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Chain-Link Thinking

We have carefully studied Mudcat Falls Community College Professor Gunther Uberflassen's treatise, The Thin Gray Line: Quantifying the Border Between Genius and Madness. Yet, we continue to marvel at the Calabash County Board of Commissioners' facility and persistence in their on-going group flirtation with that psychotic demarcation.

Straining the credulity and patience of us mere mortal citizens, the Board has approved, ultimately with common sense as porous as the chain link fence surrounding the current site, funding to build the brand new Calabash County Men's Juvenile Detention Center on property directly adjacent to the Riverside Charismatic Episcopal Church of the Sacred Sunrise Young Women's Bible Study Camp.

Nearly herniating ourselves in an attempt to give Board members the benefit of the doubt, we at first wondered whether it might actually be a stroke of penal and/or penile genius to have young nubile virgins frolicking in full view of pubescent male prisoners, reminding them daily of the true cost of crime being exacted through their incarceration. But, no, the bogeyman of municipal governments everywhere, the American Civil Liberties Union, the local chapter of which regularly has the weak-kneed Board hiding their heads beneath the covers, would no doubt have filed a lawsuit claiming a grievous violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment."

While we cannot in good conscience agree with Sheriff Atticus J. Moosejowl's proposal to tattoo bar codes on the back of prisoner's necks to stem the tide of inmate escapes from the County's hands, we admire his gumption on acknowledging that a problem exists and his willingness to at least try to formulate a solution that will aid, not aggravate the situation. The sight of tube-topped, shorts-clad young Christian babes just outside the juvenile delinquents' exercise yard will be the adolescent equivalent of waving a red cape in front of an angry bull. Our community will need more than bar codes to hold back that hormonal tsunami.

Pastor Dieselspiel is right to be fearful for his flock. And we are right to be fearful for the complete loss of sanity in our government representatives.


©2003 MFTHPPPGT




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