A couple weeks ago my local paper picked up an AP story which was headlined, “Madison man with odd name back in jail.” It was a small mention, about five inches, buried on a back page.
Irresistible, right? Plus, it had this photo of a young man, long hair, parted in the middle, and the cutline read, in all caps, “ZOPITTYBOP-BOP-BOP” http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-01-09-Unusual%20Name%20Bust/id-5ea8af45a0b34f188683449ad3b3a565
His name, legally, is “Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.” It used to be Jeffrey Drew Wilschke, until last November, when it was legally changed.
Last April, this person was arrested in a Madison park because he had a loaded handgun in his backpack.
In January, Beezow was arrested near another Madison park, accused of marijuana use, along with carrying a concealed weapon.
Surprised? Is it “name profiling” to assume that someone with a name like that might be more likely than someone with a name like Jeff Wilschke to engage in excessive drug and alcohol use?
These types of stories are incredibly fascinating. Perhaps it is my journalism background, where the commonplace news, after awhile, isn’t worth blinking an eye. This type of thing makes the eye blink and the ears perk up. It’s the kind of thing that make Chuck Shepherd create a column and website called, “News of the Weird,” for instance.
Now, because of the internet, I can find out all kinds of things “behind the headlines” that I never would have known otherwise. And the internet can take the news and run with it.
Beezow, it turns out, has a little notoriety that, along with the Nick Nolte-esque bad mug shot, has taken on a life of its own.
If you “google” just Beezow – no need to type further – you get approximately 673,000 results in less than half a second.
From his Facebook page, I found he is a heterosexual male who has more than 400 FB friends and lists his interests as “eating, standing, walking and thinking.” He also has a penchant for Zombie movies and Mexican sitcoms. (In addition, to eating, standing, walking and thinking, I also like Zombie movies, the hokier the better, and I find Telemundo weirdly fascinating, although I don’t have a clue what is being said, because of the unusual gender roles and attempts at humor.)
On one post about his legal name change, he wrote, “I could explain it as a jazz term that means the sum of all hysteria of all the chaos in the universe. or something.”
Well, chaos is right. It has been unleashed.
Seven Facebook pages now exist that say “Free Beezow” or some variation thereof.
The story was reported as far away as Kingston, Jamaica.
On YouTube, a long video on something called the TYT Network by “the Young Turks” goes on and on making fun of Beezow, his name, his interests, and his charges. It had, when I looked at it, 39,667 hits. I suppose I was 39,668.
A rather catchy song, about freeing Beezow, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g687NWgALxM had more than 3900 hits. Odd, since it was so short… Here’s a longer “Beezow Anthem:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Ou6NX3BTkjQ
The folks on “Atheist Forums” who were posting about him seemed to be upset that he allegedly was arrested in part for threatening cops. Comments ranged from someone who thought has name was not that much weirder than a guy he knew whose legal name was “Sub Paragraph 9” to another person who asked, “of all the insane assholes running for president, WHY IS HE NOT RUNNING?”
OK, so we have all had fun at Beezow’s expense.
In one TV report on You Tube, where you can “pause” the camera, I can see a Jan. 9 post by Beezow on his Facebook page. This is the day of his arrest. He posted, “A friend of mine told me today that I look more like Jesus Christ than any other imitation that has been made.”
Friends, this is a Big Red Flag. People who think they are, or even look like, Jesus Christ are sliding down a very, very slippery slope to serious mental illness.
Again, surprised?
But serious mental illness is not funny.
Beezow’s attorney, David K. Saltzman, wrote on the Huffington Post, that a competency hearing required that Beezow be forcibly “medicated into competency,” which is extremely controversial.
Mr. Saltzman is an excellent writer, so I will excerpt and let him say it himself:
“Even when defendants have documented histories of mental illness, courts commonly mandate treatment of the disorder's symptoms -- alcoholism, drug abuse, violence -- without mentioning therapy or medication. To ignore the root cause of a defendant's behavior and then be somehow shocked when he violates his probation is absurd. It's like asking a man with a broken leg to run a race, but only providing him morphine to dull the pain. Once any pressure is applied, morphine or no, his fracture simply cannot bear the weight. “Then again, this viewpoint will prevail as long as society continues to treat mental disorders as less real than physical ones…
“That's the insidious thing about mental illness, and why the convenient ironies of Beezow's situation garnered such a reaction: as much as we'd like to believe in empathy, most people simply don't care much about plights outside their individual experience.
“Let's be honest, though: if we as individuals aren't particularly empathetic, it isn't a huge deal. We make some ignorant comments, hurt a few people's feelings, miss an opportunity or three to make the world a better place. Little things like that.
“But an indifferent criminal-justice system is a much larger problem. That's why the actors who constitute that system, including myself, must attend to each defendant's individuality, even when it takes an unfamiliar form. Perhaps especially then.
“So, what's in a name? When that name is Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop, quite a bit. There's amusement, for sure, along with confusion. Maybe a hint of vertigo, if you spend too long reading it. But there's also a burgeoning awareness that something else might be going on. Not to say we shouldn't laugh at the infinite range of absurdity life presents -- we're only human, after all.
“But at the same time, as we smirk and judge and dismiss, we must strive to remember one simple fact: the most important part of any name is that there's a human being behind it.”
Yes, there is.
And there’s probably a mother behind Jeff Wilschke, who probably loves him very much and is worried about him. As one mother to another, I am sorry for her pain.
“Schadenfreude” is the term for the human reaction to laugh at another’s misfortune – typically pain, which is the reason we have a TV show like “Funniest Home Videos.”
It would also apply to those of us – me included – who laugh at the fact that Jeff Wilschke has made a very bad name for himself.
Knowing that there is a term helps to excuse our/my behavior.
Now we can only hope to get beyond it and show some compassion.
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