The Onion is in danger of irrelevancy. We have now fallen so deeply into the vortex that a woman obsessed with becoming visually impaired was intentionally blinded — as a treatment –by her psychologist.

Now a surgeon has amputated a man’s ears so that he can satisfy his urge to look like a parrot. From the story in the Telegraph:

Ted Richards, 56, is obsessed by pets Ellie, Teaka, Timneh, Jake and Bubi and has his face tattooed with colourful feathers.

But the animal lover — who has 110 tattoos, 50 piercings and a split tongue — has now had both his ears removed by a surgeon in a six hour operation. “I am so happy it’s unreal, I can’t stop looking in the mirror.”

Eccentric Mr Richards has given his severed ears to a friend who “will appreciate them” and is now planning to find a surgeon prepared to turn his nose into a beak.

This is what it is coming to: Medical professionals reduced to lifestyle order-takers, allowing the mentally ill to play out their destructive desires or killing the suicidal.

Our cultural obsession with “choice” and not judging lifestyle decisions — except for tobacco users — has driven us insane, or perhaps better stated, turned us into enablers of insanity.

Image credit: Snowmanradio, [CC BY-SA 2.0 or CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at The Corner.