Edward Morris, You're no Andrea Yates

I’m pleased to report that, as of yet, no one has established an “Edward Morris Support Coalition.” I have heard nothing about the establishment of an “Edward Morris Defense Fund.” And, as yet, I am aware of nobody speaking up for Edward Morris, or trying to drum up sympathy for him, on any daytime television talk show. The Larry King show and the Phil Donahue Show have not devoted any shows to inspiring sympathy for him.
And why should there be? If Edward Morris committed the crime he is accused of, he should, at the very least, rot in prison. The death penalty might be too kind. Anybody who speaks up for him should be watched very closely indeed.
In what seems to be an emerging Oregon Christmas tradition, another family has been slaughtered and the father is the prime suspect. Last year, it was Christian Longo whose family was found floating in Oregon’s Alsea and Yaquina Bays. He was eventually tracked down and is awaiting trial in an Oregon jail. This year, it was the family of Edward Morris that was killed. Morris’s pregnant wife and three children were discovered slain in the forest near Tillamook, Oregon. Two weeks after hunters stumbled across his family, Edward Morris was captured in Baker, Oregon. He faces five counts of murder and potentially a date with Oregon’s under-worked executioner.
I don’t know the details of how these poor people died, but I don’t doubt that the murders were horrific events.
But, as I followed the search for Edward Morris, I realized that something was missing from this story. No one was trying to drum up sympathy for this accused fugitive.
This is particularly notable as both of these Oregon holiday season murders were preceded by another notorious family mass murder. The big difference is that the murderess in that earlier case evoked a great deal of sympathy and even some tangible support from organizations that wish to be respected in the morning.
On the morning of June 20, 2001 Andrea Pia Yates waited patiently for her husband to leave for work. Then, she methodically killed each of her five children by drowning them in a bathtub.
She had actually formulated her plan the previous evening. She then, knowing full well what she meant to do in just a few hours, monstrously prepared her babies’ meals and tucked them into bed for their last night on earth.
The next morning, she filled a bathtub and held each of her four youngest children’s heads underwater until each died. Once they were dead, she laid their bodies out on a bed, side by side. Her oldest child, a seven-year-old boy, discovered what was happening and ran for his life. Andrea Yates chased him down and dragged him, kicking and screaming, back to the bathroom where she finished her grizzly task. Police found the seven-year old floating face down in the tub.
Immediately the cultural Left took their place alongside Yates and used the event to attack men, marriage, her church and American society. Her insensitive husband was responsible for driving her to commit this crime. The institution of marriage that enslaved her was to blame. A church that encouraged large families was at fault. Former National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland declared at a national convention that Yates’ actions were a consequence of America’s “patriarchal society.”
The tub was barely drained before the Houston chapter of the National Organization for Women began soliciting donations to the “Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition.”
Without ever meeting her, Patricia Ireland just knew that society, not Yates, was responsible for those children’s deaths. On the other hand, Edward Morris and Christian Longo are just evil men, who behaved as the National Organization for Women expects all men to behave.
How does one mass murderer ascend to heroic status while others find themselves reviled? The reason that no one is asking us to sympathize with this latest accused mass killer is that Edward Morris, like Christian Longo before him, serves no useful role for the cultural Left. Because they can serve no political agenda, Morris and Longo will simply have to face the charges against them without Oprah Winfrey or Rosie O’Donnell leading cheers for them from the sidelines.