Allow me to introduce you to one of the lowest pieces of shit in America.
Take a good look at inhumanity incarnate. This is Melissa Arrington, an exotic dancer from Tuscon, who killed a cyclist in a drunk driving accident.
Most people would feel bad about cutting another human's life short. There would be some guilt and some remorse and, at the least, a heartfelt apology to the family. If nothing else, it tends to go over better at sentencing. Melissa, however, was given 10 1/2 years in jail, one year less than the maximum sentence for negligent homicide. Why?
She laughed about killing a "gay guy" and thinks she should get a "medal and a f**king parade." You can hear it after the jump.
At the time she hit the cyclist, Arrington was driving on a suspended license for a previous DUI conviction. Arrington could have received as little as four years behind bars for the conviction, if not for a recorded conversation Superior Court Judge Michael Cruikshank called "breathtaking in its inhumanity."
The telephone conversation, recorded between Arrington and a male friend a week after L'Ecuyer's death, featured her talking and laughing about the crash. The man in the recording said Arrington should get a "medal and a f**king parade" for taking out a "tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot." He then said he knew it was "a terrible thing to say" but Arrington laughed and responded, "No, It's not."
What in the hell is wrong with people? Why do we have such an innate need to despise and vilify other groups of humans as opposites? Whether we're as overt as Melissa or inadvertently relying on our stereotypes to continue the subtle bias society programs inside us all, we're all guilty.
Will we ever overcome the brute need to boil everything down to a dichotomy that doesn't set the stage for a winner and a loser? I'd give the folks that come up with that solution a medal. Parade too.
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8 Comments
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Lets hope she finds payment for her bad Karma
in Jail.
She will be there long enough.
Take care
Sue
Sue Robins | January 24, 2008 6:07 PM
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Ugh - Arrington's sentence won't help her bigotry but at least she is out of the public's way. Good work, Judge Cruikshank.
Felix | January 24, 2008 6:49 PM
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Sadly, being in prison will probably only reinforce her callousness and bigotry, making her a worse person when she ultimately is released.
mike | January 25, 2008 12:32 AM
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Mike,
you might be right, she will still have to pay for what she has done...
They will take her youth and her freedom for a time.
Take care
Sue
Sue Robins | January 25, 2008 12:55 AM
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Where do I start with this dog? She drove at 2X legal limit. She killed while driving. She gay bashes (takes a lotta nerve for a stripper to gay bash, doesn't it?), and shows no remorse for any part of what she did.
10.5 years? That might be 10 times too little, far as I'm concerned, or maybe 10,000 volts too few.
AC | January 25, 2008 2:38 AM
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The relentlessly anti-gay rhetoric coming from right-wing religious leaders and politicians bear a lot of blame for this. Their constant attempts to dehumanize and degrade us allow people like Arrington to think that we are nothing more than a virus that needs to be exterminated.
Its great that Arrington will be jailed for 10 1/2 years, though I fear she will get out after less time, but that does nothing to halt the extreme level of homophobia be spewed daily by people in positions of power.
Michael Crawford | January 25, 2008 5:33 AM
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"The relentlessly anti-gay rhetoric coming from right-wing religious leaders and politicians bear a lot of blame for this. Their constant attempts to dehumanize and degrade us allow people like Arrington to think that we are nothing more than a virus that needs to be exterminated."
Undoubtedly.
But think about what categories of human beings other than gays that the caller - and Arrington - thought worthy of death: environmentalists, the French, and even bicyclists.
Its more than just christianist throcratic hate that spawned that; its also the cynical, commercial corporate hate media machines that have nurtured the spores of Rush Limbaugh and created full-grown hatemongers like Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, John Gibson and all the rest whose feeding tubes come from Clear Channel and Fox.
I honestly did not think I'd ever see something that would match the 'you can't handle the truth' sentencing speech of Michael Magidson (one of Gwen Araujo's murderers) two years ago - but I was wrong.
Kat | January 25, 2008 8:37 AM
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Interesting observation Kat..
I use to think that because people had a hand full and a half of gray matter that made them immune from brainwashing... Hay it doesn't work on me, one thing i forgot is this immunity to brain washing begins in the crib, then is passed over to the school system and then back to parents and older relatives...
Over the last 25 years or so i have been confronted with media-programmed automatons who wake up take their prozac or Paxyl go to their no nothing job and somewhere along the course of a day get a download from one of the big five talkers on AM radio, Howard Stern or MTV.
This isn't just some kind of right wing conspiracy to control the minds of America it is not limited to political affiliation. The education system has been actively working to discourage young minds not to think. I have seen this with my own two daughters when they came home from school and finished their homework then it became time to un-do the damage the education system did that day. Arrington is the symptom of a larger problem, free thought the kind that comes from learning to discern among other things, right from wrong is being stripped from the population in favor of turning humans into droids to serve the cooperate interest.
Take care
Sue
Sue Robins | January 25, 2008 9:53 AM
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