Fair Use Note

WARNING for European visitors: European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. Learn more about this notice and your responsibilities.

Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

13 Jan - BlogNews

Jail cell in the Brecksville Police Department...Image via Wikipedia
The Parent Trap  Cassie Frequels
http://motherjones.com/media/2010/01/parent-trap
Cassie Frequelz is the nom de plume of a high school senior from Central Texas. She blogs at Political Teen Tidbits

Although I never blurted anything out on national television that led to the arrest of one of my parents, I think I may know how 6-year-old Falcon Heene and his brothers feel as their dad begins a 90-day sentence for his role in the infamous "Balloon Boy" hoax. I am sure they blame themselves, and I know they're worried about what will happen to them after their father (and then their mother) goes to jail.
My mother was incarcerated more than seven years, so I’ve often written about this topic on my blog. I've also been a regular caller into Bob Kincaid's radio program on the Head-On Radio Network since I was 14 and serve as its teen correspondent. I try to call in whenever something comes up relating to imprisonment, especially when an inmate's children are in the news. Bob refers to Americans' preoccupation with incarceration as our national punishment fetish, and it seems that the national media has viewed the Heene story with punishment in mind rather than looking at the story the way I do, from the perspective of a child whose parents have been convicted of a crime.
My dad left town when I was six and I have never seen him again. My mom went to prison when I was 11 and I have only seen her twice. The state of Texas may be glad it got a minor-league drug user and occasional dealer off the streets, but it never gave me or my brother a second thought.
( Texas is a case all its own : the state with the nation's highest incarceration rate in the country with the same sad distinction. If I'm slightly wrong on the particulars...visit Texan Len Hart's The Existentialist Cowboy for reams of data on state and national disgraces. )

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments:

Post a Comment