At last a disease I can get behind

There’s a line in Regina Spektor’s brilliant song “On the Radio” that goes:

While we were on our knees
Praying that disease
Would leave the ones we love
And never come again

It kills me every time. Disease sucks. It creates such heartache. It’s created such heartache in my life. 

At last I’ve found a disease that I can get behind:

From a TIME piece on the subject:

Ethan Couch, 16, was on trial after he stole beer from a Walmart, got drunk at a party, and gunned his car into four victims who had stopped on the side of a Burleson, Texas road to help a stranded motorist. All four died, and both passengers in Couch’s pickup truck who were riding in the open bed were tossed from the vehicle. One is unable to move or talk due to brain injuries.

But even though Couch was behind the wheel, it wasn’t he, argued psychologist G. Dick Miller, who should bear the burden of punishment for the tragedy. Instead, it was his parents, who raised their boy with few limits and even less discipline, indulging him to the point where he was unable to appreciate the importance of rules and laws, not to mention the consequences of breaking them.

This complete lack of discipline and overindulgent lifestyle is referred to in psychological circles as affluenza, characterized by, among other things, the guilt that wealthy young people feel as a result of their extreme privilege.

And it worked!

Rather than a possible 20 year prison term, Couch will receive a year of rehabilitation at an in-patient facility near Newport Beach, California and ten years of probation.

Good news for privileged Americans everywhere:

If you’re wealthy enough and spoiled enough, you can apparently get away with murder.

Or at least vehicular homicide.

While I’m not interested in affluenza as it relates to petty theft and vehicular homicide, I’m more than happy to bear the burden of affluenza if someone is willing to indulge me to the levels required to acquire the disease.

I’d even be willing to submit to rigorous scientific study in order to understand this terrible disease better, as treacherous and potentially dangerous as that may be for me.  

At last I’ve found a disease that I wouldn’t mind acquiring again and again.