Robin Hood Gave Nothing To The Poor

Why are we so enarmoured by crooks and acts of villany? Why are we (in the UK anyway) so forgiving of thuggery? The glamourising of robbers and killers is nothing new as it goes back to the 17th/18th centuries when louts like Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin roamed the lands. (I refuse to call them 'highway men', because it is just another nod to all the supposed 'romance' that surrounded these cretins).
When petty thief Sheppard finally graced the gallows on 16 November 1724, no fewer than 200,000 people turned up to witness the execution. 200,000!? Thats almost double the audience of todays rock festivals! Now I realise that entertainment was thin on the ground back then but does the hanging of a petty thief really warrant such a massive crowd?
Of course it still happens today. One only has to look at Hollywood or the real crime bestsellers on bookshelves for proof. Popular culture, in all its wretchedness, has elevated gangsters and serial killers almost to the point where some simpletons actually look up to them, and more frighteningly in some cases actually aspire to follow them into the halls of infamy.
The 'bad boy/girl' attraction has taken a very sick turn, where it isn't the young Elvis or Janis Joplin making the teens go weak but Ted Bundy and his murderous crew of twisted men. I have seen the tee shirts and the morons who wear them, hanging around the film aisle of supermarkets while on their skinny chests is Charles Manson, grinning like a fool.
It is high time we shunned these scumbags, and opened our eyes to the evil they have committed. No robber ever gave his ill-gotten loot to the poor and it is folly to believe they did. It might look good on screen or in the pages of books but in reality the 'heroic robber' with a side line in chivalry did not exist.
Of course the media is guilty of banging the criminals drum as much as any film director. They revelled in the antics of the bloodthirsty Bonnie & Clyde, some potraying them as a kind of warped Romeo & Juliet, giving the public the daft idea that they weren't all that bad afterall. And the less said about Jesse James and other outlaws the better.
These people were not nice guys with noble intentions. Had you ever had the misfortune to have spent time in their company you would realise this. Honour among thieves might have existed among small crews of crooks but it would have never been extended to outsiders. Outsiders would have been robbed, raped and even murdered because the criminal mind is wired that way. It is not tuned to peace or manners, or kindness and fair play. The criminal mind is drenched in greed and deceit and whats yours is theirs like it or not.
This planet is home to some very gullible people indeed. Whether they be the type who take pity on thieves and try to rehabilitate them, or those stranger individuals who fall in love with bandits, and marry them in pathetic ceremonies in prison chapels. These idiots invariably get stung one way or another and I for one have no sympathy towards them. Evil cannot change its nature, and dishonesty once nestled deep enough in a persons mind, corrupts to the chore.
These hoods and hustlers are not paragons of virtue hidden by tattoos and vicious snarls. There is no angel lurking behind the fangs and daggers, ready to emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon and let go of sin. And those who believe there is are only edging closer to becoming yet more victims of the gutter rags. The altar of the pistol is worshipped by vultures who want nothing more than to satisfy their own despicable needs.
We should all pay closer attention to the whims and delights of criminals. The only romance to be found in that shady world is best left to the maggots, for certain there is no love there. And little sense in hanging around.