Smoking Kills

Timijane, a seventh grader at Shawano Community Middle School in Wisconsin, committed suicide after being suspended from school for possessing a cigarette.

Her mother, Charla, found the teen-ager hanging by a dog collar in the basement of the family's home.

Upset that the school district disciplined their daughter, Timijane's parents filed a civil lawsuit accusing the school district and some administrators of negligence.

As a result of their negligence, Timijane "became hysterical, emotionally distressed and was in a state of delirium, frenzy and uncontrollable impulses and rage during which she committed suicide," the lawsuit said.

School officials failed to follow proper rules in investigating the matter and handing down the suspension, and they failed to exercise "reasonable care" to protect the girl from possible harm, the lawsuit said.

"They should have never let her go home, especially by herself when she was crying the way she was," her father said in an interview. "Children with her on the bus said she was crying so hard she was hyperventilating. It was total neglect."

The Martins seek more than $75,000 in damages for medical and funeral expenses, pain, suffering, mental and emotional distress and loss of love, society, companionship and affection, the lawsuit said.

The initial question is "Why was Timijane so frightened of her parents' reaction to her suspension that she preferred death?" The second question is "Timijane?" And the third question? Well, the third question is the crux of this article: "Is this lawsuit a sign that the infantilization of America nears completion?"

It appears so.

In 10th grade, I was suspended for possessing a cigarette. In all Brady Bunch honesty, I was holding it for a friend.

When the vice principal strolled over and asked what was in my hand, I replied, "A cigarette. I think I need that smoking cessation class."

He agreed, and also politely suggested that I stay off school grounds for three days.

I didn't become hysterical, emotionally distressed, frenzied or uncontrollable. I didn't take the choke chain off of Rover and hang myself from the rafters.

I thought, "Nice, a three day vacation and a smoking cessation class that excuses me from Advanced Spanish once a week."

I spent the next three days smoking weed and drinking beer with other students who found themselves caught up in the school's sudden crackdown on smoking.

You see, until the third semester of my 10th grade year, the school allowed students to smoke in the Quad. Teachers asked students for a light, and students bummed cigarettes off of teachers.

It was a fair deal.

Then the image of a giggling blue-eyed infant appeared in the center of the sun, and Americans were blinded by the beauty and innocence of it.

"How can we protect this child?" Americans asked. "How can we ensure this infant never grows up and is forever dependent upon us?"

"I know!" someone cried. "Let's eliminate the word 'responsibility' from our lexicon, and sue each time our children so much as come down with the sniffles!"

America saw all that it had made, and it was very good.

Children wore helmets, and neighbors called protective services on each other. Naked statues were covered up. Swings were removed from playgrounds. Menstruating girls were suspended for bringing Midol into the hallowed halls of their schools. Which banned black clothing and Marilyn Manson t-shirts, by the way, and had guards posted at every door. Self-esteem was stressed. So were creative spelling and whole language. Students felt good about themselves, even as they were being carted off to juvenile hall for fighting at a football game. And they felt good because they knew their parents -- heck, maybe even the entire community -- would rally around their beautiful and innocent children.

But it became very bad. Kids thought they were unique, but that only served to make them weak. Any hint of rejection was met with violence. Censorship of the Internet was called for when unpopular opinions were expressed. Unpopular opinions were hushed in schools.

Not that this only affects the youngsters.

This phenomenon gained popularity with my generation, and it's not unusual to find sniveling brats with their own brand of childish behavior at my college.

At the beginning of the fall semester, I turned in a controversial opinion article to the school newspaper. Controversial for the simple fact it didn't accuse Columbus of genocide, mock white men for claiming discrimination or call for hate crime legislation. It was what the journalism chairman referred to as "anti-establishment."

Nice way of putting it, I suppose.

In a more literate society, what happened next would appear on the television show "When Bad Editing Happens to Good Writers."

The editor disagreed with my article. He disagreed with it so fervently, he edited the article to make me look bad. He removed the sections that bolstered my points, which left the article without supporting evidence. It was a hack job.

I had flashbacks to the burnings of The Cornell Review. My article had a Libertarian slant, but was that reason enough to edit my point into oblivion?

Apparently, yes. ¹

I asked the editor to remove the article because the entire tone was changed. He balked.

"I am God here!" he said. "What I say goes. The editing is fine, and your article is shit, anyway! Your article was mean, and I made it sound better!" Coming from the president of the school's chapter of Amnesty International, this conversation was no surprise. ²

If it were shit, though, he never would have run it. He agreed to run it because it was good, but more importantly, he could edit it however he pleased.

Given the likelihood of his death at my hands, I beseeched the paper's adviser to look at both the original and edited articles. I couldn't deal with the obnoxious fuck any longer.

The adviser took my side, and told the editor to remove the article. "Your bias shows through the editing," the adviser said.

The editor stood his ground. "No, I'm the editor, and no one can question me. It stays."

So it ran, and the backlash followed.

I wrote a letter to the editor, detailing why his attitude was typical of the kids who grew up with constant ego stroking. It didn't get into the paper.

No surprise there, either.

It didn't upset me, but shit, it was the principle of the matter. Editing is expected, but editing an article strictly to cast a person in a negative light is unethical. But who cares about ethics?

Which brings us back to Timijane. Timijane was disciplined. Timijane was rejected. Timijane's world came crashing down because she lacked necessary coping skills. Presumably, no one held her responsible for her actions in the past. Right and wrong were irrelevant. She was a golden child -- America's future. What she said went, and who would dare question her supreme authority?

Luckily, Timijane took the easy way out, and she possibly spared some future misanthropic bitch the annoyance of dealing with a pampered college newspaper editor.

But Timijane isn't the last of her breed, and neither is that editor. They're just the beginning.

With America coddling its young, it's no surprise that hate crime legislation is widely hailed. It's no surprise that editors censor non-mainstream opinions and students burn non-mainstream publications. It's no surprise that kids use their classmates as target practice, and it's no surprise that the survivors lack basic skills.

And it's no surprise that adults are now turning to the government to protect us from ourselves. If it's good for the kids, it's good for us.

In Colorado Springs, CO, Leonard Carlo runs a bar. A blue-collar bar, by anyone's standards. The bar is littered with signs containing profanity.

Signs over restroom doors said: "Fucking women" and "Fucking men"; and signs in other areas of the bar read: "No fucking tap or draw beer" and "No fucking children, animals, tabs or checks."

A state liquor agent confiscated 29 signs from Leonard's Bar II on Aug. 31 because he believed the signs violated a state regulation that prohibits profanity in bars.

Profanity in bars? Why, I've never.

Carlo faces possible suspension of his liquor license if found in violation of the profanity regulation. That regulation says licensed bar owners must not "permit profanity . . . offensive to the senses of the average citizen, or to the residents of the neighborhood in which the licensed establishment is located."

Carlo, 65, said he didn't put up his signs to be offensive, and he said people who are offended by them should not come to his bar.

"If you walk in and see "fuck' and you don't like it, get the fuck out. There's 700 bars in town," he said in an interview with The Denver Post.

"If I can't say fuck in here, then pretty soon they'll say you can't say fuck in your house. Then you won't be able to say it in your car and by then maybe they'll be able to put me in jail, and then I can say fuck all I want in there," Carlo said. "They didn't think this fucking bald motherfucker would fight them on this.

"I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for everyone. Because if they get me, baby, you're next.''

And if you own a gun, that bald motherfucker is probably right.

Brooklyn mother Gail Fox saw her son shot while on a sidewalk. But her parental ire was focused on an unusual target.

She did not blame the child who fired the gun or the adult who bought it illegally or the gun trafficker who sold it out of a car trunk.

Instead, she took aim at the gun industry, and the vehicle for her anger was a lawsuit demanding that gun manufacturers as a whole be held liable for the harm done by their products.

"They make life-taking instruments that pour into our neighborhoods with no regulation," Fox said. "They know what's happening. They could control it, and so they should be held responsible."

Fox's 19-year-old son, Steven, who survived the shooting nearly five years ago, and relatives of six other shooting victims who died in separate incidents sought damages from more than 30 gun manufacturers and distributors.

At the heart of their case was the allegation that the firearms industry is guilty of "collective liability" for fostering the development of an extensive underground market in handguns through negligent marketing methods and deliberate oversupply.

The jury's verdict, holding 15 of the 25 firearms makers named in the suit negligent, caught people on both sides by surprise.

The decision to hold gun makers liable for shootings because of negligent marketing practices is likely to encourage many more lawsuits using the same legal approach.

In modern American society, people don't kill people but inanimate objects do, students can't be disciplined for breaking school rules, profanity in an establishment that serves alcohol is illegal and censoring non-mainstream opinions is allowed.

Pass me the Similac. I need a swig.

2. I've heard the emasculated editor bemoan the existence of my site, which was a rather surreal encounter. "I can't stand that Misanthropic Bitch site!" "But I AM The Misanthropic Bitch!" Not that I admitted it.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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