How Crazy

I don't know about you, but for me, I am tired of what people perceive as being the "politically correct" way to do things.

We have a lot of issues of great importance in our country on which advocates could better spend their time and energy.

Here is a prime example of someone just trying to make a living, but is being harassed by some bleeding hearts.


'Lunatic Asylum' Angers Advocates

WESTON, West Virginia - It is an intriguing and provocative name that translates to Web hits, phone calls and tour tickets - the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.



The new owners of this former mental institution in Weston, W. Va., have opened it up for tours. "It's not a freak show," one owner said.

It is a title, to some, that acknowledges history by recreating it, readopting one of the many names previously held by the long-vacant, 19th-century West Virginia mental institution known most recently as Weston Hospital.

But mental health advocates and a marketing expert say the new owners of the massive Gothic Revival hospital have gone too far, denigrating the suffering of former patients and reopening wounds with planned events like "Psyco Path" dirt bike races on the grounds.

They say words like "lunatic" and "retarded" have gone the way of "colored" and "Negro" - and should never be resurrected.

"It's like turning back the clock to a time we don't want to go back to," says Ann McDaniel, executive director of the Statewide Independent Living Council, one of several advocacy groups to object. "I think they could still do what they want to do without being offensive."

Scott Miller, director of Mountain State Direct Action Center in Lewisburg, says one former patient burst into tears after seeing the name on a sign.

"It's not just that I'm a liberal and I think it's not a good idea. It's seeing people physically hurt," he says. "That's about all I needed to know."

Rebecca Jordan, whose family now owns the 307-acre (124-hectare) complex, sees things differently.

"This part of history is vital, and you cannot bury what you don't like," she says.
"Should we take down the Holocaust museum?

Should we completely deny all that happened because it's not favorable? Because it might hurt a few feelings?"

The daily tours that began last week, $10 to $30 depending on duration, focus on serious issues such as the evolution of mental health care, the Civil War, the Great Depression, even architecture.

"Not one person who has gone through this place and taken the tour has said that one thing was offensive," Jordan says. "It's not a freak show."

The hospital is one of the world's largest hand-cut sandstone structures, a National Historic Landmark that once housed more than 2,000 patients but has stood largely silent since 1994.

After struggling to find a suitable, sustainable use, the state sold it at auction last summer for $1.5 million (euro970,000) to Jordan's father, Joe, an asbestos demolition contractor.

They plan events on the grounds all year: "mud bog" races, in which trucks try to speed through a pit without getting stuck; a reunion of former employees; "Hospital of Horrors" haunting tours in October; and a "Nightmare Before Christmas" tour Dec. 23.

But the Jordans' approach to marketing "cheapens and denigrates the whole field of psychology," argues Jerry Kirkpatrick, professor of business and marketing at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

"They are sending mixed signals about the nature of the product they are selling. Are they selling history? Or dirt bike races and Halloween nights?" he says. "Sooner or later, one of these themes will have to move to the forefront and the other will fall to the side."

Kirkpatrick says serious treatment of the institution might mean putting recreational opportunities into a separate business and preserving the hospital as "a proper memorial."

"I can't imagine a long life for the present operation," he adds, "unless they have a lot of money to throw at it."

It appears they do not.

With renovations projected to cost tens of millions of dollars, "It's going to be 50 years before we see revenue on this property," says Rebecca Jordan. "But this county is going to benefit in the next month because of the business we're going to bring in."

Historian Joy Gilchrist-Stalnaker has worked nearly a decade to save the building where three of her ancestors died.

"Yes, terrible things happened ... and we're sorry for them," she says.

But the hospital also offered more humane treatment for people who had been shackled in prison cells, locked in cellars or otherwise mistreated.

Its name, she says, is not offensive. It is a reminder of a past no one should forget.

Well said by historian Joy Gilchrist-Stalnaker who had a first-hand experience as three of her ancestors died there.

I hear the word lunatic used a lot. In fact, in traffic the other day as a car cut me off, I called him a @#%& lunatic.

Who among you has not said or does not say someone belongs in a looney bin.

Or they say someone is just plain looney.

Does this mean we can no longer say looney tunes?

So what's next, the word crazy?

No more crazy glue, no more crazy 8's, no more crazy songs, no more wild and crazy guy, no more I go crazy for something new, no more he's gone completely crazy, no more that's a crazy idea and worst of all the women can no longer yell at their husbands, "Have you gone completely crazy?"

Friends, the requirement to be politically correct in our world has gone totally insane.