning to the Nichols escape. I was interested in the They-Are-Harming-Our-Judges that the media quickly adopted. (Although it generally takes three events to make a trend, the press in this instance settled for a two-event trend, quickly coupling the shooting of the Atlanta judge by Nichols with the tragic murder of a Chicago judge’s husband and mother. This fizzled for a moment when it was discovered that the Chicago murders were the tragic result of a verdict that displeased a mentally-ill man and not the work of a white supremacist bent on destroying the justice system.)
As Coulter pointed out, the New York Times managed to find a tax-cuts-for-the-rich angle to the Nichols escape, noting that budget cuts supposedly affected safety in many courthouses. The implication is that Bush’s tax cuts “somehow enabled a 200-pound former linebacker to take a gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother.” Those who died in the Atlanta courtroom shootings were inadvertent martyrs to a Political Correctness that refuses to look facts in the face.