
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994                   TAG: 9411170014
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AMERICAN TRAGEDY

THE BURIAL this week of two children - found buckled in a submerged car, their mother having confessed to killing them - leaves many Americans still grappling with a sense of disbelief and betrayal.

Susan Smith's contrived report of a carjacking and kidnapping, her tearful pleas for her children's return, became a media saga that plucked at heartstrings across the country. Everywhere people prayed for the children's safety and the perpetrator's capture. Now only grief, outrage and troubling questions remain.

How could Smith have practiced such deception, abusing others' sympathy and relying on an ugly stereotype to try to get away with her abominable deed? Hardest of all, how could a parent do such evil to her children?

Newt Gingrich, House Republican leader, offered one explanation over the weekend: The Democrats did it.

"I think that the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds everyone how sick the society is getting and how much we have to change,'' Gingrich said. ``I think people want to change, and the only way you get change is to vote Republican."

Trying to link grief with partisan politics was perhaps a new low for Gingrich. An argument could presumably be fashioned to blame Republicans, too.

After all, the mother's description of the phantom kidnapper was of a black man, recalling the Willie Horton image that Republicans used as an icon to exploit fears of crime. (Never mind that most kidnapped children are, in fact, abducted by family members.) And perhaps if a bit more government help had been available to the mother - family counseling, parenting classes - tragedy might have been avoided.

But this is absurd. With the elections now thankfully over, Americans are possibly as sick of politics as they are of crime. The disintegration of families and the inadequacy of support systems for young parents are not issues owned by one party or another. Susan Smith is responsible for what she did. And no grand explanation can ever frame the immediacy of anguish or account for the mystery of evil.

The clearest message to draw from this story, no matter how we voted Tuesday, is to hold children close and treat them well.

by CNB