That's Crazy!

I'd really like to work for NASA.

It seems like the organization really treats its employees well.

My boss has always been there for me when I needed a helping hand. She let me have time off when my divorce wore me out. When she has beaten me down for a mistake, she has always picked me up and sent me out on a positive note.

Still, if I were to drive 900 miles, wearing a diaper, with a BB gun, a wig and a plan to abduct and perhaps kill another television producer, I'm not so sure she'd fly to pick me up from my court hearing and then hold a news conference expressing such deep concern, not for whomever it was I was going to whack with my new steel mallet, but for me.

We cover stories of men and women going bonkers all the time. True, they don't all slip into a pair of Depends to carry out their attacks, but they go from being people who hung out with neighbors, attended PTA meetings, and led church groups, to killers or attempted killers. And when they try to kill their husbands, wives, rivals, they don't get a ton of sympathy.

So what makes our astronaut so special?

Yes, it's clear that something went terribly wrong with her, but can't you say that about a lot of people who do bad things?

What about the California woman who was arrested this week for plotting to kill her husband... using wasps! Police say she was going to fill his car with them, and he's allergic. Her coworkers aren't rallying on her behalf, talking about how sad they are for her. No one has held a news conference to talk about how they want to figure out how things went wrong in her life. But something must have made her dig into the wasp nest.

Face it, no one ever cared why O.J. snapped, except, I guess, for the guy who drove the Bronco, and maybe Ron the waiter who was probably yelling, "O.J., why the hell are you doing this?"

The astronaut plot is a great story, with all of the key elements, sex, violence, rubber tubing and space travel.

I just don't get why she's getting so much sympathy.