So for a holy mackerel story from October that seemed to slip by, a Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott sentenced a man to listen to Beethoven, Bach and Chopin for 20 hours or pay $150. The crime can’t have been too heinous, otherwise the sentence might have been to listen to Berg, Schoenberg and Ligeti!……..
The story goes (and I paraphrase) that Andrew Vactor last July was facing a fine of $150 for playing Rap music too loud on his car stereo, so the judge judge offered to reduce the fine to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to Classical Music.
OK, so I suppose this genius judge thinks this will promote Classical Music, by using it as a sentence, proving only how unpopular or irrelevant it might be!
On a serious note it’s also discriminatory. If Andrew had the final movement of Beethoven 9 blaring instead, would the sentence have been to listen to Rap music? I don’t think so! The judgment passed here quite obviously was about the defendant’s musical taste, even though the complaint was actually about the volume of the music being played, not the music itself.
From the article:
She’s also taped TV shows for defendants in other cases to watch on topics such as financial responsibility. As she sees it, they get the chance to have their fine reduced “and at the same time broaden their horizons.”
This judge better be careful, because that Classical Music horizon she is seeing, might actually be a cliff! Oh and after 15 minutes of listening, Andrew paid the full fine! This Judge thinks she’s a teacher, but she just got schooled!
Fortunately we shall soon live under the Obama Administration, which has promised to review what is considered “torture.” Because to sentence anyone to 20 hours of Berg, Schoenberg, and Ligeti would violate the Geneva Convention.