ned kelly syndrome

"Guards oblivious as Williams dragged to his cell where he lay dying for 20 minutes"

"...Williams was attacked from behind... dragged about a metre to his cell and dumped inside. The accused killer then shut the door of the cell, leaving his victim fatally wounded."

Scanning the front page of this morning's Age while I sat waiting for my morning P.R. lecture to start (oh, surprise surprise, a story on the death of gangland figure Carl Williams!) a rogue murmur of sympathy infiltrated my usually steely thoughts.

I could just imagine myself plodding about the prison, morosely looking down at my lurid orange prison uniform, minding my own prisonly business when SPLUNCH! (this is what I imagine the lovechild of "SPLAT" and "CRUNCH" to be)... someone comes up behind me and thwacks me out of this life with a pole taken from an exercise bike. A pretty undignified way to go.

The power of words! Journos keep using "victim" to describe Williams in those last moments of his pitiful life, and I hate to say, it kinda works. "Victim", for me, invokes images of Bambi's mum and Jewish people in concentration camps, not lowly pathetic murderers who get what's comin'. But as I read this article, the simple word "victim" muddled up all my anti-Williams thoughts...

For about a second.

But I quickly realised how stupid all this was. Williams is no Ned Kelly, despite the grieving bogan family and the disgusting tributes popping up on MySpace and Facebook. He was a slug, and that's how he died - smooshed out of existence.

I just hope that if i ever end up in the clink, it'll be in this one...