Day: July 13, 2004

Elderly Man Sentenced to 12 Months Probation for Killing Wife in UK

A 100-year-old British man was recently sentenced to just 12 months “community rehabilitation” after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his 87-year-old wife.

Bernard Heginbotham, 100, confessed to slitting the throat of his wife Ida, 87, on April 1 of this year. Ida was living in a nursing home due to her poor health and was scheduled to be moved to a different nursing home.

Bernard apparently believed that his wife would not receive proper care at the new nursing home and killed her in what he believed was an act of mercy. The BBC quoted prosecutor Hilary Banks telling the court that,

He [Bernard] admitted that he went to the home with a weapon and injured his wife which resulted in her death. He didn’t want his wife to be moved again and didn’t think she was going to receive the care he wanted her to have.

In sentencing Bernard to only 12 months community rehabilitation, the judge in the case said,

Bernard Heginbotham, the killing of your wife, to whom you had been married joyously for some 67 years, followed by your attempt to take your own life, was an act of desperation. It was carried out in an effort to end her suffering while you were under intolerable pressure. It was in truth an act of love and I have no doubt you suffered a medical disorder at the time and the responsibility which you bear is substantially reduced.

Sources:

Cutting Wife’s Throat Was ‘An Act Of Love’. Patrick Mulchrone, Daily Mirror, July 9, 2004.

Wife killer, 100, spared prison. BBC, July 8, 2004.

Next Time, Bring Bruce Campbell Dammit

As my wife notes, my neighborhood is currently suffering through filming of a movie called “Kalamazoo.” At first this was interesting since Bruce Campbell is one of the actors in the film, but it got less interesting after we learned he’s not involved in any of the scenes they’re shooting in my neighborhood. The chick from “Blossom” is (and I was always a fan of that show — please don’t tell anyone) but that’s not much compensation for big ass trucks everywhere.

My wife suggests that Campbell’s absence is a shame because our neighborhood already resembles something approximating “Evil Dead”-ness. In fact, when my son was born a couple years ago, my wife went into labor Saturday around 3 or 4 a.m. So I have to wake up my daugher and pile everyone in the car. Since we live in a student ghetto, there were still plenty of half-drunk (or more) students roaming the streets. It was foggy that day and for some reason my daughter was convinced they were zombies or other monsters.

So Sam Raimi wouldn’t even have to pay for extras if he wanted to shoot a horror film around here. Sam, buddy, just have your people talk to my people and we can do this.

And when is The Adventures of Brisco County finally going to come out on DVD? Sure I can torment my wife somewhat with repeated watchings of Buffy and Smallville, but she’s just dying to see the obssessive re-watchings of Brisco. Bookcase that with “Sliders” (which is going to be on DVD this summer) and she’ll run out of the house screaming.

McKinney Rears Her Ugly Head Again

Henry Hanks points out that Cynthia McKinney is trying to make a political comeback after the woman who ouster her in the Democratc Primary last time around decided to run for the Senate this year.

On her web site, McKinney uses the slogan, “Cynthia McKinney: The Voices for the Voiceless” and includes claims like this,

Cynthia was tapped by the Congressional Black Caucus to lead its effort on the Durban World Conference Against Racism. With her leadership, the Congressional Black Caucus spoke on this United Nations effort and at this important event, never once compromising on the rights of all peoples to come together and express their pain and suffering and ways to end it. Cynthia was unwilling to be silenced in the face of injustice.

McKinney, of course, leaves out her support for Zimbabwean strong man Robert Mugabe (the same Mugabe who recently called Desmond Tutu “angry, evil and embittered little bishop.”)

In 2001, the United States approved sanctions against Zimbabwe after Mugabe began a number of illegal tactics inlcuding seizing the lands of white farm owners, arresting politicians and newspaper editors who disagreed with him, and even denying that Zimbabwe had any sort of AIDS crisis because homosexuality was only a problem in decadent countries like the United States and Great Britain.

McKinney was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to speak out against the sanctions bill, and as far as I can tell the only pro-Mugabe politician in the Congress period.

The fascinating thing is that almost no one is aware of this. I e-mailed several prominent Left defenders of McKinney back in 2002 about what they thought of her pro-Zimbabwe stance and the reply back is inevitably “I had no idea she’d ever said anything like that” but of course there was never any follow-up afterward. McKinney’s support of Mugabe was apparently just not that interesting.

The Audible Internet

The National Education Association released a study this month suggesting that the number of Americans who read fiction, poetry or drama has declined to in recent years, especially among younger Americans. A lot of news stories on the study, however, insist on spinning this to mean a general decline in all reading, leading to hilarious nonsense like this from the Christian Science Monitor,

As with any good detective novels, the usual suspects are here — but surprises are, too. As websites and talk radio proliferate, reading is no longer the only way, or even the primary one, of getting information.

Yeah, if only the Internet was dominated by text rather than being exclusively a video/audio media, then maybe more people would be reading.

LOL.

I have a hypothesis, by the way, on the literature finding. Personally, I read far fewer novels than I did a decade ago. Why? Because story telling can be replicated in large part by video/audio media whereas text is (and will likely remain) still superior to video/audio for nonfiction. Plus I can tell when a movie or TV show is crap pretty quickly, whereas you might have to read several hundred pages before learning the novel you’re reading is crap.

(Not to mention the fact that the last 3 or 4 novels I’ve read were all on my PDA, and the only one that wasn’t was a tie-in novel to Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Somehow I don’t think either of those count in the NEA’s book).

Source:

New on the endangered species list: the bookworm. Christina McCarroll, The Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2004.