Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Surprise Results

It's interesting. My poll (up in the top right hand corner) ended today. I've read your impassioned comments about Megan Meier and, more specifically, about Lori Drew. It's obvious that many of you have intense feelings about the whole matter, who's to blame, and what should be done with them.

The thing that surprises me though, is that, as I read through your many comments, it seemed that most of you felt that while Lori Drew is a despicable person-her actions were deplorable and reprehensible--her actions didn't warrant any legal punishment, because she, technically, didn't break the law. For the most part, you recognized that as dastardly as her deeds were, she didn't really commit murder.

Yet, the results of the poll show that you, as a group feel otherwise. Fully 50% of you responded that Lori Drew deserved to die for her actions. A death sentence. In essence, you feel that she's responsible for Megan's death.

Startling, to say the least.

But then what of Megan's mother? Many of you felt that she bore some large part of the responsibility here. One commenter felt as though Mrs. Meier was responsible (at least in part) because she wasn't doing an adequate job policing her daughter. I disagree. We can argue the semantics all we want (that is, it is "policing" or "situational awareness"; either are fine for my purposes), but the reality of the matter is, the reader was advocating punishing Megan's mother for "not catching" Megan.

Again, to my point, Mrs. Meier was not intended to be a law enforcement offier. She was divinely intended to be the force that instills the values and principles of their household into her children. Those principles should have been enough to keep Megan from derailing. They apparently were not sufficient. Assuming that's not the case, though, no amount of law enforcement is going to keep a teenager from egaging in activity that Mom and Dad don't approve of.

But then, that's not really the point either. The truth is, there're plenty of folks who are "at fault"--who at least made some minor contribution to Megan's death. Not to hear you tell it though; why? Because she deserves to die, according to you; her role was significant enough that she needs to win the death penalty.

What of the rest? What about mom and the other friends?

Perhaps it's their punishment that they have to live with themselves, to know that they were, in part, responsible for this poor girl taking her life.

2 comments:

Mrs. Willman said...

This is how polititians are able to set up polls to meet thier expected outcomes. If given proper choices to choose from, you may have (and probably would have) found the poll to tell completely different results.
Saying she is guilty is one thing, and saying that she deserves death herself is another. There were no inbetween choices for those who felt that she had contributed to the outcome and should be punished accordingly.
Think about it. Even people who kill others with their cars while intoxicated don't get the death penalty. They definately needed to be punished for their crime though.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I believe what Lori Drew did was disgusting, thoughtless,immature, dispicable... any MANY other things and she should to a certain degree take some resposibility for this. I'm not sure to what degree her punishment should be. Everything in me wants to scream death penalty, but is this too severe? Not sure. I didn't vote on the poll because I wasn't sure what my feelings on the matter were. I don't think we can actually say she committed murder, but what she did played a big role in what ultimately led to Megan's death. There's got to be some type of sentence come from this. Lore Drew is obviously not a GOOD! person. Why would you as an adult ever even dream of purposely hurting a young girl? It's NOT RIGHT! She definately, in the least, deserves a LOOOONG jail sentence.