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Hate To Admit It, But Woody Allen Is Kind Of Right

Woody Allen, in his 2010 Commonweal interview, on the title character of the western Shane: I didn’t see him as a martyred figure, a persecuted figure. I saw him as quite a heroic figure who does a job that needs to be done, a practical matter. I saw him as a practical secular character. In […]

Woody Allen, in his 2010 Commonweal interview, on the title character of the western Shane:

I didn’t see him as a martyred figure, a persecuted figure. I saw him as quite a heroic figure who does a job that needs to be done, a practical matter. I saw him as a practical secular character. In this world there are just some people who need killing and that is just the way it is. [Emphasis mine. — RD]It sounds terrible, but there is no other way to get around that, and most of us are not up to doing it, incapable for moral reasons or physically not up to it. And Shane is a person who saw what had to be done and went out and did it. He had the skill to do it, and that’s the way I feel about the world: there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way. As ugly a truth as that is, I do think it’s the truth about the world.

This just in from Los Angeles:

A Southern California man has been arrested after authorities say he emailed explicit images of a 3-month-old boy to England.

Robert Schrader, of Littlerock, was arrested Monday and remains jailed on federal charges of producing child pornography.

Cases like this really split my head wide open, and twist my conscience in knots. As a matter of moral conviction, I cannot agree with Woody Allen that some people just need killing, and that’s all there is to it. But if this man is guilty, and somebody just killed him, because there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way, I can’t deny that I would find it satisfying. Wouldn’t you?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel right at all about that, but … a 3-month-old boy? What kind of monster does such a thing? If somebody did that to one of my children, you might as well reserve me a room with a view at Angola.

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