When Trailer Trash Get Their 15 Minutes

It was at the tender age of eleven that I learned my first lesson about cynicism and insincerity. Votes were cast by my elementary school classmates for who would be King and Queen of the Valentine's Day pageant that year. I was horrified to learn after votes were counted, that two of the most pathetic classmates had been elected for the position; not for the usual reasons that persons are elected to such posts: beauty, personality, popularity, etc., but for pure meanness. It was to be a joke that the two school jesters—kids that most students would not bother to speak to in the lunch room—would be sitting on the podium as the King and Queen of jokedom. The joke, of course, being kept amongst the classmates, themselves.

It was a "Carrie" moment, though Carrie, as a story and film, was still a twinkle in some writer's eye. My classmates were, in fact "the spoilers."

I still remember thinking to myself that neither of the two elected individuals were so backward that they could not see, immediately, what had happened, that they had been elected purely out of spiteful meanness and had become the butt of a cruel joke. Now, it is true, that humans rarely see themselves as others do. However vain either of the individuals were, however, neither was so ignorant of their place in the pecking order that some small voice inside should not have expressed some concern. If they did question the legitimacy of their election, they gave no indication of it. To all intents they were happy to fulfill their obligations as King and Queen, and make entries into their diaries later.

I mention this story as a preface to something I heard in the news today; the story about this 19 year old kid, Colton Harris-Moore who recently stole an airplane and crash landed it in the Bahamas. Apparently, he has a long history of misbehavior going back to the age of eight or even younger. Basically, he is an anti-social, sociopathic miscreant whose crimes include everything from petty theft and burglary to felonies.

According to the news stories, he was raised in a trailer in the back woods of Washington State by a single mother; the biological father having fled and the step-father left after having enough of the kid by the time he was six years old. You could almost feel sorry for the kid. Operative word: almost.

I feel sorry that the kid comes from trailer-trash, raised in a state that is, itself, basically total white-trash, but none of this excuses his increasingly anti-social behavior. The kid has a record as long as his arm and at 6' 5" that's impressive. They call him the barefoot bandit because he frequently removes his shoes when the cops are in hot pursuit (well, you know those hillbillies, can't get used to those crazy things folks call shoes). Frankly, his crimes were such that had he been tried as an adult, he never would have been sent to a half-way house in the first place, and had he not been sent there, would never have had the opportunity to escape and spend the next several years vagabonding and thieving from one location to another. His crimes have escalated from simple burglary, to theft of motorboats, automobiles and airplanes which are left abandoned or crashed wherever he decides to relocate his thieving spree. There is no mystery about his ability to elude Washington State police for so long, as there are two factors in his favor: heavy underbrush and a police force reminiscent of the Keystone Cops.

The worst, however, are the comments made by the white-trash who styles herself his mother, Pam Kohler, making statements so outrageous, you almost have to believe she is not firing on all four cylinders, that these are the blatherings of some pathetic half-wit. I've seen no photos of the woman but, let me guess: tatoos, piercings and underwear on the outside, right? In that sense, alone, I pity the kid. I imagine that had I been raised by some illiterate white-trash slut in a trailer in the woods, I would probably feel rather angry and anti-social myself. How would you like to have a mother who, when advised that her son had stolen a single engine plane, comments, “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes—I would be so proud.” I mean it's so ludicrous to be almost unbelievable. Ma Barker dressed in a clown suit!

A question that should have been asked many times before now, is why the child was not removed from that environment before he turned into what he has become. According to the record, numerous calls were made to child protective services as the kid appeared to be running wild and even living in the woods unparented at the age of 8.

What appalls me is not just that we have yet another anti-social individual committing crimes against society but in the state of Washington, where he has continued his two-year crime spree unabated, he has become a local legend. I understand T-shirts are sold lauding him, and even songs have been written about him. Now that his crime spree has gone international, it appears he is being turned into something of a national hero amongst the more mentally deficient of our population.

Again, the spoilers are having their day. THEY can't be King or Queen of the universe, so they will promote a pathetic excuse for a human being into that role. They will encourage this fool and reap vicarious enjoyment as he goes down in flames—after all THEY are not the ones who, ultimately, will be toted off to jail in handcuffs while the rest of the world snigger up their shirt sleeves. In the end, those who now aid and abet him, will abandon him easily when he no longer offers any entertainment value; once he is locked down and out of sight, they will return to filling their empty craniums with hour upon hour of "reality" shows.

Meanwhile his mother has set up a website ostensibly to collect donations for "legal fees" (who knows maybe it really covers her liquor and meth tab) but the fact is that no amount of money will keep this kid's hide from hard time; he is wanted in numerous states and now the Feds have a claim on him. (They have, in fact, offered a bounty on him.) Nevertheless, the story is that his mother has already hired a prominent shyster attorney who has defended several other notable Washington State drug addict losers. I hope he's truly enjoying his moment in the limelight because it is soon going to end, and it will be a very dark day in the far distant future before he ever has an opportunity to steal a peep at freedom again.

But, again, given the context of the state in which this all began, Dogpatch—Washington State—the white trash capital of the planet—a monument to hillbillies and trailer trash, of Ma and Pa kettle—poster boy and girl of all hickdom—it still manages to have a kind of twisted logic. Think stupid, lazy white people, and it all begins to fall into place. Those people clearly have no sense of shame; I blush for them. Some of my closest friends are from this state but are not the bumpkins I have described; they are, however, a minority and the other type alluded to above, comprise the vast majority of the population.

I despair for civilization when the basest members of society are turned into pop icons for a few moments of cheap, idle amusement, and the fact that the average citizen of a certain age is little more than a vacuous cartoon. I'm not sure that it is reversible, rather, I believe that, periodically, humanity must first be plunged into a dark sterile void before struggling back into the light of rational thought.