Machinist - Salon.com
I think this will be a very interesting case to follow. What the woman did was reprehensible, and if it can be proved seems like it merits some punishment. But I agree with this columnist, what these prosecutors are doing is stretching the law to the breaking point just to find some way to punish the woman.
First I think that this woman is going to have to live with the guilt that she may have forced a teenager to kill herself, and that is probably punishment enough for anyone but a sociopath to live with. I occasionally still feel terrible about some of the things that I did as a teenager, and none of them had terrible consequences like this.
Second, I think that if any kind of legal consequences are going to enacted they need to come from a civil action, not Criminal. I think that the Web and the social networking sites are a bit of a mine field, but they won't get better because the Law makes them that way. I think this is a case where Locke's Social Contract will take over. Eventually the bad people will get forced out or kicked to the side, just like bully's on a playground. Getting the government involved is like asking for there to be police officers watching elementary school recess to prevent bullying, at some point people need to learn how to behave on their own, not at the barrel of a gun.
I have been in my share of 'flame wars' and the reality is the bullies eventually get kicked out of the play ground. Would that have stopped what this woman did? No, but I think there is a dynamic there that stems from the Helicopter Parent syndrome, what was she doing trying to fight her teenage daughters battles in the first place? We as a society are not teaching our kids to solve their own problems we are teaching them to run to the nearest authority figure and/or parent. Once we get past that, and return to letting our kids be kids, learn that a skinned knee or bruised ego is not the end of the world, the better off our society will be.
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