Clayton Lockett's Bad Execution Is Not About Him

Recently executed murderer/rapist Clayton Lockett was a motherfucking piece of shit who did horrific things to people. Frankly, if his victims and their families had set him on fire, pissed on him to put it out, and then set him on fire again, the Rude Pundit would have a hard time saying that that was a bad end for him. But that's different than a state government being empowered to kill prisoners. And it's very different than a state government using a secret method to torture someone to death, unintentionally or not, which is what happened to Lockett when Oklahoma attempted to execute him.

To those of us who think that capital punishment is wrong and that Lockett's suffering was despicable, conservatives would like to remind us that Lockett was a motherfucking piece of shit, as if somehow we're too stupid to think that human beings can do horrific things to people.

Over at Fox "news," Erick "Erick" Erickson wants to make sure we remember Stephanie Neiman, the woman that Lockett beat, raped, shot, and had buried alive. He goes a bit less subtle on his right-wing shithole, Redstate, describing the crime and then telling liberals to "Just remember that while you are posturing over how Clayton Lockett died." God, how Erickson must have whipped himself to weeping before grabbing his semi-tumescent two-incher and jacking off to his own words.

Ann Coulter, in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the cravenly cruel pandering of a cup of yogurt way past its expiration date"), goes into pornographic detail about what Lockett and his accomplices did: "One of Lockett's crew orally sodomized her, then vaginally raped her. Lockett raped her vaginally, anally and orally." You can imagine Coulter sitting back, smug, spike-covered vibrator ready for action, turning herself on as she really told us pussy lefties, typing, "This is the murderer whose recent execution has thrown liberals into deep despair" with one hand as the other plunged the fuck toy into her anxious snatch.

All over Right Blogsylvania and the right-wing commentariat, the savages are looking to pump up their street cred by telling us just how terrible a terrible man was and how they shed no tears, except those that come out of their genitals before orgasm. Dallas Morning News columnist Mike Hashimoto says, "I’m sorry that his execution changes nothing, big picture or small. He ended up where he should have, just 43 minutes late." Christine Flowers wants us to put ourselves in Stephanie Neiman's shoes and confesses that "if the ability to empathize with an innocent, dying woman over the justified final reckoning of a murderer makes me a sadist, I will wear that label with no small pride." You get the idea, no?

A bit less masturbatory but no less wrong, Jonah Goldberg offers, "As far as I'm concerned, Lockett deserved to die for what he did. Everything else amounts to changing the subject, and it won't convince me otherwise."

Ah, but, dear, dear Spawn of Lucianne, everything else is the subject. Listen: it's not that most of us on the left are mourning for Clayton Lockett. We are mourning for ourselves, for our justice system, for our national soul. 'Cause, see, Locektt's execution ain't about him. It's about us and who we want to be. Saying Lockett's 43-minutes of state-sanctioned torture is better than he gave his victims is to say that we should judge ourselves by the standards set by a monstrous bastard.

And, to trot out a well-worn but always useful argument, we have come close to executing a number of people who were later proved innocent. We have executed a few innocent people. The Rude Pundit has a problem with that because, if we continue like this, it means that, at some point in the future, we (yes, we) will torture an innocent person to death under the banner of "Justice." That's fucked up.

What else is fucked up is that Erickson and Coulter wear their deep Christian convictions like armor. So what did Jesus think of the death penalty? Or maybe when he said, as the Bible you allege to be so fucking important to you relates, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"?

Or maybe you break out the Jesus jams when it's easy, not when it's really fucking hard to not give in to the orgiastic bloodlust that juices up the right. Unlike those of us on the left, who have the courage and strength not to say, "Fuck it. Let 'em hang."