How has Lindsay Clancy become a more compelling victim than her three children who she brutally killed?

Outside Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts this week, Americans are witnessing something resembling a mass psychosis event.Hundreds of women have assembled to support Lindsay Clancy, the mother on trial for murdering her three young children.Clancy does not deny killing 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan with her own hands.Her defense argues that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and therefore cannot be held criminally responsible.The women outside the courthouse, holding babies while cheering for Clancy, have no such excuse.Unless, that is, we want to talk about what social media has done to women’s ability to process tragedy, assign responsibility and distinguish between victim and perpetrator.Imagine the conversation at home as Mom puts on pink and heads off to spend the day with hundreds of other women cheering as members of Clancy’s defense team drive past.“Mom, who’s the woman you’re making heart hands at?”“A woman who strangled her three children!”For the families of these women, alarm bells should be ringing.For the rest of us, it’s worth asking how we reached a cultural moment in which the woman who killed three children has somehow become a more compelling victim than the children themselves.Some of Clancy’s supporters aren’t coming to rally for her alone; they’re bringing their own kids along.Those children look at their mothers the way children always have: as the person charged above all others with loving, protecting and caring for them.The last image Cora, Dawson and Callan saw was that person violently taking their lives.Whatever Clancy’s mental state, that is the horror at the center of this case.Yet somehow the three dead children have receded into the background — while an online community obsesses over the suffering of the woman who killed them.There are serious questions to ask about postpartum psychosis, psychiatric medication and the medical care Clancy received before the murd...