Going Meta-Postal

A few weeks ago, a 59-year-old electrical contractor shot a mailman seven times on his driveway in Snellville, Georgia. It wasn't a case of pre-emptive "going postal," shooting the mailman first (yuk-yuk-yuk). The motive was much more mundane. William Crutchfield, the suspect, had fallen $90,000 into debt due to medical bills he couldn't pay, and was afraid of losing his house. So he decided that the way out of this awful fate was to shoot his way into a federal prison.

At his first hearing, Crutchfield explained, "My health is very poor. I have congestive heart failure and diabetes. I have high blood pressure?I'd like to get where I'm going and start doing my time." He described his special dietary needs as "horrible," and added that he had been without the proper medication "since it's been prescribed."

Besides making some sneery internet "stupidest criminal" lists, Crutchfield also became a brief poster-boy for leftist bloggers, who held his story up as evidence of the Bush Administration's heartlessness. Indeed the story seems almost lifted from some 19th-century bathos-packed Hugo or Dickens novel.

Except that this is contemporary American, and that means that no one is sympathetic. Crutchfield proudly displayed a large NRA sticker on the door to his house, where he lived alone. He was a great fan of Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph. He kept survivalist gear in his house. He hated the federal government, which is why he chose to shoot one of its employees (he could have landed in prison without hurting anyone). In other words, Crutchfield, our poor victim of evil right-wing policies, is pure Red State material: a right-wing pig, a Sucker of Colossal Proportions.

It must have hit him that he was a sucker, because he very candidly decided on a dime that he "wanted to be cared for by the federal government." So here was Crutchfield's Red State solution: He took a .380 pistol and shot a 60-year-old grandfather named Earl Lazenby seven times-hitting him once in the arm and shattering the bones, and six times in the abdomen, resulting in 29 holes in Lazenby's colon and intestines. Lazenby will survive, but he will never be able to digest his food or produce insulin on his own again. All so that Crutchfield could be taken care of by the same federal government he spent his life hating-the very same mean, idiotic hatred that deprived him (and tens of millions) of proper health and a decent life in the first place.

And yet-the double-sucker! He's going to prison to care for his heart, only to expose his saggy ass to every disease-infested, condom-shy inmate in his wing.

Crutchfield's story is neither funny nor sad. It is instead a grotesque yet inevitable result of a culture as utterly stupid and mean as America's is today. The only thing that's sad is that being a sucker isn't a capital crime.