But every time there was a statement on his behalf, it sounded worse and worse. The point where my heart broke was when it sunk in that this was never really his boyfriend, he was a target all along.
No one has officially said that, but the tone-deaf attempt to show righteousness by "teaching in prison" really drove it home.And it's not just him; obviously his lawyer makes lots of money despite being 100% detached from reality. What precisely illustrates the narcissism isn't that he's teaching in prison. It's that he's teaching biology in prison. His friends sent him books so he could do so.
I spent over a decade in community college. I worked with countless young men who JUST managed to make enough good choices to be there instead of prison.
Your black plague expertise was your self indulgence you could afford before you became a murderer. You squandered it. It's obtuse and it no longer makes you special.
My at-risk students couldn't fucking read, asshole, they couldn't read. Start there. It's not about what you WANT to do or what YOU specialized in. It's about them, you fucking deranged narcissist.
Until I read this story, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was especially sad about this psychoasshole professor murder case - but then it suddenly crystallized. He's above it all and felt like trying murder, like it was trying some new trendy varietal or something. So from his million dollar coop, he found a schlub no one would notice to help, and then he dipped into the blue collar world where he found a hair dresser to "date". Because he's a professor and certainly a hairdresser's rank makes him disposable, if that pleases million dollar coop proffy, right?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/sneed-prof-accused-of-murder-embraces-teaching-spirituality-in-jail/
That sounds sadly plausible to me, all the more so since I can offer an example which is somewhat similar, yet different: oddly, I, too, knew a murderer who turned to doing good (genuine good, as well as I could tell) in prison. The differences:
ReplyDelete--She was in a long-term abusive relationship (psychologically and pharmacologically -- he was a doctor, and was prescribing for her -- completely inappropriately, both because of their relationship and because of what he was prescribing) with the man she killed (she claimed that she meant to kill herself in front of him, and instead ended up shooting him; this seemed plausible, both on the basis of her general instability, which had displayed itself in other situations, and because she was in withdrawal at the time of the killing -- when he ended their relationship, she lost her supply). So, no seeking out a relationship (or relationships) to fulfill a sick fantasy, just a sad deterioration of an existing relationship (that probably wasn't so great to start with thanks to the combined psychopathologies of the people involved -- but walking away, or letting the other walk away, is the obviously-better solution in that case).
--The good she did in prison developed gradually, after her conviction, in response to the needs of her fellow-prisoners (which, yes, were very different from those of the students with whom she'd worked in the past). (She did protest her innocence early on, and persistently thereafter, but I don't remember any attempts to demonstrate it via immediate "good works," let alone to turn the prison into an institution more akin to the ones in which she was used to working).
This is a truly weird, as well as very sad, case. I don't suppose high-profile professor/researchers have any more opportunities to turn their visibility and professional charisma to evil ends than people in other professions, but they do have opportunities, and some do turn them to evil purposes, occasionally, as in this case, spectacularly evil ones (and the fact that he may, in some circles, be feeding a narrative that associates same-sex relationships and being "inherently disordered" just makes it worse. Of course there are plenty of really sick heterosexuals, and heterosexual relationships, out there, but we're not yet at a point where somebody won't point fingers based on the fact that this relationship involved same-sex relationships).