Phillip Paul's Day Off

Officials at Eastern State Psychiatric Hospital are defending their decision to take insane maniac Phillip Arnold Paul to the Spokane County Fair with fifty bucks in his pocket and let him wander off. "I'll tell you what would be crazy - missing the Spokane County Fair, now that would be crazy," said hospital spokesperson Linda Bates. "It's only like the best fair in the entire state, that's all. We wait all year for that fair." Bates points out that Eastern State lists 'empowerment of patients' as the very top bullet of their Core Values chart. "I really don't think that it's fair to call Phillip an insane maniac, just because he slit some woman's throat and buried her in the garden, and then burned a deer carcass to celebrate. He only did that because the voices told him she was a witch, and who am I to say she wasn't? Anyway, I've never seen him do anything like that when he's on his meds." Much of the panic surrounding Paul's escape can probably be traced to the hospital's loose-lipped psychiatrists. "He's the only paranoid schizophrenic - I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of them - that frightened me," said Dr. Frank Hardy. "The first time I took one look at him - and I've never done this before or since - I asked the jailer to remain in the room while I examined him." "That is so cruelly judgmental," Bates bemoans. "Ugh. How would you like to have someone talk like that about you? So Phillip made a bad first impression, so what?" Bates also discounts the idea that Phillip Paul may have used his money to score a bus ride to parts unknown. "I imagine he's still at the County Fair somewhere. I know I would be. It's so big and there's so much fun stuff to do. Phillip loves corndogs and he'll probably wander on back after he gets his fill."