Regarding Ashley Todd and whether we should pity or condemn her:

Whether she's got mental problems or she's a lying, racist prick-ette, what's the difference? She's equally fucked.

Mental health treatment can feel just as bad as morally-prescribed condemnation and punishment... I know from personal experience. On occasion when I got in trouble as a kid, I'd be sent to the school counselor, not the detention. And I HATED it. It felt infantilizing and degrading.

To choose between being a "troublemaker", or being "in need of help"... not much of a choice. To me, both designations mean only one thing: no credibility. And that's what really puts me into a depression. Why bother being the recipient of compassion if it means you get a reputation as a person not worth taking seriously?

So many people with mental illnesses see their diagnoses as liberation. Finally, a name to the problem! I have never been able to agree with this feeling. You have to struggle just as much to prove you have credibility and valuable ideas, as a habitual lawbreaker does. Just as with autism spectrum people and those who technically are not ASD, but are just quirky: you will get treated as the same group of socially deficient rabble.

I happen to feel a personal kinship to confused adolescence through my own experiences that transcend your experiences ...

I choose pity, like I do for many other similar instances ...

I have 22, 20 and 18 year old 'children' ... and they still make silly childish mistakes ....

You are free to think as you wish ... as I am ...

This has been another episode of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.

Meaning no disrespect to persons with mental illness, the post is called, "Sick or Republican?"

http://www.leighannlittle.com/2008/10/sick-or-republican.html

She deserves all the scorn and embarrassment she gets. Hopefully, this incident will be a figurative slap in the face, to make her wake up and change her ways. She's young, so there is hope.

Fuck her and the College Republicans. She (and they) are the result of two decades of hate radio and a full decade plus of Fox fucking news. Are those people mentally deranged? Yes. But nothing except public scorn will do any good.

You want to cure her? Ship her to Iraq and force her face into the remains of a freshly blown up person.

as I pity the Manson family. McCain too wants to start Helter Skelter, or he'd tone down ALL of this type of insanity.

McCain wants to be president so much that he'd selfishly take a chance on reviving and igniting the racial insanity that we saw unleashed in the 60s. McCain don't give a fuck who dies in Iraq or America just as long as he gets to be the BIG BOSS MAN! He's just another George W Bush waiting his turn to happen.

And not one second before.

I ain't holding my breath.

I have pity for the person, but not the deed. This child sounds like someone whose spent her life trying to be accepted...and running away from herself and her failures. From what I've read and seen, this kid looks like she's had a life fighting a lot of demons (weight being a major one), and found a welcome home in the young repugnicans...just like others find a home in religion. It sounds like she bounced around and was constantly trying to prove her salt to her peers and saw this stunt as a chance to really get accepted. Conveluted and dellusional, yes, but in a very lonely world, the need to be needed can lead people to do some very self destructive things.

The missing part of this story right now is Ashley's. I'd be curious to hear it. After all the smoke clears, let's see if she comes clean with what led to this evil act...I have a strong feeling she was put up to it by others (we know her "boss"...the one who took the picture...has a story to tell) and the games and tactics the young repugnicans use to turn these kids into political zombies.