Thank you, Tank, for expressing my own feelings so perfectly.
I, too, haven't checked out what the legal description of second degree murder in New York really is. Let me put it like this. If somebody kills another person, and the prosecutor asks that the defendant should be found guilty of a crime that doesn't fit the description of the killer's deed, and the defendant therefore has to be found not guilty, then that still means that there has been no justice. The way I see it, if you have killed, unless in very specific situations in the line of duty or in very clear-cut cases of self-defence, then you have killed, and you should be found guilty.
On the other hand, like Carol pointed out in a previous FDK thread, in a way it doesn't matter to me if the court finds Superman guilty or not. What matters to me is that to me he is guilty of murder, whether it is first, second or third degree murder, or even manslaughter. I can easily see that there are mitigating circumstances, and personally I wouldn't sentence him to jail. But I have said that so many times already, so repeating it won't do much good.
I very, very much liked Jonathan's talk with Clark. It's interesting that Clark may listen to Jonathan in a way that he'll never listen to Lois, or even to Martha. There is something about male authorities which make people listen to them in a way they'll never listen to females.
How interesting, by the way. How do we know what is right or wrong? I'm convinced that most of our beliefs and most of our conscience is really our anticipation of what other people would say about our actions, if they knew about them. What is right or wrong, then, becomes simply a question of what others think. Particularly, it becomes a question of what the most important authorities in our lives think.
I saw a TV documentary about a Mormon man in Utah, one of those Mormons who insist that a man has the right to have many wives. (Yes, I know very well that the official Mormon church forbids polygamy, and the overwhelming majority of Mormons consider polygamy to be wrong.) Anyway, this man had six wives and twenty-nine children. In the beginning of the documentary, one of the twenty-nine children was interviewed, an unbelievably charming circa eleven-year-old boy. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, the boy replied, with sparkling eyes, that he wanted to have many wives, just like Daddy. My point? We learn our values from those who are most important to us, particularly from imposing male authorities. Well, the world ought to be a better place if Jonathan Kent was the authority that most people listened to.
Right now, I'm not too interested in whether Superman will be found guilty or not guilty. Just as in the O.J. Simpson case, the legal verdict seems so much less important than what the defendant actually did (although of course O.J. was acquitted of the actual taking of human lives). What interests me now is to see how Clark will find his way back to Lois. If indeed he does.
Ann
