Though I am new to Mr. Walsh and to the apparent disagreement you and he have had over the recent past, I nonetheless thought your response to him in the matter of what "dispassionate" means and why it might be, in circumstance such as these, thought a virtue was spot on and pitch perfect. IMHO, well done.
The word “defense” has different meanings. Michael has not been “defending” her actions. He has been establishing the basis of a legal “defense,” the facts and legal theory with which one would conclude that she is not criminally liable, but, instead, legally insane.
The point is that in this context, the meaning of the word “defense” and legal context is being perverted. It is no sense analogous to the typical use of the word “defense,” which would be used for actions that are in some sense justifiable, could be repeated without objection.
That's right. Everyone who's been raging with such fury lately at the people they condemn for "defending," "excusing," or "supporting" Lindsay Clancy are using those words as synonyms, speciously, for "justifying." And farming cheap outrage on that specious basis.
In my view you've chosen to disregard the evidence and have decided which experts' opinion you wish to consider factual diagnoses.
Clancy meticulously strategized how to provide to herself enough time in the house alone with her children to strangle them until they were dead.
As an experienced nurse, professionally familiar with the healthcare system, she ensured no doctor or practitioner would have consistent longterm experience of her. She spent a brief time (less than a week) as a voluntary inpatient and then checked herself out to continue her doctor shopping and prescription collecting. She was not compliant with doctors' directions on how to take the medications prescribed to her.
As a trained nurse she knew anatomy perfectly well and how to cut her veins effectively. She did not do that. But she was ruthlessly effective in the method she chose to murder her three children.
As you know, being extremely familiar with lawsuits and the people who bring them, her now-ex and his mother are not going to blow up the possibility of success against her providers by saying anything contrary to "everyone failed her in her desperation." But by adhering to that stance they are pissing on the corpses of those dead children we must presume they loved. But as you've said previously, the kids are certainly dead and nothing will bring them back. So let's go a little further with that: the family might as well collect if they can.
Thank you! I picked up on the doctor shopping as well. She had a nanny, her husband worked from home so people certainly tried to help her. And yes, I believe her actions were premeditated. She knowingly killed her three children one after the other after she sent her husband on an errand.
True, but many women are posting totally bat shit crazy stuff on various platforms.
Many of them insist that the husband actually killed the children, or that it was his voice telling her to do so. The husband has been condemned for being a narcissist, who failed to support Lindsey, which doesn't seem accurate.
Also, we've already seen at least one copycat killer, as a mother killed her 2 year old, claiming that he was demonic. This is just an incredibly sad case, and it's disturbing to see so many unhinged responses online.
Do you have evidence of her “legal insanity” that is not itself merely her crime? “You’d have to be crazy to murder your own children” is allowing a criminal to benefit from the circumstances of their own crime
Great point. Also, this is a matter of law which we should all know by now often involves technical aspects driven by policy, in this case, Did She Know that Killing Her Children Was Wrong?
The answer to this question seems obvious to most onlookers who are probably not fully informed and in any event are judging from their perspective, not the defendants. As many as eleven members of the jury, which had front row seats to the entire spectacle, apparently see otherwise.
Walsh is a moralistic demagogue. He can be highly entertaining and sometimes actually makes good points. But his primary setting is rigid Christian moral outrage. He's totally predictable and, I'd add, as a result he's generally boring.
Michael chose a fight with a predictable, boring demagogue. Yipee! Nevertheless, I am grateful simply for the entertainment value of having Walsh's femininity brought to light. On this issue, Walsh is overcome with hysteria.
It may be that you should not have let yourself been baited, but... it is a response worth reading. Of course, it will be completely wasted on Walsh, who seems to be one of the brightest examples of de-evolution in the digital age. But it is good to read for the rest of us, who will never be reminded often enough of that little byproduct of the evolution of Homo sapiens called "reason".
Good Job, Mr. Tracey. I've admired your writing/reporting for quite awhile now - ever since I read your history of Americans' anit-interventionism preceeding WWII. That was a response to a Vicious attack by a leftist. When younger I devoted what was probably too much time to the problems of L. Celine and Wyndham Lewis (and talk about being "unable to read the room" - Lewis entitled his 1939 anit-hitler defense of the jews, (a couragous work, considering he announced to the world that he was completely mistaken in his previous six years of political analysis) "The jews - Are They Human?") and anyone who might dare to practice irony in politically unstable times. Not that you are a particularly great ironist. Like myself, it seems you lean more towards bombastic sarcasm overkill. And why not? These people are disgusting. You know you're doing good when you've made enemies on all sides. It can be a lonely place, though. You have my support, for what it's worth.
The children are dead. Everyone agrees it's a terrible tragedy. What are you suggesting I do in order to demonstrate my "concern" for the dead children? Agree with the government's incoherent theory of first-degree murder, which was just rejected by 11 of 12 jurors -- who sat there for five weeks, day in and day out, listening to every angle of the case aired in painstaking detail? What are YOU supposedly doing to demonstrate your own "concern" for the dead children? Demanding that their mother be executed? Sadly, there is nothing left to do for those children. They cannot be raised from the dead.
What many of us are suggesting that you do in order to demonstrate your concern is to support the woman who carefully planned their murders and performed them one by one - spending several minutes on each of them - be permanently removed from society so she can never murder again.
No murder victim will ever be raised from the dead. That doesn’t mean we don’t punish the murderers; it’s why we must punish them.
This was indisputably first degree murder. The murderer herself said she did it. Furthermore, 11 out of 12 jurors voting for her acquittal doesn’t validate claims of her innocence. Juries make bad decisions all the time for a variety of reasons, such as caring more about an agenda than facts.
I’m not saying that the prosecution did a great job, because I don’t know that. I’m saying her guilt was clear yet a significant portion of society wants to keep her out of prison for political reasons. Just like many people did not want O.J. Simpson to go to prison because he was black.
I first discovered you when I saw your posts condemning the banishment of President Trump from social media sites and warned of the danger of that. Ever since then, I’ve regularly read your posts and articles. As a conservative, I’ve often disagreed with your views, but I’ve always felt challenged by your writings. Even if you did not change my mind, I at least found myself thinking more deeply about my position on various issues. This is the first time that I’ve ever thought you were radically, outrageously wrong about something.
Michael has not once defended a killer. He has been doing exactly what we claim our justice system is supposed to do, among other things is the presumption of innocence no matter how vile the crime; and to channel the emotion: "does your 'feeling' change what the evidence and law require"? I do not want to live in a society where blood lust and blind rage become all that is necessary to determine guilt or innocence.
How about the.170 dead little girls the USA bombed whilst they were going to school in Tehran? No."feelings of concern" for them. It's OK if the Yanks do it in the name of Trump.
Two things about the Lindsay Clancy trial that is mind blowing to me are, one seeing many women defending hormones made her do it argument. Male chauvinists have used that argument against women for decades, it’s the reason many men tried to oppose women getting the right to vote. They’re governed by biology, not reason. Wild to see in 2026, women using the misogynist playbook of biological determinism to defend Lindsey Clancy. Second, women would never accept a man using that excuse in the commission of a crime, example say a man rapes a woman. And his defense attorney tells the court that while his client is remorseful for what he did, he can’t be held responsible for his actions. He took that night by accident too much exogenous testosterone and Viagra, he forced himself on her, he couldn’t help it. His hormones and sex drive made him do it. Women would rightly call bullshit on that biology made me do it defense
There are 2 key differences with your hypothetical. The man chose to take the hormones and he didn't kill his own children. There's something about a mother killer her young children that isn't quite as hard to digest compared to her killing someone else's children, for example.... Or killing her own when they are full grown. Perhaps it has something to do with this happening in nature with some species. Or maybe it's just so hard to conceive of that it's easy to conclude she must have been experiencing insanity.
The only dispassionate one in all of this was Lyndsey Clancy as she systematically sent her husband out on errands just long enough to strangle her 3 children. Nothing about her behavior fits anything typical of psychosis, according to the Norwegian psychiatrist, Hannah Spier, MD. She believes an entirely new definition of psychosis for the category "post partem psychosis" has been dreamed up to explain away the possibility of the woman being a psychopath. Nearly half of the filicides committed are committed by women. It's not the US healthcare system, it's not a random male voice, it's not some new psychosis, that unlike any other psychosis, comes and goes from hour to hour. Women throughout history have killed, and judging from the copycat killer this weekend, Corie Walsh, they will keep on killing. We don't need to keep making up defenses for them.
I don't share your take on the Clancy case, but I would never describe you as a "weird, childless ogre."
I had post partum depression with both of my babies, but I never neglected them, or harmed them.
I don't really understand psychosis and delusion, but it does seem like she did some careful planning, in sending her husband out on errands, right before she heard the voices.
It's always creepy when people purport to know, and then aggressively opine on, various aspects of my personal life, which I virtually never talk about in public to begin with, and have definitely never discussed with THEM.
I respect people who have intellectual humility, high decoupling, a "scout mindset"—otherwise known as rationalists. You are clearly one of them, Walsh is not. Unfortunately it seems like there's more Walsh's in the world than rationalists.
Junior high school. First semester. Beautiful young woman full of love for life. Sunday morning her older brother goes upstairs to find the young woman in her bed. She is dead. Their mother went into the room early that morning. She took a pillow and covered her daughters face with it. The mother continued to press down on her daughters face as the daughter fought for her life. The mother prevailed. Mom believed the daughter was too good for this world so she killed her. [A friend remembers the mother tried to enlist the oldest son to help her kill his two brothers too. Can't say.]
Of course the mother was "insane", for what sane person would kill their child? Apparently juries have found it is possible. Fathers I believe. In this particular instance mom was not found guilty. She spent a little time in a facility. Very little. It seems with her daughter dead, the proximate object of the mother's insanity was miraculously gone. [Sons?] Mom was released. A few years after the murder, another friend's parents were in a town 3-hours away. They attended a cocktail party and saw the mom at the party.
Something is ABSOLUTELY wrong if you can kill someone(s) with your own hands, claim insanity because of that someone(s) and once they are dead you have a short ride to release and a cocktail party. Oh, and her husband divorced her 2-years earlier. There is your 'post-partum' excuse.
Tracey is just never going to get it. Rote contrarianism isn’t interesting or appealing. I think it’s why Taibbi shelved their podcast after Tracey took a ridiculous, indefensible position on russiagate.
Ironic that MT would go on this screed about moral -instead of evidential- indignation over Clancy. Bro have you taken a look at the people defending her? They’re emotional lunatics and her defense team leaned into that anti-logic!
What's funny about your little screed here is that I was CONSTANTLY denounced as a "rote contrarian" for my Russiagate commentary/reportage WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING. Meaning from 2016-2019. That's just one of a zillion things I've been "rotely" called a "contrarian" over throughout the years. People like yourself seem to think "contrarian" just means "views contrary to mine and that of my immediate social network, at this moment, which may at some later date become conventional wisdom, and I'll pretend to have believed them all along." Something very similar has incrementally been happening with Epstein. This time last year, all anyone could do was excoriate me for my reflexive, brainless "contrarianism" on that subject. It still happens today, don't get me wrong, but significantly less so, and with less unhinged virulence. I could give you countless more examples. My extensive experience with the "contrarianism" charge is that guys like you love to chirp it when you don't want to engage on the substance of what I've been saying/writing/reporting. So instead, you resort to the tried-and-true tactic of impugning motive: that I'm just pathologically obsessed with taking views "contrary" to whatever amorphous blob you imagine I'm positioning myself against at any given moment. It's never been true -- it's just not how I think, write, or engage with the world, insofar as I can access my own conscious mind. However, you really need to believe it: that I secretly do everything for arbitrary, self-promotional, personality-defected reasons. I've now written many thousands of words on the Clancy case. As per usual, a certain segment of my followers/subscribers immediately revolted and left, as social media metrics unfortunately inform me of on the regular. There's nothing more I could possibly do to establish that my writing/research/reportage on this subject and all others is the product of authentic journalistic inquiry and reasoning, to the best of my ability. But rather than address that head on (which would actually take some legitimate effort) you instead fall back on the same old "rote" deflection, and try to cheapen me as nothing more than a sneaky trollish instigator, going around making people mad for its own sake. I don't take the insult personally, of course -- I've heard the same petty accusation way too often by now, and on such a wildly diverse range of issues, that I can't NOT be inured to it. What I find more objectionable than the insult itself, I guess, is that it's just so BORING. I can't imagine anything more painfully tedious than debating my own allegedly foul character traits, motivations, and interior thoughts. Seriously: don't you have ANYTHING more interesting to comment on?
I don’t know. I mostly wanted to post a comment that was vaguely in sympathy with Michael since I posted one under a prior Clancy post that was vaguely critical of him. The truth is, I’m just not all that interested in this case
Well, it clearly reached a critical mass of public attention such that whether or not you're personally interested, it's having a big national impact, and therefore calls for some rational discussion -- at least from my perspective.
I don’t know what society should do about Mrs. Clancy.
But what stands out to me, on her most normal day, January 24, 2023, she sent her husband out for food pick up and child laxative just after 5 p.m., and in a span of 45 minutes strangled all three of her small children and then attempted suicide. Two things: she didn’t kill the baby onsite, and she failed at suicide. I don’t profess to know her state of mind — NO ONE KNOWS BUT HERSELF WHAT THAT WAS — but she appeared to me to be in such a hurry to get these things done before her husband returned, and in her rush she couldn’t completely kill the baby and she totally fumbled on her suicide attempt. Yeah, she’s difficult to watch in that courtroom slumped over and whimpering until they have to clear out the room in order to restore order in the court. When I see that I try to gauge her incredible psychic pain, she must be fucking miserable, bound now to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, her head must be extremely pressurized.
If there is a retrial and she is found not criminally liable, then she is, what, institutionalized? If she was never diagnosed with post-partum psychosis and if she claims she was only temporarily insane while she committed murder but now is not insane, why would she be subjected to being institutionalized? Nothing makes any sense. The best questions posed have been from Sabrina Salvati, who resides in MA and explained the law in this case in detail. But her question is, why did no one, not the husband, the grandparents, someone other than the state, knowing that Mrs. Clancy had feelings of harming her kids, NOT remove the kids from the home while she dealt with her mental schisms? What was never mentioned in any of this mess was the matter of why the children were not protected.
I did not watch the trial. Couldn’t bring myself to engage in such morbidness. I’ve only looked subsequent to the mistrial conclusion, and frankly I regret looking at it at all.
I am reading into the legal difficulties that mothers face if they wish to relinquish custody of their children beyond the stage of newborn.
Surely, we could use some change in the law and programs to allow mothers who are unfit to raise children to more easily pass their children to others after the newborn stage.
But it will be better if some mothers who are unfit to raise children can more easily pass them to others. If Lindsay Clancy did so, it would not made her sane, but it'd save her children.
OK, but there were family members in the case of Clancy. I admit I don't know their circumstances, but I don't know any grandparent who wouldn't step in to save their grandchildren. I am sure there are some. Then an aunt? God forbid the father's parents should get custody, right? You had four people who raised children of their own. I seriously doubt it was an issue of passing the kids off to a responsible party who wouldn't strangle them. Are you saying we should let an unfit mother decide where her children, she may kill if not relieved of them, decide who should have custody of her children? Is that what codification by the state should entail?
Though I am new to Mr. Walsh and to the apparent disagreement you and he have had over the recent past, I nonetheless thought your response to him in the matter of what "dispassionate" means and why it might be, in circumstance such as these, thought a virtue was spot on and pitch perfect. IMHO, well done.
The word “defense” has different meanings. Michael has not been “defending” her actions. He has been establishing the basis of a legal “defense,” the facts and legal theory with which one would conclude that she is not criminally liable, but, instead, legally insane.
The point is that in this context, the meaning of the word “defense” and legal context is being perverted. It is no sense analogous to the typical use of the word “defense,” which would be used for actions that are in some sense justifiable, could be repeated without objection.
That's right. Everyone who's been raging with such fury lately at the people they condemn for "defending," "excusing," or "supporting" Lindsay Clancy are using those words as synonyms, speciously, for "justifying." And farming cheap outrage on that specious basis.
In my view you've chosen to disregard the evidence and have decided which experts' opinion you wish to consider factual diagnoses.
Clancy meticulously strategized how to provide to herself enough time in the house alone with her children to strangle them until they were dead.
As an experienced nurse, professionally familiar with the healthcare system, she ensured no doctor or practitioner would have consistent longterm experience of her. She spent a brief time (less than a week) as a voluntary inpatient and then checked herself out to continue her doctor shopping and prescription collecting. She was not compliant with doctors' directions on how to take the medications prescribed to her.
As a trained nurse she knew anatomy perfectly well and how to cut her veins effectively. She did not do that. But she was ruthlessly effective in the method she chose to murder her three children.
As you know, being extremely familiar with lawsuits and the people who bring them, her now-ex and his mother are not going to blow up the possibility of success against her providers by saying anything contrary to "everyone failed her in her desperation." But by adhering to that stance they are pissing on the corpses of those dead children we must presume they loved. But as you've said previously, the kids are certainly dead and nothing will bring them back. So let's go a little further with that: the family might as well collect if they can.
Thank you! I picked up on the doctor shopping as well. She had a nanny, her husband worked from home so people certainly tried to help her. And yes, I believe her actions were premeditated. She knowingly killed her three children one after the other after she sent her husband on an errand.
True, but many women are posting totally bat shit crazy stuff on various platforms.
Many of them insist that the husband actually killed the children, or that it was his voice telling her to do so. The husband has been condemned for being a narcissist, who failed to support Lindsey, which doesn't seem accurate.
Also, we've already seen at least one copycat killer, as a mother killed her 2 year old, claiming that he was demonic. This is just an incredibly sad case, and it's disturbing to see so many unhinged responses online.
Do you have evidence of her “legal insanity” that is not itself merely her crime? “You’d have to be crazy to murder your own children” is allowing a criminal to benefit from the circumstances of their own crime
Great point. Also, this is a matter of law which we should all know by now often involves technical aspects driven by policy, in this case, Did She Know that Killing Her Children Was Wrong?
The answer to this question seems obvious to most onlookers who are probably not fully informed and in any event are judging from their perspective, not the defendants. As many as eleven members of the jury, which had front row seats to the entire spectacle, apparently see otherwise.
Walsh is a moralistic demagogue. He can be highly entertaining and sometimes actually makes good points. But his primary setting is rigid Christian moral outrage. He's totally predictable and, I'd add, as a result he's generally boring.
Michael chose a fight with a predictable, boring demagogue. Yipee! Nevertheless, I am grateful simply for the entertainment value of having Walsh's femininity brought to light. On this issue, Walsh is overcome with hysteria.
It may be that you should not have let yourself been baited, but... it is a response worth reading. Of course, it will be completely wasted on Walsh, who seems to be one of the brightest examples of de-evolution in the digital age. But it is good to read for the rest of us, who will never be reminded often enough of that little byproduct of the evolution of Homo sapiens called "reason".
Are we not Walsh? We are DEVO!
'
twist away the gates of steel to use your freedom of choice!
Good Job, Mr. Tracey. I've admired your writing/reporting for quite awhile now - ever since I read your history of Americans' anit-interventionism preceeding WWII. That was a response to a Vicious attack by a leftist. When younger I devoted what was probably too much time to the problems of L. Celine and Wyndham Lewis (and talk about being "unable to read the room" - Lewis entitled his 1939 anit-hitler defense of the jews, (a couragous work, considering he announced to the world that he was completely mistaken in his previous six years of political analysis) "The jews - Are They Human?") and anyone who might dare to practice irony in politically unstable times. Not that you are a particularly great ironist. Like myself, it seems you lean more towards bombastic sarcasm overkill. And why not? These people are disgusting. You know you're doing good when you've made enemies on all sides. It can be a lonely place, though. You have my support, for what it's worth.
Thank you for that last paragraph LOL! He and plenty of other "manly men" (some with beards!!) are acting like stereotypical women.
does that mean they can play in the WNBA?
Matt is correct on his main point. Michael has been defending a killer instead of being concerned about three dead children.
The children are dead. Everyone agrees it's a terrible tragedy. What are you suggesting I do in order to demonstrate my "concern" for the dead children? Agree with the government's incoherent theory of first-degree murder, which was just rejected by 11 of 12 jurors -- who sat there for five weeks, day in and day out, listening to every angle of the case aired in painstaking detail? What are YOU supposedly doing to demonstrate your own "concern" for the dead children? Demanding that their mother be executed? Sadly, there is nothing left to do for those children. They cannot be raised from the dead.
What many of us are suggesting that you do in order to demonstrate your concern is to support the woman who carefully planned their murders and performed them one by one - spending several minutes on each of them - be permanently removed from society so she can never murder again.
No murder victim will ever be raised from the dead. That doesn’t mean we don’t punish the murderers; it’s why we must punish them.
This was indisputably first degree murder. The murderer herself said she did it. Furthermore, 11 out of 12 jurors voting for her acquittal doesn’t validate claims of her innocence. Juries make bad decisions all the time for a variety of reasons, such as caring more about an agenda than facts.
I’m not saying that the prosecution did a great job, because I don’t know that. I’m saying her guilt was clear yet a significant portion of society wants to keep her out of prison for political reasons. Just like many people did not want O.J. Simpson to go to prison because he was black.
I first discovered you when I saw your posts condemning the banishment of President Trump from social media sites and warned of the danger of that. Ever since then, I’ve regularly read your posts and articles. As a conservative, I’ve often disagreed with your views, but I’ve always felt challenged by your writings. Even if you did not change my mind, I at least found myself thinking more deeply about my position on various issues. This is the first time that I’ve ever thought you were radically, outrageously wrong about something.
But why she should not be "removed from society" to a mental facility, instead of prison?
If you accept her defense, she no longer experiences psychosis. What’s the basis to hold her?
What’s incoherent about the theory of the murder, when the defense stipulates her involvement?
Michael has not once defended a killer. He has been doing exactly what we claim our justice system is supposed to do, among other things is the presumption of innocence no matter how vile the crime; and to channel the emotion: "does your 'feeling' change what the evidence and law require"? I do not want to live in a society where blood lust and blind rage become all that is necessary to determine guilt or innocence.
Your statement is idiotic.
Oh good, the bot is here with a rebuttal.🙄
Still idiotic
If that is true, Matt reasons like a 4th grader.
How about the.170 dead little girls the USA bombed whilst they were going to school in Tehran? No."feelings of concern" for them. It's OK if the Yanks do it in the name of Trump.
Who made the claim that this happened? And if it did in fact happen, do you think the USA knowingly targeted them?
Two things about the Lindsay Clancy trial that is mind blowing to me are, one seeing many women defending hormones made her do it argument. Male chauvinists have used that argument against women for decades, it’s the reason many men tried to oppose women getting the right to vote. They’re governed by biology, not reason. Wild to see in 2026, women using the misogynist playbook of biological determinism to defend Lindsey Clancy. Second, women would never accept a man using that excuse in the commission of a crime, example say a man rapes a woman. And his defense attorney tells the court that while his client is remorseful for what he did, he can’t be held responsible for his actions. He took that night by accident too much exogenous testosterone and Viagra, he forced himself on her, he couldn’t help it. His hormones and sex drive made him do it. Women would rightly call bullshit on that biology made me do it defense
There are 2 key differences with your hypothetical. The man chose to take the hormones and he didn't kill his own children. There's something about a mother killer her young children that isn't quite as hard to digest compared to her killing someone else's children, for example.... Or killing her own when they are full grown. Perhaps it has something to do with this happening in nature with some species. Or maybe it's just so hard to conceive of that it's easy to conclude she must have been experiencing insanity.
Take Walsh down
The only dispassionate one in all of this was Lyndsey Clancy as she systematically sent her husband out on errands just long enough to strangle her 3 children. Nothing about her behavior fits anything typical of psychosis, according to the Norwegian psychiatrist, Hannah Spier, MD. She believes an entirely new definition of psychosis for the category "post partem psychosis" has been dreamed up to explain away the possibility of the woman being a psychopath. Nearly half of the filicides committed are committed by women. It's not the US healthcare system, it's not a random male voice, it's not some new psychosis, that unlike any other psychosis, comes and goes from hour to hour. Women throughout history have killed, and judging from the copycat killer this weekend, Corie Walsh, they will keep on killing. We don't need to keep making up defenses for them.
https://youtu.be/d8xzVrlLpWU?is=5zp-ufLDLryo8VaN
I don't share your take on the Clancy case, but I would never describe you as a "weird, childless ogre."
I had post partum depression with both of my babies, but I never neglected them, or harmed them.
I don't really understand psychosis and delusion, but it does seem like she did some careful planning, in sending her husband out on errands, right before she heard the voices.
It's always creepy when people purport to know, and then aggressively opine on, various aspects of my personal life, which I virtually never talk about in public to begin with, and have definitely never discussed with THEM.
I respect people who have intellectual humility, high decoupling, a "scout mindset"—otherwise known as rationalists. You are clearly one of them, Walsh is not. Unfortunately it seems like there's more Walsh's in the world than rationalists.
Both things can be true, right? Lindsay Clancy deserves a prison sentence AND the prosecutors are blowhards?
Junior high school. First semester. Beautiful young woman full of love for life. Sunday morning her older brother goes upstairs to find the young woman in her bed. She is dead. Their mother went into the room early that morning. She took a pillow and covered her daughters face with it. The mother continued to press down on her daughters face as the daughter fought for her life. The mother prevailed. Mom believed the daughter was too good for this world so she killed her. [A friend remembers the mother tried to enlist the oldest son to help her kill his two brothers too. Can't say.]
Of course the mother was "insane", for what sane person would kill their child? Apparently juries have found it is possible. Fathers I believe. In this particular instance mom was not found guilty. She spent a little time in a facility. Very little. It seems with her daughter dead, the proximate object of the mother's insanity was miraculously gone. [Sons?] Mom was released. A few years after the murder, another friend's parents were in a town 3-hours away. They attended a cocktail party and saw the mom at the party.
Something is ABSOLUTELY wrong if you can kill someone(s) with your own hands, claim insanity because of that someone(s) and once they are dead you have a short ride to release and a cocktail party. Oh, and her husband divorced her 2-years earlier. There is your 'post-partum' excuse.
Tracey is just never going to get it. Rote contrarianism isn’t interesting or appealing. I think it’s why Taibbi shelved their podcast after Tracey took a ridiculous, indefensible position on russiagate.
Ironic that MT would go on this screed about moral -instead of evidential- indignation over Clancy. Bro have you taken a look at the people defending her? They’re emotional lunatics and her defense team leaned into that anti-logic!
What's funny about your little screed here is that I was CONSTANTLY denounced as a "rote contrarian" for my Russiagate commentary/reportage WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING. Meaning from 2016-2019. That's just one of a zillion things I've been "rotely" called a "contrarian" over throughout the years. People like yourself seem to think "contrarian" just means "views contrary to mine and that of my immediate social network, at this moment, which may at some later date become conventional wisdom, and I'll pretend to have believed them all along." Something very similar has incrementally been happening with Epstein. This time last year, all anyone could do was excoriate me for my reflexive, brainless "contrarianism" on that subject. It still happens today, don't get me wrong, but significantly less so, and with less unhinged virulence. I could give you countless more examples. My extensive experience with the "contrarianism" charge is that guys like you love to chirp it when you don't want to engage on the substance of what I've been saying/writing/reporting. So instead, you resort to the tried-and-true tactic of impugning motive: that I'm just pathologically obsessed with taking views "contrary" to whatever amorphous blob you imagine I'm positioning myself against at any given moment. It's never been true -- it's just not how I think, write, or engage with the world, insofar as I can access my own conscious mind. However, you really need to believe it: that I secretly do everything for arbitrary, self-promotional, personality-defected reasons. I've now written many thousands of words on the Clancy case. As per usual, a certain segment of my followers/subscribers immediately revolted and left, as social media metrics unfortunately inform me of on the regular. There's nothing more I could possibly do to establish that my writing/research/reportage on this subject and all others is the product of authentic journalistic inquiry and reasoning, to the best of my ability. But rather than address that head on (which would actually take some legitimate effort) you instead fall back on the same old "rote" deflection, and try to cheapen me as nothing more than a sneaky trollish instigator, going around making people mad for its own sake. I don't take the insult personally, of course -- I've heard the same petty accusation way too often by now, and on such a wildly diverse range of issues, that I can't NOT be inured to it. What I find more objectionable than the insult itself, I guess, is that it's just so BORING. I can't imagine anything more painfully tedious than debating my own allegedly foul character traits, motivations, and interior thoughts. Seriously: don't you have ANYTHING more interesting to comment on?
I am not going to revolt and leave, because reading your take makes my analysis better. But, you maybe a contrarian, just sayin'.😎
No, I do not have anything more interesting to comment on.
Michael’s right. You are a bore.
The kookiness of Clancy’s defenders isn’t very “evidential” as to her guilt or innocence
Neither is Walsh's, which gets to the question of "What the hell is the point Tracey is even getting at here?" IMO: dumb, contrarian rage-bait.
I don’t know. I mostly wanted to post a comment that was vaguely in sympathy with Michael since I posted one under a prior Clancy post that was vaguely critical of him. The truth is, I’m just not all that interested in this case
Well, it clearly reached a critical mass of public attention such that whether or not you're personally interested, it's having a big national impact, and therefore calls for some rational discussion -- at least from my perspective.
Taibbi turned out to be a pathetic dickhead. Mark Ames is right about him.
I don’t know what society should do about Mrs. Clancy.
But what stands out to me, on her most normal day, January 24, 2023, she sent her husband out for food pick up and child laxative just after 5 p.m., and in a span of 45 minutes strangled all three of her small children and then attempted suicide. Two things: she didn’t kill the baby onsite, and she failed at suicide. I don’t profess to know her state of mind — NO ONE KNOWS BUT HERSELF WHAT THAT WAS — but she appeared to me to be in such a hurry to get these things done before her husband returned, and in her rush she couldn’t completely kill the baby and she totally fumbled on her suicide attempt. Yeah, she’s difficult to watch in that courtroom slumped over and whimpering until they have to clear out the room in order to restore order in the court. When I see that I try to gauge her incredible psychic pain, she must be fucking miserable, bound now to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, her head must be extremely pressurized.
If there is a retrial and she is found not criminally liable, then she is, what, institutionalized? If she was never diagnosed with post-partum psychosis and if she claims she was only temporarily insane while she committed murder but now is not insane, why would she be subjected to being institutionalized? Nothing makes any sense. The best questions posed have been from Sabrina Salvati, who resides in MA and explained the law in this case in detail. But her question is, why did no one, not the husband, the grandparents, someone other than the state, knowing that Mrs. Clancy had feelings of harming her kids, NOT remove the kids from the home while she dealt with her mental schisms? What was never mentioned in any of this mess was the matter of why the children were not protected.
I did not watch the trial. Couldn’t bring myself to engage in such morbidness. I’ve only looked subsequent to the mistrial conclusion, and frankly I regret looking at it at all.
Michael came off reasonable and polite to me in that podcast episode. People should watch that again (if interested).
Rather than engage in the burgeoning debate/discussion, Taibbi strangely & abruptly hung up.
I guess on podcasts everybody is supposed to agree with each other. Dull!
I am reading into the legal difficulties that mothers face if they wish to relinquish custody of their children beyond the stage of newborn.
Surely, we could use some change in the law and programs to allow mothers who are unfit to raise children to more easily pass their children to others after the newborn stage.
So that is what you are going with? Society killed the kids? Really?
No, of course.
But it will be better if some mothers who are unfit to raise children can more easily pass them to others. If Lindsay Clancy did so, it would not made her sane, but it'd save her children.
OK, but there were family members in the case of Clancy. I admit I don't know their circumstances, but I don't know any grandparent who wouldn't step in to save their grandchildren. I am sure there are some. Then an aunt? God forbid the father's parents should get custody, right? You had four people who raised children of their own. I seriously doubt it was an issue of passing the kids off to a responsible party who wouldn't strangle them. Are you saying we should let an unfit mother decide where her children, she may kill if not relieved of them, decide who should have custody of her children? Is that what codification by the state should entail?
So, this is what people do on X.