If you really want to blame anyone for the mentally ill being tossed into the streets, you can start with the advocates for the mentally ill who didn’t think they should be institutionalized. That started back in the 1970s. The original reasons were just; there were lots of people being locked away who could function well in society as long as they stayed on their meds. The problem is that the courts wound up ruling that virtually ALL mentally ill people should not be institutionalized and insurance companies jumped on this bandwagon, as well. Hence, by the early 1980s, you had many, many people on the streets who were simply incapable of functioning in society. As a matter of criminal law, it’s interesting to note how the law changed after John Hinckley.

In Deb’s case, I’m not sure if she’s truly mentally ill or just somebody who went way over the line in some fit of bravado. I read most of her early stuff and thought it was the typical B.S. stupid lefties come up with. And she got her chops busted for it. Perhaps she decided to escalate the rhetoric to differentiate herself from the average stupid lefty. In any event, she’s discovered that you can’t do things like that, even in the virtual world, and face no consequences in the real one.

You know, I grew up in Milwaukee in a predominantly Lower Slobovian neighborhood, so that’s especially rich to me. I found them to be fine, hardworking people with a penchant for large collections of garden ornaments and given to playing Liberace records at all hours of the day. I must confess that I found their custom of adding curdled milk to pilsner disgusting.

Otherwise, of course, I renounce your jest in a pro forma way.

I grew up in a Lower Slobovian neighborhood and there was a bar where I would go in for a drink or a six-pack.

One evening, I walked in and said, “Hey guys, I heard this great Lower Slobovian joke”.

The bartender looked at me and said: “Look, buddy, I’m a Lower Slobovian. And all these fourteen other customers here are Lower Slobovians. Especially, that six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound guy there dancing with the jukebox.”

And I said: “OK, OK, I’ll tell it slow.”

No, you’re right. That happened under Reagan. But the legal groundwork for all of the court challenges to mental institutionalization occurred earlier, as did the academic idea that these people were differently mentally enabled, so to speak, happened earlier. I think that Ms. Frisch is in a hell of her own making, certainly, but I think that her obsessions and compulsions are really beyond her control, as well.

I’m not sure we disagree. I did not pull all that stuff about mentally ill people becoming lost once they lose their support system from my imagination. I’m just not ready to feel sorry enough for Ms. Frisch to disregard her potential to do harm. I believe it was President Reagan who turned the mentally ill into homeless in the early ’80s. I disagreed with him then and I disagree with him now. I am a father too. My reason for living is to take care of my child.