Maureen Dowd, "Gangsta Guilt Trip": It's Not the Sopranos

My past professional career included the crime fighting and anti-terror domains, and there was also my service over many years in a reserve combat unit. I have often wondered about the corrosive effect that this has had on my life, and whether all of this has taken me to a place where I wish I had never gone. In addition, there is the deep dark issue of survivor's guilt.

Today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Gangsta Guilt Trip" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/opinion/dowd-gangsta-guilt-trip.html), Maureen Dowd continues with her series of opinion pieces concerning the Whitey Bulger trial. Dowd writes about the murder of another young woman, who was raised and molested by Stevie Flemmi, Bulger's past partner in crime. Dowd concludes:

"Flemmi took Debbie Hussey out shopping at the mall and then lured her to her death in a house Whitey dubbed 'The Haunty,' because of the bodies they had buried in the basement. Flemmi said Whitey choked the young woman — it didn’t take long because she was 'very fragile' — and dragged her down the stairs in 1985, just as he had with Debbie Davis in 1981.

'I’m not a doctor,' Flemmi said, 'but she looked dead to me; she felt dead to me; she was dead.' He added, 'Dead, period.'

Nonetheless, he told Whitey to 'Let her pray.' She was, after all, his little girl."

Okay, you've read this opinion piece, as you might watch an episode of "The Sopranos." Do you now just file it away in one of the recesses of your mind,  pick up a Macchiato and continue on your way to the office? After all, how does this have anything to do with you?

But consider the toll this takes on those who investigate these abominations or penetrate such organizations. Let me tell you, it's not something that you can cast aside when you go home to your family in the evening.

From an exhibition in Paris concerning women's underwear (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/07/maureen-dowd-tortured-mechanics-of.html), Dowd would now have us glimpse, from a safe distance, this horror show in Boston.

What's the point, Maureen?