Chained to a cause

Severe mental illness and psychosis manifest themselves in a number of ways: odd or bizarre behavior, self-mutilation or social isolation, to name a few. Given those descriptions it’s easy to see how chaining oneself to a tree, a dog house or the front porch of your South Bend home could easily be construed as insanity. But sometimes, if not most times, what the media considers madness is just misunderstood.\nOn Monday the South Bend Tribune reported that a 19-year-old girl chained herself to her front porch. “I’m not crazy,” she claimed, adamantly rebuffing charges that the choke chain around her neck was not a form of self-admonishment or a promotion for a kinky BDSM party inside the house. No, this was a sit-in of sorts.\nJenny Lawson spent 12 hours chained to her deck to draw attention to the plight of confined domestic dogs everywhere. She joined 104 other people from 34 states participating in the national “Chain Off 2007” sponsored by the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit Dogs Deserve Better. The remaining 300 million people in the U.S. (this editorial board included) did their part by rolling their eyes and scoffing at the “demonstration.” \nThe idea seems preposterous at first, along the lines of the “Students Against Terrorism” T-shirts IUSA thought last yearwould somehow bring down al-Qaida. \nIt’s not as if lounging around outside all day on the safety of your own porch evokes images of the race riots or even Live Earth. But when you get right down to it, sipping lemonade for the maltreatment of man’s best friend isn’t the worst waste of time – it’s not even in the top ten. Watching a Cosby Show marathon, for example, or waiting for a table at Denny’s are both equally pointless, but Lawson and her fellow dog-lovers used the media to advance a real agenda. That’s more than can be said for the thousands of people sitting in line for hours (even days in some cases) to get an iPhone or an early viewing of the newest Harry Potter flick.\nLawson was tethered to her family’s front porch from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with only occasional breaks to use the bathroom. While her actions might seem superficial, they are in stark contrast to Ian Arkin, 18, of Carmel, Ind., who wasted 12 hours in front of the Keystone at a Crossing AT&T store so he could be one of the first people to lay his grubby paws on Apple’s $600 multimedia chew toy. His buddy, a self-proclaimed Mac-o-phile, sat with Arkin, prostrating himself in front of the gadget gods until 6 p.m. on June 30 when the magic box finally went on sale. On the other hand, with the help of advocacy groups such as Dogs Deserve Better, more than 100 local governments have enacted laws prohibiting chaining up dogs for extended periods of time. \nLawson may not be the Harriet Tubman of the dog world, but at least she didn’t whittle away a week of her life in line for “The Order of the Phoenix.” That really would have been crazy.