An Oprah program about the Lindsay Clancy case has triggered fierce criticism after a guest urged viewers to show the same passion for incarcerated women of color. The source column portrays that appeal as identity politics taken to a morally grotesque extreme.
The column begins with a sweeping attack on what it calls a sickness spreading through America. It argues that liberal women have become especially vulnerable to an ideology that removes common sense and allows sympathy to overwhelm moral judgment.
At the center is a woman whom the column says appears to have killed her children before claiming postpartum psychosis. The writer rejects that condition as an excuse for allegedly planning the deaths, concealing the children’s bodies and seemingly attempting suicide.
According to the column, many people would ordinarily conclude that such conduct demands a guilty verdict rather than sympathy. Instead, the writer argues, the case exposed something darker within national politics and the culture surrounding identity based victimhood.
The author contends that misguided sympathy now encourages people to excuse appalling acts. He describes this shift as something beyond self destructive empathy, presenting it instead as a form of empathy capable of becoming dangerous to others.
The column then points to another child killing case that emerged only weeks after the Clancy story gained national attention. Prosecutors say Corie Walsh of Frankfort, Illinois, allegedly strangled her son, who was 2, while believing he was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.”
Walsh had reportedly been closely following the Clancy trial. The column says she had discussed the case with friends only hours before authorities found her son dead, creating what the writer characterizes as an eerie resemblance to a copycat killing.
From there, the column broadens its attack to the cultural environment. It argues that liberal women are particularly susceptible to the mentality it condemns, framing the controversy as evidence of a much larger ideological and moral breakdown.
That argument leads directly to Oprah’s recent program examining the Lindsay Clancy case. The writer says the discussion was filled with excessive emotional appeals and directs attention to one guest’s comments in a clip beginning at 1:26:46.
“I want us to have the same passion for people who don’t look like Lindsay, who don’t have her same access… who don’t have her same access and education, her melanin, her privilege,” she said.
“There are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for this same thing that we’ve never heard of. And I just want to remind us to have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well.”
The column reacts with alarm to that plea, arguing that it transforms women who kill their children into victims because of race, gender or other identity categories. The writer calls this a chilling and insidious expansion of victimhood.
In the author’s view, the guest was not challenging sympathy for Clancy so much as demanding that it be extended to Black women in prison for similar acts. The column treats that position as a demand for equal access to reverse victimhood.
The criticism becomes even sharper as the writer describes children as the most defenseless possible victims. He argues that placing an accused killer inside a protected class does not erase the underlying act, regardless of arguments involving melanin, privilege or gender.
The column presents this as the inevitable endpoint of identity politics. Its closing challenge asks whether anyone will recognize what the writer considers the left’s morally absurd worldview before more children are killed.