A St. Louis Court has just this afternoon upheld the precedent that
\nalthough the law in our nation maintains that everyone is equal before
\nthe blind, deaf, and especially dumb Maiden Justice, some animals are
\nmore equal than others. Now in our very heartland, much like on this
\nnation\u2019s more enlightened Left Coast, football players can kill innocent
\nwomen with near impunity.<\/p>\n Last October, Leonard Little, intoxicated Star Bonecrusher of some
\nsort or another for the St. Louis Rams, ran a red light in his great big
\nnew Mercury Decimator sport utility vehicle and, true to his title,
\nrammed a smaller car that was quite lawfully making its way through our
\ndowntown St. Louis streets. Susan Gutweiler died from it.<\/p>\n
Gutweiler, a mother from Oakville, a suburb to the southwest of St.
\nLouis improper, died because she was in the right place\u2014crossing an
\nintersection according to all applicable traffic laws\u2014at the wrong time,
\nwhen a local footballer on the sixth-rate tax abatement and corporate
\nincentive money hole that passes for an NFL team in this town happened
\nout at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong blood alcohol
\ncontent and at the wrong speed. And she died, as the Post-Dispatch put
\nit, \u201clater of her injuries.\u201d Suffered when two tons of blood alcohol
\ncontent and metal compacted her proletariat car.<\/p>\n
At least the media have not been silent throughout the debacle.
\nAlthough Gutweiler\u2019s family will have to go on without a mother and a
\nwife, at least Leonard Little\u2019s story is being told. The St. Louis
\nRams, when their coach Dick, capital D-I-C-K, Vermeil has taken time to
\nreflect on crime and punishment in the United States, issued a frank and
\nthought provoking statement that the St. Louis Rams are not afraid to
\nembrace all members of their team, even those who get lit and run down
\nactual practicing members of Family Values.<\/p>\n
No, the St. Louis media have emphasized the claims from Little\u2019s
\nattorneys, therapists, and other millennial swamis that Little needs to
\nget back to work making the bountiful dollars that those of us here in
\nthe inner ring suburbs can imagine only remotely. It\u2019s part of the
\nhealing process for him to get back out onto the field crashing into
\nother felons and earning the adulation of a public which bemoans the
\ncollapse of society and the dearth of character in strangers but doesn\u2019t
\nconfuse the man\u2019s personal life with the great job he does. No, Leonard
\nLittle just wants to move on, find closure, and put it all behind him
\nthat she got in front of him. Susan Gutweiler would probably have
\nwanted to move on, too, if she weren\u2019t dead.<\/p>\n
I know, I know, I should probably calm down. After all, the St.
\nLouis court today handed down the punishment for Leonard Little. Ninety
\ndays in jail\u2014NINETY DAYS IN JAIL–and four years\u2019 probation. And the
\nconditions of the probation are pretty strict, I\u2019ll admit. No booze, no
\nbars, no intoxicating substances. After all, the Post-Dispatch does
\nemphasize that he faces testing. It\u2019s already obvious that he doesn\u2019t
\nhave the decency, self-discipline, or common sense not to drive
\nintoxicated without someone, maybe like a gruff-but-with-a-heart-of-gold
\ncoach, on his case(where\u2019s Billy Martin when you need him?). It\u2019s not
\nas though Leonard Little, the Leonard Little who\u2019s the linebacker for
\nthe St. Louis Rams, wrote a Word Macro virus which crashed e-mail
\nservers or anything; he just struck someone down dead.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to calm down. After the decision, the only quote from
\nthe victim\u2019s family and the only outrage I have heard so far, is that
\nsomeone should take justice into his or her own hands. That\u2019s it. Just
\na heated little quote certain to paint the family as unrealistic and
\npossibly vengeance seeking. I couldn\u2019t blame them. After all, the
\nmishmash of judicial and legal wisdom has decided that Susan Gutweiler\u2019s
\nforty-seven years of life are worth ninety days in jail, less than two
\ndays per year.<\/p>\n
Maybe I am just cynical. Not nearly as cynical as the buzzing
\ncloud around Leonard Little, the sycophants that tell him and us that
\nit\u2019s not his fault and that somehow it serves the greater good for
\nsociety that the Little boy can drive about freely and play football,
\nbut I\u2019m getting there.<\/i><\/ul>\n
On the other hand, this time Little has not been found guilty of driving while intoxicated; perhaps he wasn’t. However, with one decal of a downed car already on his fuselage, I expect the worst from Little.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today’s top story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Rams’ Little is accused of DWI. At least he didn’t kill anyone this time. Here’s what I wrote when he was sentenced for killing Susan Gutweiler in The Cynic Express(ed) 3.02: A St. Louis Court has just this afternoon upheld the precedent that although the law in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22775,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/22775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}