Murdering Mommy Dearest

While I'll admit that the subject is always on my mind, I can't help but noticing that there have been a couple of prominent "Mommy Murder" stories in the news as of late. Is it a trend or are people in this town a bunch of Stewie Griffin wannabes?

Recently, a 37 year-old was charged with murder for beating his mother to death with a hammer and even more recently a fight between neighbors led to gunfire that left a mother dead and Kansas City police looking for suspects.

To a more crass person, this kind of thing might qualify as the ultimate "your mama joke" but I tend to take violence in the media much more seriously. The fact that even a mommy can be murdered should clearly demonstrate that no one is safe from violence in this town . . . Which is as good of a reason as any to move to JoCo, I guess. Still, I don't want to go into the Freudian/oedipal complex background of the whole thing but I should note that only societies in steep decline start taking out their rage on mommies . . . Or, the fact that someone is murdered who happens to be a mother might simply make a good headline and a nice change of pace from merely noting the fact that local homicide victims are almost always minorities.