The facts of fair and foul-play… The Ugly Truth, part 1 In Shakespeare's immortal tragedy Richard III, the titular villain - a ruthless, conniving, Machiavellian schemer of the highest order - is described by the author (in dialogue) as "rudely stamped," "deformed," and "cheated of feature" by nature… In other words, he's ugly. In this respect, he's far from alone in the grand pantheon of villains in plays, books, and movies. Many of them are far from comely, while the heroes (save Cyrano de Bergerac, Quasimodo and a very few others) are almost always attractive. But formulaic or not, it seems that a link between beauty and virtue - or rather, a link between a lack of beauty and a dearth of virtue - may not be limited to the realm of fiction. Some recent research shows that an association between attractiveness and criminality may indeed be REAL. According to a Washington Post article from February 17th 2006, a federally funded study of 15,000 surveys of high-school students found that those rated by interviewers on a 1-to-5 scale as being the most attractive admitted the least amount of criminal activity in seven common categories - while those ranked as the least attractive copped to the greatest percentage of these. The results held true nearly across the board for both sexes… Think there's nothing to this? Look at how the media reacts when attractive people commit crimes. Example: Eric and Lyle Menendez were put on trial a few years back for killing their parents - something that, like it or not, happens quite often in this day and age. But because they were such clean-cut looking young men, the media made the case a huge story. It just made no sense why such genetic "winners" would commit such a heinous crime. Look at how the media handled the Scott Peterson case, too. Both he and his wife were pretty people. That's why the case made the national news. It's sad, but a husband killing his wife (or vice-versa) is far from an unheard-of occurrence - but it's big news when both parties are attractive. And on the other side of the coin, do you think anyone in the media would be making a year-long case out of Natalie Holloway's disappearance if she weren't so photogenic? I think not. But I digress… My point in talking about all this is not to belabor the truism that attractive people get all the attention, or even to give credence to the theory that ugly folks are more likely to be criminals - but to point out a potentially glaring flaw in the fairness of the American criminal justice ethos. I'll do exactly that in part 2 of this essay, in the next Daily Dose. **************************************************** When ya gotta GO How's this for ugly: According to the Associated Press and other sources, a 56 year-old Florida man recently bludgeoned his 58-year-old male roommate to death with a claw hammer AND a sledgehammer… Why? Because the man (the dead one) let the home's supply of toilet paper run out. Now, this is a major offense, I know, but I ask you: Did the punishment fit the crime in this instance? Apparently so, since according to the accused, an ongoing argument over the toilet paper situation (it wasn't even urgent, evidently) escalated until the now-deceased man pulled out a rifle to clarify the matter! That's when the survivor pounced on him with BOTH a sledgehammer and a claw hammer and pulped his victim so severely that the only way authorities could identify the body was by its fingerprints. How the accused had both of these implements close at hand - and how he wielded them simultaneously (quite a trick) - remains a mystery at the time of this writing… As does whether or not either man was unattractive. Sounds like they both were, at least on the inside. Reporting what's true - even if it's not pretty, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
