Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.

The act plainly states “a candidate for election for Federal office … may not make any expenditure for a flight on [a noncommercial] aircraft unless … the candidate, the authorized committee, or other political committee pays … the pro rata share of the fair market value of the flight.”

But the FEC changed that by redefining when a member of Congress is or is not a “candidate.” Here’s the explanation from The Campaign Legal Center:

Yet the FEC today adopted a final rule nonsensically declaring that a candidate is not a “candidate,” for the purpose of this statute, when that candidate “is traveling on behalf of another political committee (such as a political party committee or Senate leadership PAC).” Instead, where a candidate claims to be traveling “on behalf of” their own leadership PAC, or one of the many committees controlled by their political party, or any other political committee—the old rules apply, allowing that candidate to pay the price of a commercial air ticket instead of the price of the private plane the candidate is actually flying on.

To make matters worse, FEC Chairman Walther published a statement explaining his decision to provide the necessary fourth vote for the final rule put forth by his three Republican colleagues on the FEC. Preposterously, Chairman Walther cited comments filed in the rulemaking proceeding by the Campaign Legal Center, together with Democracy 21, suggesting that we support this new rule gutting HLOGA. Chairman Walther wrote: “The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 agreed and indicated their support for ‘retain[ing] the existing reimbursement rate structure for non-candidate travel.’” (emphasis added). While we did support retaining the old rate for non-candidate travel, nowhere in our comments did we suggest that candidates should be considered to be engaging in non-candidate travel through the simple expedient of claiming that they are flying “on behalf of” their leadership PAC or other federal political committee. Chairman Walther should know better.

Candidate travel is candidate travel—period.

The FEC’s new rule illegally contradicts the plain meaning of the statute. Unfortunately, gutting or ignoring federal law—that Commissioners would have written differently themselves—has become a recurring habit for the FEC. In an earlier rulemaking, the FEC gutted the intent of another key aspect of HLOGA, allowing lobbyists to easily evade required reporting of bundled campaign contributions.

Provision of non-commercial travel by corporations (and unions) to members of Congress or federal candidates is simply more legalized corruption.

So I wonder how long it will be before enough members of Congress step up to close this loophole by updating the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Days? Weeks? Next century?

As a felon, Jefferson has had equally despicable company: Rep. Andrew J. Hinshaw, R-Calif. (accepting a bribe); Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., D-Mich. (payroll kickback scheme); Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa. (accepting bribes from FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen); Reps. John Murphy, D-N.Y., Frank Thompson, D-N.J., John Jenrette, D-S.C., and Raymond Lederer, D-Pa. (Arab businessmen bribery scandal, a.k.a. Abscam).

And Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y. (extorting money from a defense contractor); Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. (sex with underage campaign worker, bank fraud); Rep. Walter Tucker III, D-Calif. (accepting and demanding bribes); Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill. (felony mail fraud); Rep. James A. Trafficant, D-Ohio (bribery, conspiracy and racketeering); Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (accepting bribes from defense contractors) and Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio (Abramoff scandal). I’m sure readers can name more.

The collective misfortune of these men is that they got caught. Each undoubtedly said to himself, “I am invincible. I am a member of Congress.” They all assumed membership in the biggest-of-all-members-only clubs provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the real reason they believed they could get away with accepting bribes and committing extortion is that members of Congress have been doing it legally for years.

Jefferson may serve 13 years. Prosecutors say he probably earned less than $400,000 despite seeking millions in illegal bribes from “oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa,” said The New York Times. But he’s raked in about $6.45 million in campaign contributions since 1990, half from political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. More than $600,000 came from lawyers and law firms. (Wonder if the sharks will return his calls now.)

Prosecutors focused on the $90,000 federal agents found in Jefferson’s freezer. The public should have been more focused on Jefferson’s legal sources of campaign bucks, in the same way it should have paid less attention to the penis of that other two-faced Louisiana legislative poseur, Sen. David Vitter, and more attention to the sources of his campaign funding.

We the voters, the people who have watched health-care costs starkly climb ever higher, who see taxes rising exhorbitantly at all levels, who witness the quality of education for our children wither, who watch jobs vanish overseas and unemployment rise, and who are frightened that decades-old safety nets are tattered beyond repair, have become so inured to the corrosive role of money in politics that we forget that politicians are continously but legally bribed by monied interests. And it should stop.

Ask Glenn Greenwald of salon.com. In a video for Larry Lessig’s change-congress.com, he explains how Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., are threatening to filibuster any health-reform plan with a public option. Lieberman, says Greenswald, is “drowning in campaign contributions” from the health-care industry — more than $2.5 million — and his wife landed a cushy job in 2005 with PR flacksters Hill & Knowlton, representing pharma giant Glaxo. Several months later, Lieberman sought to steer incentives to Glaxo to develop vaccines.

“This is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery, that runs the United States Senate,” says Greenwald. “Only in this case it is particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.”

Bayh’s wife, says Greenwald, “sits on the board of directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health-insurance companies in the nation. [The Bayhs] own, by their own disclosures, between $500,000 and a million dollars in WellPoint stock. … When Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster the public option … the value of the stock of the health-care industry skyrocketed … and personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.”

Bayh’s wife was paid more than $2 million between 2005 and 2008. Bayh, in 2008, received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry, says Greenwald.

“It’s really clear corruption,” says Greenwald.

Politicians defend their financial associations with large corporations (and unions) and wealthy individuals. They call it “campaign financing.” Sadly, we’re too accustomed to this shameless dance now, aren’t we?

A member of Congress, or someone who aspires to be one, gets on the phone and calls people who have lots of money. Often those people run very large enterprises, such as corporations (or unions). Those corporations, driven by the dictum “maximize shareholder income” (or, increasingly, “maximize CEO compensation”), would like members of Congress to make those tasks easier. Politicians say such donations only provide access to their ears, not their actions. The big corporate and PAC donors — or their hired lobbyists — say they’re only legitimately promoting the causes of their companies and clients.

Bullshit. It has been known for decades that lobbyists are often in the room, helping congressional staff write — or writing themselves — legislation. Earlier in this decade, tax-law experts from General Electric shaped an export tax reform bill that saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lobbyists’ dictation of politicians’ words and deeds has become even more blatant. New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote Nov. 14 that lobbyists wrote and sought to have supportive statements about health-care reform placed by members into the Congressional Record prior to the Nov. 5 vote:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. … Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. [emphasis added]

A lobbyist created the messages and supporting documents and e-mailed them to members. Lobbyists denied any malevolent intent. Said one, quoted anonymously by Pear: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

In the past five years, Genentech has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying expenses. In the past decade, Genentech has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Pear reports Genentech’s PAC has made contributions to some of the members who used its talking points and that company officials had hosted fundraisers for some.

And, of course, there’s no quid pro quo, right? Wrote Pear: “Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, ‘There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.’” [emphasis added]

Bullshit again. It is, as Greenwald says, legalized corruption. Imagine if I, as an individual voter living in a rural district, had asked my congressman to insert under his name words I wrote about health-care reform into the Congressional Record. He would say no. (Or rather, the staff member I’d get shunted off to would say no.) But when Genentech said jump, 42 members of Congress asked, “How high?”

Don’t kid us. It’s legalized corruption. Remarks members of Congress revise and extend into the Congressional Record, we now see, have been actually written by lobbyists. So what do the clowns we elect to office do for the $174,000 we pay them (and with very nice health-care bennies, too)?

A handful of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C, think they have an answer — a constitutional amendment to limit how long a person may serve in Congress. Apparently, senators would get 12 years, while representatives would get only six years. (Imagine that bill’s conference committee, eh?) On his Senate website, DeMint writes:

As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork, in short, amassing their own power.

Don’t be misled. After all, what’s to prevent the current system of lobbyists, legalized corruption, and greed from buying new sets of politicians every six or 12 years? Being new, they’ll come cheap, too.

Members of Congress need mountains of money to obtain and retain political power. They spend hours each day dialing donors and asking for, or demanding, campaign contributions. That’s the extortion part of the equation. Donors demand at least an ear and now, we see, actual words printed in the Congressional Record. That’s the corruption part. All that separates many uncharged and unjailed members of Congress from Jefferson and his imprisoned pals is an FBI wiretap.

Changing the politicians through term limits has little merit. Instead, get rid of the current system of campaign finance. If members of Congress were willing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions of dollars, demand that they allow the public to outbid special interests. Lobby members of Congress (yep, I said lobby) to drastically and dramatically overhaul public election financing. Demand that members of Congress place in the federal budget each year sufficient billions of dollars to pay for every federal and statewide election in the country. Give incumbents and challengers alike plenty of public money. But cut them off at the financial knees if they accept a single dime of corporate, union, or PAC money.

If our politicians continue to insist on being bought, let the public do the buying.

Enron, which is packing the Royal Court Theatre nightly before it heads off to the West End at highly inflated ticket prices, is worth it. It’s a bit disenheartening that Lucy Prebble, whose second play it is, can turn out such an accomplished piece of work at such a tender age—she’s all of 28. But it’s great theatre—it covers the bases, it’s pretty funny throughout and highly funny in spots, and if it overdoes some of the symbolism at time, it captures how Enron fit into the American imagination of the time. And it moves right along, without a dead spot all evening. Prebble understands that Enron is a quintessentially American story, one of a business so intertwined with politics and funny money and that curious belief in unfettered markets that no one ever seems to learn from. That she is able to turn this story of a confused mixture of greed and ideology into a fine theatrical evening is a considerable accomplishment.

(A bit of full disclosure first—I worked at Citi for a number of years, and while I had no direct contact with the Enron people or any of the deals that Citi brought on their behalf, including the now notorious partnerships that ended up sinking the company, I knew some of the people who did. It was not Citi’s finest hour. Of course, Citi was having a lot of things go wrong around then, so it was just one of a whole raft of problems that came along that came close to sinking the bank.)

The story is fascinating enough, as anyone who has seen The Smartest Guys in the Room will know. Sleepy gas pipeline company becomes global trading megastar, or something along those lines. We don’t actually see much of that process, though—what sort of company Ken Lay had built before the arrival of Skilling. So we don’t really get a sense of how transformative Jeffrey Skilling was when he came into the company, although Prebble does try to lay this out early on. But Prebble does what appears to be a pretty good job of showing how driven Skilling was, and how it changed the company from a bunch of traders to a bunch of sharks. Sam West (son of Timothy) plays Skilling as a nerd, and he’s surrounded by several nerds as well, including the equally odious Andrew Fastow, who was to become Enron’s Chief financial Officer and was directly responsible for the fraudulent partnerships that led to Enron’s downfall. Sam West’s performance is nicely done—we pick up immediately that he’s a nerd, but he’s also a really, really smart one, and he won’t be happy until everyone realizes how smart he really is. So here are these nerdy guys growing this company into an American powerhouse, with old Texan gas guy Ken Lay—a nice turn by Tim Piggott-Smith—in the background, beaming away, playing golf with both Bushes. What could possibly go wrong?

We get to see pretty much all the relevant action, including the raping of the California ratepayer, all passed off as just business in Bush’s America. Well, it was Clinton’s America too, it has to be said. But he was sandwiched by a pair of Texas oil guys for whom there was no amount of government intervention into the energy business that could be justified. Prebble alludes to this, but British audiences often have such a weird idea of America and how it works that you never really know if the British understand how thoroughly trashed America was during this period. (Most British I know still think of the Republican Party as being more or less equivalent to the Tories, when in fact the Republicans have actually moved to another planet.) It doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the play, however, if this point isn’t brought out more—Prebble keeps things moving right along.

We know how this turns out, of course—Skilling resigns (and eventually goes to jail), Fastow turns state’s evidence to save his own skin, and Ken Lay dies at an extraordinarily convenient time for Ken Lay (although tales of sightings in South America are legion). Part of the joy of the play is how nicely Prebble strings it out for us—there’s lots that could have been included, or is only referred to in passing (that notorious plant in India, for example, is worth a play in its own right), but the play holds together pretty well on its own. Some reviewers have complained that the symbolism Prebble uses is a bit heavy—debt-eating Raptors, for example. I found them, if not cute, at least appropriate. These are people who named their deals after Star Wars characters, after all. And how else can you theatrically display a story about, at its heart, accounting fraud? This is an American story, and American stories tend to be large scale, so throwing in a bunch of obvious symbols, surrounded by the occasional song and dance routine, fits right in. It’s Texas. But more than Texas, too, as Prebble points out—a recurring theme of the play is how willing, enthusiastic even, Wall Street was in suspending its disbelief about what Enron was doing, long after it became clear that something was very wrong.

We wondered about the audience, which seemed to mostly people in their early 20s. All of this is history to them—2001 was a lively year for financial scandals, and these kids would have seen this stuff on TV—or not, which seems more likely. What 13 or 15 year-old in their right mind watches the financial news? Well, Skilling and Fastow probably did, which tells you about as much as you need to know about them. And as events of the past several years have amply demonstrated, it wasn’t just Skilling and Fastow—they just got there earlier.

According to the paper of sure we’ll lie to help you invade Iraq record, Mr. Karzai was paid for “a variety of services” that included raising a paramilitary force. You don’t say…

I’ll just go ahead, break with writing convention and give you the money shot way ahead of schedule:

“The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.”

Raise your hand if you’re surprised by that sentence.

Is your hand up? If it is, you’re an idiot.

The rest of the piece is pure, unadulterated agitprop…not that the majority of Homo americanus is quick enough on the uptake  to see through it. Oh, the Obama administration’s consternation and hand wringing that the brother Karzai might be a “malevolent force”. Lord, who could have guessed that throwing Benjamins at whoever made the best promises for the short term would blow up in our face?

Anyone who bothered to read anything deeper than the paper of evil Russia invades Georgia, the bastion of democracy, unprovoked record could have told this story anywhere between last week and eight years ago. Many of us did.

And none of you listened.

Congratulations, Mr. Obama, you’ve managed to push the Karzais into a corner. Got ‘em real flustered too. “I help, definitely,” Ahmed Karzai said, “I help other Americans wherever I can. That is my duty as an Afghan.” The poor guy doesn’t even know if he’s Afghan or American anymore.

But he’s not the only one’s who’s confused. We’ve got a Gen. Flynn who thinks that “the only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.” (Whew, i’m sure glad there hasn’t been any mafia activity in Chicago since 1931.) And then the proverbial “unnamed CIA officer” who says, “Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade. If you’re looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

Again, show of hands if you’re surprised by the anonymous CIA officer’s statement. Yes, you’re an idiot.

The question, the big fucking question, is how Mr. Obama plans to establish a squeaky-clean slate of hope in Afghanistan under these circumstances. It’s one thing to make your few “friends” walk the plank for your benefit; it’s a whole other thing to not open yourself up to accusations that you’re doing the same thing that the last jackass-in-chief did. I’m talking about the US government’s tangential–at the very least–involvement in the opium trade; i’m also talking about the blatantly timed leaks and obvious media manipulation.

We get it, Karzai is the scapegoat for all the horrendous bullshit that’s happened in Afghanistan and all the blood on the hands of Republicans, Democrats, Homo americanus ignoramus and the rest of us. So what? All it proves is that being an ally of the United States is at least as dangerous as being its enemy. Now show us the lily white savior of freedom and democracy in Afghanistan.

Look, i’m not a fan of big time drug dealers like the CIA Ahmed Wali Karzai or their abettors like the paper of record the CIA. But this is just asinine.

Hunter was right, “We’re a nation of pigs and we’ll get what we deserve.”

Read it here.

When elected, Obama said that federal raids on state-law legal marijuana cultivation and distribution would end. The didn’t, not by a long shot, and the reasoning was that the feds would continue to prosecute people who violated state and federal laws. That boils down to everyone, no matter their standing under state law. The latest memo simply tells prosecutors that it’s not a good use of their time to bring charges against those abiding by their State’s law.

So hold your applause. This memo amounts to nothing, which is precisely what’s it’s meant to amount to while simultaneously making Obama look like a good guy.

The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime and provides a significant source of revenue to large-scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels. One timely example underscores the importance of our efforts to prosecute significant marijuana traffickers: marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels.

Note the Department’s commitment, “in all States”. I have to wonder what credentials Congress possess that enables it to determine how dangerous any drug is, as if that august body was known for its deep, careful thinkers and scientists. Furthermore, according to everything i’ve ever read, drug scheduling is under the purview of several departments that are all within the executive branch. That’s how Congress established the system when it determined which drugs were dangerous and which drugs weren’t. So the President could order the DEA, HHS and the FDA to review the scheduling of a drug and force Congress to be along for the ride.

Yes, marijuana trafficking is the single largest source of revenue for Mexican drug cartels. That’s because it’s illegal. I thought supply and demand was like the American catechism. Restricting supply only pushes prices, and hence profits, up. This idea that further restricting supply will somehow diminish cartel profits flies in the face of everything Ronald Reagan and common sense taught me…not that the two necessarily intersect.

As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities [catching druggies] should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. …prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. To be sure, claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of those laws, and federal law enforcement should not be deterred by such assertions when otherwise pursuing the Department’s core enforcement priorities.

So according to the Obama administration, if you’ve got cancer or aids and your supplier is giving you marijuana for free that’s ok. But just because someone is in full compliance with his State’s law is no protection. In other words, “Hey, don’t make us look like assholes by arresting someone who’s got six months to live.”

The administration produces a list of characteristics that should suggest prosecution. Some of them make sense, but there’s always a catch. “Evidence of money laundering activity” makes the list. As any monetary gain from the sale of marijuana is criminal under federal law, just about any use of marijuana proceeds could be considered money laundering. And if you don’t think that the DEA won’t see that argument, you’re high.

This guidance regarding resource allocation does not “legalize” marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law, nor is it intended to create any privileges, benefits, or rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable by any individual, party or witness in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter. Nor does clear and unambiguous compliance with state law or the absence of one or all of the above factors create a legal defense to a violation of the Controlled Substances Act.

Get the picture?

Nor does this guidance preclude investigation or prosecution, even when there is clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law, in particular circumstances where investigation or prosecution otherwise serves important federal interests.

It should be clear by now that there’s nothing in this memo worthy of applauding. Sure it’s a step in the right direction, but that only deserves the response, “It’s about damned time.”

The administration has the power to start the ball rolling on significant drug reform. Rescheduling would end the entire “debate”. Judging by election in results in states where a marijuana referendum was on the ballot in 2008, dope is a lot more popular than hope. There’s no political risk to Obama at the voter level. The voters who would be angered by the move won’t be voting Democratic before the second coming in any case. There are a at least few million who would probably vote for the politician who reforms marijuana laws regardless of anything else the politician does. The youth vote would basically deify such a politician.

Big time donors like the pharmaceutical industry wouldn’t like it, which might indicate who’s side the President is on, but see above and ask yourself if it would even matter for the one more election he can win.

But there almost certainly won’t be any movement on a relatively simple problem with a pretty straight-forward solution that would have positive benefits in other areas of concern like health care and the economy. With the ability to legally cultivate marijuana there are probably a lot of unemployed American facing foreclosure who might attempt an entrepreneurial response to the death of the American Dream. Places like Southeastern Kentucky would have a valuable cash crop, and they probably wouldn’t need so much tax-funded aid. Hell, folks in those places might even start thinking that Obama ain’t so bad after all.

Never mind the taxation question. Enforcing taxation will be even more difficult than enforcing criminalization. Let the money flow through the real economy and accept that it will trickle up. Smart states will establish retail distribution licensing similar to the existing structure for alcohol. It will raise local and state revenues; keep control over the retail sector; and be subject to sales tax. We’ll just have to take our chances on person-to-person transactions being claimed as miscellaneous income. Regardless, that money will be spent and serve the greater economy.

Plenty of savings can be found by not wasting tax dollars on prosecution and incarceration of marijuana cases. And i’ll bet that law enforcement will still have plenty to do.

The answer is simple and frankly, the question is stupid. So you’ll have to forgive me if i hold my applause until the end…though i might not be able to hold them if some intrepid journalist asks the President if he thinks it would have been better for the nation if he’d been convicted of his youthful indiscretions and never gotten to be President. Clearly you can smoke pot and grow up to be President, you just can’t get caught doing it.

Outrage is palpable – on both sides. Yes, there are two sides. In addition to the “hang the pedophile” side, there’s the – if I might repurpose Wilde here – unspeakable in defense of the unconscionable crowd. Hey, lighten up folks. It’s not like the guy was a priest or anything.

Anyway, those in the hang-the-pedophile camp are offering up as aggravating evidence some wild shit Polanski said back in 1979.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!”

Appalling. Just disgusting, isn’t it?

So, for those of you who are as revulsed as I am, I have a little exercise for you. Think of it as a seminar question.

Q: Roman Polanski has asserted that everyone wants to fuck young girls. Using the artifacts of Western popular culture – network and cable television programming, movies, magazines, popular music and the products of the various fashion industries – attempt to disprove Polanski’s claim. Avoid the temptation to cherry pick anomalous examples and please, be thorough.

Thanks. We now return you to your regularly scheduled righteous indignation.

What’s been called the Summer of Hate certainly plays a part in this. With major media celebrities and politicians talking about revolution and the like, acting as a bellows on whatever anger resides in places like Clay County, that anger is sure to become white hot. I do not discount this angle of the story, nor should any of us. It’s real and it’s very dangerous.

But let’s consider the overall situation that Mr. Sparkman entered, knocking on doors as a representative of the federal government of these United States. We’ll assume that Mr. Sparkman was just a census worker earning $12/hour.

He wouldn’t have been the only agent of the federal government knocking on doors in Clay County this time of year; in fact, the federal government has a large contingent of agents descend on the area every fall. As poor as the region appears on census statistics, it is perennially one of the top three regions for outdoor marijuana cultivation in the US. Federal and state governments pour millions into the area every fall to pay for helicopters, Humvees, assault rifles and officers. Their hope and goal is to eradicate as much of Kentucky’s largest cash crop as is humanly possible.

It’s a very large crop. [Caveat: Government estimates based on seizures are notoriously unreliable, and government estimates of "street value" are generally so out-of-touch with reality that they're functionally useless. Unfortunately, those numbers are all we have.] In 2005, Kentucky produced $342 million worth of tobacco and $336 million worth of corn. Law enforcement estimates that it seized or destroyed $1 billion worth of marijuana in Kentucky that same year. And that was at a time when marijuana production was declining in the area. Since the beginning of The Great Recession, cultivation has been on the rise again. The DEA and state police seized or destroyed 10,625 pounds of marijuana in Kentucky in 2008. Using the estimates compiled by Jon Gettman, the 2008 seizures in Kentucky represent $14,779,375 (farm gate prices) removed from the local economy at a cost of millions in taxpayer funds.

Of course, the government doesn’t get it all. It estimates that between 20 and 40% of the harvest slips through its fingers. So 10,625 pounds represents, at most, 80% of Kentucky’s harvest in 2008. But that’s probably a crock. The old grower’s adage is that you plant 1/3 for the cops, 1/3 for thieves, and 1/3 for yourself. In 2006, the head of Kentucky’s marijuana eradication program estimated that no more than 50% of the crop was destroyed. Other estimates place the seizures at around 10% of the total crop.

As police presence has increased, growers have moved away from large plots with hundreds or thousands of plants that are easily spotted from the air to more, smaller plots. Smaller plots tend to get more care and, consequently, produce higher yields. The $2000 per plant profit that law enforcement claims is probably not far off the mark (and may be low in a grower’s best case scenario). So bringing just ten plants to harvest produces more income than a minimum wage job that is non-existent in any case.

That’s why the federal government has thrown out the old Drug War rule of thumb that federal prosecution begins at the cultivation of 100 plants or more. These days in Kentucky, any cultivation is a federal prosecution. Growers use the Daniel Boone National Forest to avoid forfeiture laws, which enable the government to seize all assets of someone involved in the trade before conviction. But if they find a plot on national forest land, they can do little more than destroy the plot and claim a teaspoon sized victory in the battle to drain an ocean.

This is the situation Mr. Sparkman entered, knocking on doors for the federal government. He was probably just a census worker, but in a world where police officers use information gathered from children in DARE classes to arrest parents, trusting anyone representing the government is dangerous for those on the wrong side of the law. In Clay County, just about everyone is or connected to someone who is on the wrong side of the law. Realistically, they don’t have much choice.

None of this excuses the murder of Bill Starkman, not even if he was an informant. Nor does it negate the part that anti-government hysteria promoted by the likes of Glenn Beck played in the murder. We can only hope that the perpetrators are captured and brought to justice. But what’s the difference between the US government destroying marijuana fields in Kentucky and poppy fields in Afghanistan? Why has the latter been discontinued because it only harms poor farmers while the former has been increased, even though it harms small farmers without affecting the larger trade?

And after looking at the few numbers above, how does the President of the United States laugh at questions about the economic benefits of marijuana legalization/decriminalization? Perhaps he wants to keep people in desperate poverty. What else can we conclude if he continues to wage a war against his own people? He certainly shouldn’t be sending innocent men into the drug war torn areas of Appalachia to take the chance of reaping the government’s own bitter harvest.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has conditionally reinstated

Last Thursday the Philadelphia Eagles answered the question as to which team would sign a convicted dog-killer (there were 32 possible answers to the question, and “none of the above” wasn’t one of them), and in doing so touched off a long-awaited PR war for the souls of their stunned fans. That the move is this controversial in Philly is instructive, because this is a city that has some of the meanest, most hardcore fans in the sporting world. Imagine if the team had instead been somebody like Seattle or the 49ers.

In any case, this is America, and as such there was never any doubt that Vick would be reinstated and that some team would pay millions to sign him. If Saddam Hussein had been able to break down a defense and get to the rim he wouldn’t be in Hell right now, he’d be in the NBA. So the controversy, such as it is, has nothing to do with anybody being surprised that Vick would find his way back onto the field.

Nonetheless, the argument is raging, and not just in Philadelphia. As I’ve read what people on “both” sides of the question have to say, as I’ve listened to the takes from local and national various sports commentators, as I’ve heard callers to sports talk stations offering their humble (and utterly meaningless) opinions, I have to admit that I’ve gotten a little tired of some of the memes being trotted out to defend Vick, the Eagles and the league. No matter how self-evidently inaccurate or utterly silly a particular idea may be, once it reaches the point of cliché the chances of somebody not repeating it are about the same as a crack addict not honking on the pipe every chance he gets. It’s true that much of what I’m complaining about comes from a noble place and it’s also true that many of those who are getting on my nerves are in fact good people espousing worthy ideals. Still, we have to understand that good intentions don’t guarantee positive results, and sometimes the pursuit of even the best ideals can effect unanticipated and undesired outcomes.

Here are some examples.

Everybody deserves a second chance…

Really? Everybody? Let’s test this. How about Charles Manson? Does he deserve a second chance? If so, can he stay at your hosue when we release him? Did Ted Bundy deserve a second chance, and if so, would you have let him escort your daughter to the prom? How about TIm McVeigh, or Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold or Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer?

Okay, okay. What Vick did wasn’t as bad as those guys. I get that. But two things to remember. First, the meme says everybody, not almost everybody, and this ain’t no straw man – I’m quoting lots and lots and lots of people that I’ve heard with my own in ears in just the past month. If we agree, as I suspect we do, that it’s not really everybody, then what we’re literally saying is that not everybody deserves a second chance.

Second, let’s try a scenario involving nobody famous. Say you’re a parent and you have a brother named Fred. And one day you catch Fred molesting your five year-old daughter. Assuming you’re even vaguely human, Fred’s ass is off to jail (assuming you can keep yourself from killing him on the spot).

So one day Fred gets out of jail. Do you let him babysit your daughter? If not, why not? After all, everybody deserves a second chance.

Give me a few minutes and I think I can convince just about anybody out there, even the most charitably minded person alive, that some people don’t deserve a second chance. Once we get to that point, the only thing left is to decide where to draw the line. At a minimum, though, we’ve demonstrated the ridiculousness of ever saying those words again.

He’s paid his debt to society…

We’re a nation of laws and we must, at some level, invest a measure of faith in the collective justice of our system if we’re to live civilly. Otherwise there’s a lynch mob on every corner, a vigilante lurking in every dark alley, and that’s a prescription for chaos. Who will watch the watchers, right?

That said, it’s hard for an intelligent and moral citizen to take the system at its word, to assume that justice is done in each individual case. If a man breaks into a home, rapes and murders a woman, and winds up pleading to a misdemeanor because the prosecutors can’t cobble together enough evidence to get a felony conviction, has the perpetrator paid his debt to society? Has OJ Simpson paid his debt to society? (Remember, he was found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman in a civil case.) Or has he merely paid a fraction of the debt he should have incurred?

The “paid his debt” meme forces us to assume and to assert that the system is always right, and I’ve never yet met anyone who believes that, I don’t think. Yes, the system has run its course, but it’s not hard to find cases where offenses are punished too heavily or too lightly and every day the guilty walk free (and the innocent are sometimes convicted, as well). We do have an obligation to accept the results of the justice system, writ large, though, so while I’m mad as hell that Michael Vick only served a fraction of what I think his crimes merited, I’m not campaigning to throw him back into prison. Given a chance I’ll certainly support much stiffer penalties for dogfighting, but that’s about the future, not the past.

That said, what should I think of people who spout these kinds of clichés when they clearly have no idea of the implications of them? Further, what do we do with those who seem to think that the framers of the Constitution meant that multi-million dollar sports contracts were an inalienable right?

The system has rendered a verdict and exacted a punishment. In one context this means Vick has a right to pursue a life for himself. But in no sense does this entitle him to resume the life of royalty he lived before he was caught.

Forgiveness

Don’t get me wrong – forgiveness is a wonderful thing, taken in moderation. People make mistakes and it wouldn’t be much of a world if we couldn’t forgive the simple fact of human failing. For my part, I’ve made massive mistakes in my life and am the (hopefully worthwhile) person I am today because I’ve been afforded the chance to learn from those errors. By the same token, I have been the victim of the mistakes of others, and have tried to be as generous with my own spirit of forgiveness as possible.

That said, we Americans have some problems where forgiveness is concerned. For starters, not all mistakes are created equal. I do not believe that all things deserve forgiveness (refer to my comments above on Tim McVeigh and your Uncle Fred) and even if I did, I think it would need to be earned by a regimen of penance that was proportional to the offense. Despite what 90% of Americans are required by their religions to say they believe, I don’t think that if we all felt free to voice what we really believe that I’d be in the minority at all.

For example, if you’ve been around long enough you’ve probably had the misfortune to be involved with some form of marital or relationship infidelity. Maybe he/she cheated on you, or maybe you were the cheater. Or both. Or maybe you’ve been lucky enough not to be involved, but you know people who have. In any case, tell me if you have heard some variation of this: “I forgave him/her, but I can’t ever forget.” My guess is that most of us know of a case where person A forgave person B, but nonetheless exiled person B from his/her life forever. Well, is that really forgiveness? If so, then what is the functional difference between forgiveness and can’t-forgiveness? The practical results are the same in both cases – the only distinction is that in one case you repeat the words that you’ve been taught you have to repeat when issuing mandatory forgiveness.

An ever bigger issue has to do with the hypocrisy of forgiveness – in short, the ways we use the certainty of forgiveness to enable all manner of bad behavior. We get a lot of this from those in the ministry, it seems. Jim Bakker. Jimmy Swaggart. Ted Haggard. Henry Lyons. If it isn’t a preacher it’s somebody famous in the news all the time. Right now the happy guys in the spotlight are Louisville hoops coach Rick Pitino and former Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards. (One wonders if “Catholics in Louisville” would be less forgiving of a coach who knocked up a stranger in public restroom and then paid for her abortion if said coach’s record was in the .500 range.)

The problem here has to do with the concept of intent. It’s one thing to forgive someone who acted improperly in a time of crisis, or who made the wrong choice when the choices were ambiguous, or someone who hurt us accidentally through some form of negligence.

But what about those people who intentionally did that which they knew or believed to be wrong with clear planning and/or forethought? Jim Bakker didn’t realize that he shouldn’t cheat on his wife? Really? All those Catholic priests didn’t know that molesting little boys was bad? Really? Ted Haggard can’t say hello without railing against the abomination of sodomy but he thought it was okay to buy a male hooker for himself? Really? In these kinds of cases there’s a good degree of arrogance associated with even asking for forgiveness, because the regret very clearly isn’t about the action, it’s about getting caught.

To this point, can you actually argue that Michael Vick didn’t realize dogfighting was wrong? If so, then why did he take such effort to conceal it?

We’re not just talking about famous people and preachers here, of course. The certainty of forgiveness plays a big part in the way some of us plan our lives. For instance:

• Monday-Friday: go to work
• Friday night: get loaded, get into a fight
• Saturday night: pick up a hooker
• Sunday: go to confession

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. How many times do you suppose that the aforementioned legion of priests confessed for buggering altar boys? What do you think is the world record for number of consecutive weeks confessing to buggering altar boys?

At some point, we’re not talking about genuine forgiveness, we’re talking about enabling.

Rehabilitation

The purpose of prison – or at least one of the purposes – is rehabilitation. We send people who do bad things to prison so they won’t do them anymore. Studies indicating national recidivism rates of better than two-thirds tell us what we need to know about the rehabilitating effects of incarceration. Still, it’s a nice idea.

But even in the absence of this data, we’re assuming that all things can be fixed. In truth, an extremely detailed study would probably conclude that some kinds of anti-social behaviors are more easily addressed than others. For instance, a small-time mugger who encounters a strong vocational training program in jail is a very different case from a pedophile. A few experts seem to think that pedophilia can be treated, but I don’t believe this is anywhere near a majority opinion.

So if we’re going to talk about rehabilitating Mike Vick, it’s fair to ask about the nature of the crime and its amenability to treatment.

And here’s my biggest problem: what Michael Vick did was simply sub-human. I don’t mean that word in a pejorative, insulting way. Instead, I’m referring to a clear deficit in human empathy. One of our greatest writers, Philip K Dick, in one of his greatest books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, confronted a world of increasingly human-seeming androids and posed the question: what quality makes us essentially human?

The answer: empathy. In the narrative (upon which the film Blade Runner was based), humans worked hard to cultivate their empathy (which was central to the society’s dominant religious ideology) through the stewardship of animals. A citizen who didn’t have an animal to care for lived a deficient, hollow life, and few sins were more damning than the failure to properly care for one’s animal. In one of the central moments of the novel, one of the replicants kills an animal – something no human could have even contemplated. The lesson is undeniable: only something inhuman could harm an animal.

Dick’s depiction of a strange science fiction near-future was brilliant in its grasp of the fundamental character of our actual humanity, here in the real and now. Empathy makes us human, and there are few measures of empathy that are more revealing than our treatment of animals. Why animals? Because they are helpless. They rely on us.

There’s no absolution here for Michael Vick

We all have our own means of evaluating other people and the moral codes that govern our lives, but for me no bell has ever rung more clearly than the one PK Dick sounds in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? From where I stand, there is no more meaningful and reliable measure of human character than how one treats the innocent and those who cannot take care of themselves. Animals are one case, and a good one. So are children. And if you’re a man, especially a strong one, I know all I need to know about you if you abuse women. You are sub-human.

I have no forgiveness for that, and I’ve never really understand people who do.

So here’s how I see it from the context that I’ve described here. The NFL has said that sub-human behavior doesn’t disqualify you from membership in their highly paid club, and the Philadelphia Eagles have gone a step further and said they’re willing to subsidize those who exhibit sub-human behavior.

You do what your conscience tells you is right. For my part, though, I won’t be spending a penny on the NFL this year. Further, I’ll be paying attention to who advertises with them and making sure I don’t patronize their businesses, either. It’s not much, I know. I don’t have a lot of money and the NFL doesn’t care what people like me think. But my principles must matter to me and I won’t apologize for having a code that isn’t subject to compromise on something as essential as the default qualities of humanity.

Meanwhile, it’s a shame that Rae Carruth isn’t up for parole anytime soon. I’d like to see if the league would at least put its foot down when the victims are human.

by Josh Sternberg

Michael Vick could be the best thing to happen to the American reputation in quite some time. His heinous acts of violence and horrific judgment were undeniably stupid. But the lesson learned is not about dogfighting or about why individuals do stupid things. It’s about the nature of our society.

America can show the world that we are not only a nation of law, but also a society of forgiveness – that someone could commit a crime, spend their time in a rehabilitation facility and come out to be a productive member of society. We all have made mistakes, some larger than others. But in the end, we all subscribe to the belief that if we make amends, the past becomes just that: the past. We hope to learn from our errors so that we don’t repeat the harm we did to others. While there are certain individuals who never reform or show remorse for their actions, a vast majority of the people in our society are able to overcome their indiscretions and become functional members of society. From the highest elected office in the land to the neighbor next door, people have broken laws and rules, but in the end, the American society usually forgives. “Time heals all wounds” is an apt (and oft-used) cliché because it’s true.

We are participating in one of the longest running experiments in human history. When our nation was founded, self-rule was a largely untested concept. Granted, only certain people could vote (white, land-owning males) but that’s not the point (right now). We were the first country to begin with “We, the people” and our experiment in democracy was a long shot to succeed, especially since what our founding fathers knew was based in monarchy or oligarchy and was not a representative republic.

As we’ve progressed as a nation (women’s rights, civil rights, etc…and yes, we still have a long way to go), we’ve also evolved as a species. Maybe not in the Darwinian/genetic case (although there are studies that indicate we, indeed, have) but more from an emotional perspective. What once offended us or was considered taboo is now part of the mainstream. And of course, what offends us now most likely didn’t exist 200+ years ago. Over past 100 years or so, the U.S. has been regarded as a leader – technological, legal, political, and up until the latter part of the 20^th century, moral.

We started to lose our moral compass once we became the first nation in the world to use a weapon of mass destruction. While I would never want to have to be the person to make a decision to kill 200,000 to save 200,000,000, the day we dropped The Bomb was the day our moral footing started to give.

We continued down this path through Vietnam and through the ’80s, where we propped up nations because we were afraid that a political ideology would infect us like a deadly disease. In the ’90s, we ignored atrocities around the world and we all know what’s happened since 9/11. But there has always been a glimmer of hope because when all’s said and done, no matter what our elected leaders do, the resiliency of the American people is too strong to quiet.

Maybe because our nation is deeply rooted (whether we believe or not) in the Judeo/Christian philosophy of treating your neighbors like you would want them to treat you, maybe because we spend our days thinking about how to pay the bills and buy food rather than in debating policy, or maybe because humans can be inherently good, we’ve become a society that is eager to forgive.

We live in a constant state of dialectic tension, which communications theorist Leslie Baxter defines as “a result of the conflicting emotional needs felt by the participants of any relationship, who experience tugs and pulls causing relationships to be in a constant state of flux.” For example, after we graduate college, we want to be independent of our parents, but yet we still ask them for money to pay our rent. We communicate to ease this tension. While this theory is rooted in the philosophical dialectic, I believe it can be incorporated for the masses, too.

We love an underdog; whether on film or on the sports field, an audience loves to root for the little guy. Rocky. Rudy. Bill Clinton. It has become the quintessential American story, right? We love getting behind the underdog and propping them up until they are at the top of their game. And then, for some reason, we love tearing them down. We love seeing the fall as much as we love seeing the rise. But once the fall comes, as it inevitably does, the audience is right there to offer support and help the underdog work his/her way back up. Maybe not all the way to the top, but at least off the bottom.

Now, I’m not arguing that we caused Michael Vick to become a dog killer. That’s on him and it’s something he has to deal with. But we helped push him along this path with our insatiable need to see our heroes fall. We didn’t pull the trigger, but we definitely loaded the gun. But that was in the past.

We may not forget, but we do forgive. And when a person does his time for committing a crime we should embrace forgiveness. Because if we don’t, then our society is a sham. We set up prisons for the idealistic goal of reforming disturbing and disruptive behavior. But we also set up prisons for the realistic goal of keeping bad people away from the good people. If we were to reach for the ideal and achieve the goal of rehabilitation, who are we to condemn someone for past sins against humanity (or in this case, caninity?) So we forgive. Because if we don’t, we are mocking our penal system, which in turn mocks our society’s values and norms.

This is why Michael Vick should be allowed to play in the NFL. He lost two years of his life because he was stupid. But he went through the system that we created and hopefully he makes something of his second chance. Because that’s what we need. We need the fallen idol, now underdog, to rise again or our nation falls, too.

Josh Sternberg founded Sternberg Strategic Communications by using traditional and digital approaches to help clients understand who they are and how to get their messages to the right audiences. Josh has honed his professional communications skills at a couple of NYC firms, including Stanton Crenshaw Communications. Prior to entering the real world, Josh taught several communications courses at William Paterson University and Montclair State University, both in New Jersey. On Twitter, Josh is @josh_sternberg

Hey, not her fault the gun didn’t go off.

I’m referring, of course, to the “Lone Wolf” Flu. It’s precisely the sort of bug we’d expect to strike conservative talk show hosts across the nation – and it has – but lately it’s turned up in what were once considered to be some of the most objective and sanitary environments in the American media landscape.

I’ll stop torturing the metaphor now, lest it seem like I’m treating the subject too lightly. Instead, let’s examine a couple of news items that do considerable damage to the truth of our domestic terror problem. First, a June 13 AP story bylined by Devlin Barrett and Eileen Sullivan came across the wires with this headline: “Shootings show threat of ‘lone wolf’ terrorists.” And yesterday the Wall St. Journal joined in with “FBI Seeks to Target Lone Extremists,” which explained that “[l]one-wolf offenders continue to be of great concern to law enforcement.”

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the terrorists they’re characterizing as “lone wolves” are no such thing. Or, if they are, then the working definition of “lone wolf” is so badly broken that it’s beyond fixing. That phrase asks us to accept that killers like James von Brunn and Scott Roeder (and Eric Rudolph and Buford Furrow and Benjamin Smith and James Kopp and Jim David Adkisson) get to the point of politically motivated homicide all by themselves. It asks us to accept that these people have no context, no community, no ideological fellow-travelers whipping them on.

Which is bunk. David Neiwert has written a couple of pieces since the latest fatal case cropped up in the Holocaust Museum several days ago. As he explained on Friday, “these are not ‘isolated incidents’.”

As Potok explains, the “lone wolf” concept was popularized in the late 1980s by an Aryan Nations leader named Louis Beam as an extension of his strategy of “leaderless resistance.” One white supremacist, a fellow named Alex Curtis, even went so far as to develop a “point system” for lone wolves.

A 2003 piece by Jessica Stern in Foreign Affairs described how even Al Qaeda was finding the concept useful. And she explains its origins:

The idea was popularized by Louis Beam, the self-described ambassador-at-large, staff propagandist, and “computer terrorist to the Chosen” for Aryan Nations, an American neo-Nazi group. Beam writes that hierarchical organization is extremely dangerous for insurgents, especially in “technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure, revealing its chain of command.” In leaderless organizations, however, “individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization.” Leaders do not issue orders or pay operatives; instead, they inspire small cells or individuals to take action on their own initiative.

The strategy was also inspired by at least one “lone wolf” shooter: Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist sniper who in the late 1970s and early 1980s killed as many as 20 people — mostly mixed-race couples — on a serial-murder spree, and attempted to assassinate both Vernon Jordan and Larry Flynt. (Franklin was also the inspiration for William Pierce’s Hunter, the follow-up novel to The Turner Diaries.)

As it turns out, we know a bit about these murderers, and the facts help us paint a picture of wolves who are anything but lonely.

• Buford was a member of the Aryan Nation.
• Smith was a member of the white supremacist Creativity Movement.
• Kopp was a member of the anti-abortionist Lambs of Christ.
• Rudolph isn’t tied to a specific hate group, but seems to have had ample support from a variety of sources.
• Adkisson was a fan of hate-talkers Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly.
• Roeder was either a member of or had ties to a variety of right-wing organizations, including the Montana Freemen, the Sovereign Citizen Movement, the Army of God and Operation Rescue.

Like all these other “lone wolves,” von Brunn was hardly an island, either.

The conclusion we’ve all hopefully reached about “lone wolf” terrorists is this: just because the rest of the pack isn’t physically present doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Sara Robinson summed it up nicely:

The assassins themselves are ratting you out. They’re telling us, straight up, that they were inspired to act by the hate radio talkers that you empowered — one of whom is now the de facto head of the Republican party. They got it from media outlets owned by your biggest donors. They got it from bloggers who receive daily talking points faxed in from the GOP. They got it from activists representing causes that would have never become causes in the first place if the issues hadn’t been politically expedient for you.

Beyond that: You’ve already admitted your own complicity. When the Department of Homeland Security expressed their worries about right- wing extremist violence last April, practically every conservative pundit in the country went into a righteous fit. DHS never named anyone directly, so it was astonishing how many of you on the right were so quick to step up and claim that that memo was slandering you, personally and collectively. Since you were so eager to claim that that memo was all about you, now that the violence has come to pass, we’re well justified in holding you to that.

The Press as Typhoid Mary

Back to the AP story, which unfortunately provides a warm, nutrient-rich pool in which the “lone wolf” meme can replicate with abandon. In a number of respects, it might be argued that the reporters and editors toe the journalistic line in ways that are more than defensible. The term is embedded in quotation marks in the header and in the first occurence in the body of the story. They interview and dutifully quote experts, and we have no reason to believe that FBI officials have any particular ideological axe to grind with their use of the term.

The WSJ story, authored by Gary Fields and Evan Perez, differs from the AP article primarily in the fact that it doesn’t even feel a need for quotation marks.

Despite the insight each story provides into the FBI’s attempts to head off these kinds of “isolated” attacks, I find myself wanting more in the way of perspective from the reporters. A lot more. As the FBI frames the issue, a “lone wolf” crime is apparently defined in opposition to one “planned by a trained terrorist network.” This taxonomy is probably useful in some contexts, but here it lacks a certain … granularity. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman quoted by the AP privileges the term.

In the end, the reader comes away with the idea that these killers are, as a matter of fact, solitary agents. Both agencies lend credence to this misinformation by failing to challenge the underlying factual inaccuracy, and in doing so they inadvertently serve the cause of the “leaderless resistance.“ When our most reliable news institutions say that these incidents are isolated, that they’re not part of a larger movement, that there’s no collective organization behind the attacks, it provides cover for a thriving, blood-thirsty community of wolves.

Put a little more aggressively, we might argue that such weak reportage provides aid and comfort for terrorists. No, that’s not a terribly civil accusation, and I’m certainly not arguing that Fields, Perez, Barrett, Sullivan or their editors are in some way intending to promote or enable the actions of these freak-right loons. Nonetheless, their failure to fully and clearly identify the context in which these actions occurred has an effect – intended or not.

If their hesitance to pull that particular trigger is somehow related to a concern over the appearance of bias (far more likely with the AP than the WSJ, I’d think), I’d offer two responses. First, the Homeland Security report that stressed the threat of homegrown right-wing terror was generated by the Bush Administration. Second, “balance” is never an excuse to sidestep the truth.

If we’re going to effectively address the causes of our recent domestic terror epidemic the Lone Wolf Flu must be eradicated. Step one: our mainstream media has to stop spreading the virus.

______________

Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church this morning. According to the New York Times:

Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.

He had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term abortions that violated state law.

The shooting occurred at around 10 a.m. (Central time) at Reformation Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, Dr. Tiller’s regular church.

MSNBC’s Web site is reporting that authorities have a suspect in custody, although no details are yet available.

Of course, we’re not a breaking news site and that’s not what this story is about. Instead, let’s speculate a bit.

Here’s the wager: the murderer will turn out to be a right-wing Christian terrorist. I’ll also offer a side bet: his media consumption includes the like of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.

If I’m wrong, check this space. I’ll gladly post an update noting my mistake. But as of this moment, would you bet against me?

Let’s hypothesize that I’m right for a second. What does it mean? Well, in the short term it probably means nothing for the doctor, his family, colleagues and friends. Whatever the reason, he’s dead, and tragically so, and at times like this the what probably means a whole lot more than the why.

From a big-picture perspective, though, from the perspective of the culture war that has claimed another victim, the slobberingly ignorant wide-right nutjobs have given the cause of Progress another martyr, and in doing so have made the case against their reactionary jihad a little clearer than it was before. Even in a nation as unrelentingly bassackwards as the US, the tide of enlightenment is slowly but surely washing them and their violent, Stone Age ideology away. The repudiation of their 8,000 year-old code of ethics in the last election may well make them more dangerous for a time, but with each passing day more and more mainline Americans are standing and looking them dead in the eye, at last seeing them for what they are.

Your gutless thugs may assassinate a librul or two in church every now and again, especially if you’re sneaky enough to catch them unawares. You may win a school board battle or two. But the war? The war is lost. It’s not about if, merely when.

I won’t bother with the arguments over why the Jesus’s Jihadis are doing what they’re doing. We know those details,  and our friend Sara Robinson predicted this very sort of terrorism less than a week ago. Besides, I’ve already had my say on why we’re not having an honest conversation on abortion itself, and so far there’s been no evidence whatsoever suggesting that I’m wrong.

All I’ll do is say, with 100% certainty, that if I’m right about what happened this morning in Wichita, our wild-eyed war god-worshiping right wing has done little more than pound another nail into its own coffin.

UPDATE 1: Operation Rescue is apparently making the same assumptions that I am, offering a faux-condemnation of the assassination:

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which has led numerous demonstrations at Tiller’s clinic, condemned the shooting as a “cowardly act.”

“Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice,” the group said in a statement. It offered its prayers for Tiller’s family, “that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

Why would I question the sincerity of the statement, you ask?

On its Web site, Operation Rescue refers to Tiller as a “monster” who has “been able to get away with murder.” And Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who is no longer affiliated with the group, called Tiller “a mass murderer.”

Find the dumbest mob possible, whip them into a lather, point them at Satan’s personal emissary on Earth, and then play innocent when the predicatble happens.

Sure, why not.

UPDATE 2: Hmmm. This isn’t officially confirmed, but if it proves to be true … well, everything I said above, times 10.

KMBC-TV in Kansas City reported that the suspect had a post-it note with the phone number of anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in his car, however that group issued a statement this morning denouncing the shooting.

Thanks for passing this on, JS. Just thanks a lot.

Part three of a series.

In the days following the murders at Columbine High School I visited the school and the grounds of Clement Park. Those walks produced this piece, which was originally published ten years ago today.

We have learned a great deal about the  events that took place at Columbine since  this essay was written (for instance, we now know that the  “Cassie Said Yes” story never actually happened,  and we also know that the whole “Trenchcoat Mafia”  thing was also a media-propagated fiction). But it seemed to me that going back  and revising to account for new information would damage the  fabric of what I wrote in late April and early May of 1999.  I have therefore elected to leave the factual inaccuracies  in place. I do, however, note the spots containing errors with an asterisk (*).

Salon.com and Westword.com provide as thorough and accurate  a picture as we are ever likely to have of the shootings and  the aftermath, and I recommend them highly.

_________________

Sunday, May 2, 1999

It won’t stop raining, and nobody seems to care.

I went to Columbine twice this week. On Wednesday I was simply overwhelmed – I have never seen anything like the rambling memorial site that has spread across the grounds of the high school and the adjacent Clement Park, never imagined anything like it. There was no sense of scale, of proportion – there exists no frame of reference with which to make sense of this deluge of grief. But I feel compelled to try describing what I saw, the pain, the small expressions of faith for the future, this physical manifestation of a community’s psychic anguish. So I returned yesterday, Saturday, hoping vainly for perspective where none appears possible.

As you turn east off Wadsworth and drive down Bowles the park and school grounds lie to your right. The park features picnic space and fields for football, lacrosse, soccer, and softball. Fields for small children to run and play in. Fields to watch the sun set behind the Front Range of the Rockies just a few unobstructed miles to the west. Whatever permanent monument they eventually erect here will never reflect how thoroughly and ironically public Clement Park has become. We sometimes lament how our nation has lost all sense of itself as a community, has forgotten what it is to have a town square, a shared space that symbolizes the communal spirit.

Well, here it is.

At the west end of the park, beside an athletic field, there’s a small latticework shrine featuring a lacrosse helmet and two crossed sticks mounted over a bucket of flowers. On one side there’s a small laminated sign with a prayer that reads, in part, “Dear God, we have been abused and it has wounded our souls. Our memories and thoughts, Dear Lord, are full of horror and we are powerless to heal them.” The other sign reads, “When God would educate a mans (sic) and compels him to learn better lessons he sends him to school to the necessities rather than the graces that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolation.”

Just west of the site where Vice President Gore laid a bouquet last Sunday is a tent dominated by a tribute to Cassie Bernall, the young woman whom the gunman asked,”Do you believe in God?” with information about how to contribute to the Cassie Bernall Fund rest on a table.* Notes, posters, and banners offer condolences and solidarity from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Marin County, California, and an elementary school in Wallace, North Carolina.

A major memorial has grown up around the flowers Gore placed, and a tent has been erected to protect the site from the elements. Inside lies a carpet of flowers – bouquets, formal arrangements, loose cuts, potted; a profusion of handmade cards, posters, placards, most handwritten and decorated, but few displaying anything like professional art or design skills and none that I saw were store-bought; a large poster from the people of Southern Oregon, who last year at Thurston High School came to know firsthand the pain we in Colorado are now grappling with; in front of this stands a silver and blue football goalpost – the crossbar is hung with a mobile featuring strings of paper angels; several stuffed animals, mostly teddy bears; balloons – some with sympathy messages, others in bouquets of blue and white; candles – some plain and some bearing Christian imagery; a blue baseball cap with a red and white cross; crosses, and more crosses. These artifacts – flowers, cards, posters, crosses, and hundreds, if not thousands, of stuffed animals, mostly teddy bears – make up the bulk of what people have brought and left at Columbine.

As you walk the hundred yards or so to the central memorial area the trees by the sidewalk are wrapped with blue and silver ribbons and some are draped with paper prayer chains. These were put here by a school district somewhere in the Midwest, and each link was made by a different student. Originally at least one chain hung from each tree, but to preserve them against the weather most have now been moved inside a tent down the street. Most of the trees in the park are wrapped with blue ribbons at the least; many have flowers laid beneath them and other remembrances hung from their branches. On one hangs a blue rabbit’s foot.

Just before you reach the main memorial area there’s a light blue wooden A-frame shrine about four feet tall and six feet wide dedicated to Cassie Bernall. It bears pictures of her and handwritten messages, as well as balloons and flowers. On the ground at one end is a one foot by one foot black board lettered in gold calligraphy: “I promise that from this day forth I will do everything in my power to insure that such a thing as this will never happen again. I will change my lifestyle and be more vocal and assertive in my beliefs.”

Some shrines are dedicated to all the dead, and others to individuals, these probably placed by the victim’s friends. As you turn into the central memorial area the first thing you come to is an elaborate tribute to Dave Sanders, the lone faculty member killed and a man who died trying to save student lives. This display features pictures of Sanders coaching, with his family, his players and students; two Columbine softball jerseys and a trophy; a pair of running shoes hangs from a tree; a soccer ball and a basketball lie loose among the flowers. The pile of flowers and stuffed animals threatens to swallow the whole display.

Some local residents went to Clement Park even as the tragedy was still unfolding and erected a series of lattices where people could place flowers. This spot has become the centerpiece of the memorial site, and eleven days later these lattices have been overtaken and literally buried beneath the artifacts of grief. I’m hard put to describe it, really. The central area around the lattices is probably thirty yards by fifteen, roughly oval. It’s bordered by row after row of displays, and if you didn’t know what you were looking at you might think yourself at some sort of carnival. Park officials have covered the ground here and in other heavy traffic areas with straw, adding to midway effect. More flowers, more teddy bears, more posters than you can possibly count, and more unconventional tributes stand in defiance of whatever hate drove Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to want to destroy an entire school and all those in it. A volleyball lies before a sign placed by Columbine alumni. Nearby a baseball rests amid the flowers. There are also American flags, although fewer than you might expect.

Seemingly every school in the Denver Metro area has placed a memorial of some sort – whether a simple posterboard project from a kindergarten class or something more elaborate from a neighboring/rival high school, it’s clear that this attack is being taken very personally by students no matter where they are.

There are condolences from beyond the metro area, too. In addition to the tributes from Oregon, North Carolina, Marin County, and Pennsylvania, people in many other places have sent their thoughts and prayers: besides condolences from cities across Colorado, there are tributes from Maui; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Lynchburg, Virginia; Allan, Texas; Gage, Oklahoma; Pace, Florida, and Palm Springs, California. A blue banner hangs between two trees: “Our thoughts and prayers are with you, from the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana.” A poster and letter have been sent from Belvidere High School in Illinois, where on April 21, 1967, a tornado struck the school, claiming the lives of 17 students. On the news yesterday morning they interviewed a woman who had flown here as an emissary from her church in Franklin, Tennessee. There are probably commemorations from other communities, as well – it’s easy to miss things here. I think my fellow Coloradans wouldn’t mind me speaking for them in saying thank you to the citizens of these communities.

Southeast of this area several sets of wind chimes hang from a tree, ringing in the rain and the light wind. The chimes are in the shapes of butterflies, doves, and a couple of birdhouses. A young man who looks to be in his late teens is wandering around handing out free flowers – I get a bouquet with carnations and columbines.

A sign that especially caught my attention was originally nestled in one corner, and it has now been moved under a tent near the street. On a white sheet folded in half, written in black magic marker, is a crudely drawn message that may be among the most important for a community trying to heal. In big letters: “Ours pains and sorrows for the victims of CHS.” In smaller letters across the bottom: “Not everyone who wears trench coats are killers.” Hanging just to the top and right of this sign is a print of Warner Sallman’s famous portrait of Jesus, beatifically looking toward Heaven.

You may have read in the papers or heard reporters on CNN talk about Rachel Scott’s car. But even knowing it was there, it still took me a few second to realize what I was seeing. When it became apparent that Scott might be a victim, her friends found her car in the parking lot and began placing flowers on it. Since then the red Acura has been buried beneath flowers, cards, teddy bears…. I only know it’s an Acura from news reports – you can’t really tell by looking at it. The driver’s side especially is almost completely covered by plastic. The passenger side isn’t quite so concealed, though, and I’m startled by the things we sometimes notice in times of overwhelming sorrow. Rachel needed new tires. The right front is almost bald. Another thing – lying on the bed of flowers by the driver’s-side door between three teddy bears is a loose dollar bill.

A few feet away John Tomlin’s truck, a brown-gold Chevy beater, has also become an altar. John liked to off-road in the truck – a popular diversion here in the high country – but now it’s hard to imagine it ever moving again. Vehicles are about as secular as objects get in our culture, but in the wake of this tragedy these two have been invested with a profound aura of consecration. Relocating them will seem like graverobbing.

Adjacent to this lot is the portable satellite dish farm where all the news outlets have their trucks and trailers and uplinks. The memorial area is braced on one end (the end nearest the school) by a few media tents, and one crew was preparing to tape as we walked past on Wednesday. A reporter for the Today Show was recording a segment a few feet away. Despite the presence of the implements of media, the area remains quite hushed. When people talk, they tend to whisper. They don’t look each other in the eye as they pass so much – if they’re like me, they don’t want to see their own numbness reflected back at them.

Still more remembrances have been placed closer to the school itself. The fences of the tennis complex, two sets of three or four adjacent courts each, have become walls of posters and banners. This is where the members of the San Jose Sharks, in town for their playoff series with the Avalanche, placed their banner on Friday – it’s about fifty feet long and is signed by literally thousands of fans: “To the community of Littleton, Colorado – Our hearts and our prayers are with you.” The Sharks are wearing CHS emblems on their helmets for this series.

Other signs are placed by individuals, by towns and schools, by a sorority from the University of Colorado. And here, a new symbol – there are hundreds of angels and thousands of bears, but hanging on the fence are two bears with angel wings. Another sign notes the connection between Columbine, Oklahoma City, Pearl, Paducah, Jonesboro and Springfield: “As the world watched our lives were forever changed.” On Saturday the baseball team from nearby Arvada West High School is out in full uniform touring the grounds.

Two Hills

If you watched the memorial service on CNN last Sunday you saw the hill in the distance where students were gathering. It’s actually two hills, and as you walk across the field toward them you pass several other shrines – one, at the corner of a recreation football/lacrosse field, is fairly large, maybe ten feet by fifteen, a growing mound of flowers and posters and bears. By Saturday it had been covered by a tent. Cards and tributes hang from trees. There’s a four-field softball complex between the main memorial area and the hills, and on the outside of one of the center field fences another teddy bear sits with two or three cards. A smaller bear, wearing a sweater, hangs on the fence, and there’s a piece of paper tucked under the sweater. I pull it out and unfold it. In blue and pink marker it simply says, “We care.” If you walk around a bit you find these small, private remembrances all over the place – here a loose bouquet of flowers lying in the grass with no explanation at all, there a card or a balloon or a bear, maybe indicating a mourner whose grief found no solace in the company of others.

As I approached the hills on Wednesday it was growing dark and beginning to rain. The skies have been heavy here almost continually since the shootings, but as oppressive as the weather has been there is a sense of rightness about it. On Saturday it rained all day, with temperatures in the 40s. There is only one safe path up the hill now, as the weather and the foot traffic have rendered most of the area treacherous with mud. The grounds crew has paved the main route up the lower hill with straw, and hundreds of people wait in line to view the hilltop memorial. Some make their way up by other paths, slipping and sliding, but enduring nonetheless. Some people take shelter beneath colorful umbrellas. Others, like me, expose themselves to the skies. I can’t speak for anybody else, but there is nothing here I want to shield myself from.

Several days ago fifteen crosses were erected along the ridge of the lower hill by a craftsman from Chicago. Each cross bore the name and picture of one of the dead – thirteen for the victims, and one for each of the killers. People wrote messages on each of the crosses, and many stress love and forgiveness. The message at the top of Klebold’s cross said, “God loved you.”

As you can imagine, the crosses dedicated to Harris and Klebold stood amid some controversy. The cover of Thursday’s Denver Rocky Mountain News featured a photo of two students tearfully facing off with a woman writing “a derogatory message on Dylan Klebold’s cross.” Whatever the woman wrote was conspicuously marked out, as well as whatever was written at the top of Eric Harris’ cross.

I walked from cross to cross, reading what I could in the fading light. As I paused before the monument to Isaiah Shoels, I thought about the irony of a kid who had fought to overcome so much adversity. He worked to overcome a heart condition and his small size (he was just 4′11″) because he wanted to play football, and his family reportedly transferred into the Columbine district because it represented a better and perhaps safer school environment. There he died because he was black and an athlete.* When I returned yesterday, I took a marker with me so I could write Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words on Isaiah’s cross: “I have a dream….” But the wood was so wet that the marker wouldn’t write on it. A man behind me, without even asking what I wanted to write, handed me his marker, which he said was waterproof and should work. But the soaked wood resisted this, too. I told myself I’d come back when the weather broke and try again.

I won’t get the chance. On Friday the father of Daniel Rohrbough and some relatives went to the hill and took down the crosses dedicated to Klebold and Harris. Mr. Rohrbough told reporters that it was a simple matter of right and wrong, that people coming to the hill wouldn’t realize they were honoring killers. “I don’t think any thinking person in this country is going to disagree with me,” he said.

Two small makeshift crosses were quickly erected in the place of the ones the Rohrbough family removed, and at the top of each was written “Start to forgive.”

Then, early this morning, the Chicago man who built and placed the 15 crosses originally came and took them all down. CNN captured them being loaded in the back of a pickup truck and driven away, with all the remembrances that had been hung on them still dangling from the crosspieces. He did not speak to reporters, and no reasons were given.

Thirteen seedlings have appeared on the far hill – the taller of the two – since Wednesday. A marker near the pinnacle reads: “These 13 burr oak trees have been planted on this hill as a memorial, one for each special person who had their life taken. I will pray for each family every day. – Scott.”

At the crest is yet another memorial site. At one end a variety of Christian ornamentation hangs from a crude wooden cross. I’m struck, as I have been for days, by how powerful a moment this tragedy has been for Christianity. A bit of context – I grew up Southern Baptist but left the church in my early 20s. I never rejected the lessons I learned growing up, but the institution of the church seemed to have nothing to do with morality or spirituality any more. Now I consider myself a neo-pagan, although that term is fairly broad as I use it, and a friend once listened to me for a few minutes and concluded that I was a “Jungian” pagan. I’m fortunate to have Christian friends and family who see through the trappings and accept the person underneath.

I offer this information only to explain why I feel somewhat left out by the healing process. The moral authority here has been usurped by Christianity – at the local level the churches have been the center of most gatherings, and nationally our Vice President shared the stage with the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famous Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham. In the entirety of the memorial sprawl, which contains hundreds of thousands of individual expressions of mourning, I found precisely one overtly non-Christian religious symbol – a small Star of David on a sign placed by the Montessori School. There is another spot where I encounter sun and moon symbols often employed by neo-pagans. The largest sun ornament is attended by what I believe are Norse runes, but the symbols hang from a cross.

The Grief of Other Tribes

I don’t make these observations to diminish people’s faith – on the contrary, while I’m not a Christian, I have taken comfort in the fact that the community has a belief system which can be called on in a time of crisis to lend support and provide meaning.

But non-Christians are in pain, too, and as I faced the wooden cross on that hill Wednesday I wanted to offer some gesture in my own spiritual language, my own symbology. I was wearing my pentagram, a symbol which for pagans symbolizes the sanctity of the natural world and the human spirit (and which is all-too-often mis-associated with Satanism), and wanted more than anything to hang a symbol of my spirituality alongside those of the Christians in my community as a statement of unity.

But I feared the gesture would be misconstrued by many, if not most, visitors to the hill, and in such a time of pain I couldn’t imagine doing anything that would intrude upon the grieving of others. What if somebody mistakenly took it to be a Satanic cult mocking their sorrow? So I was forced to a compromise. I was also wearing a Celtic cross, an ancient pagan symbol often taken by Christians as reflecting their faith (since it’s a cross, after all), and I placed that on the wooden crosspiece amidst rosary beads, angels, and more crosses. The crosspiece itself is plastered with a bumpersticker reading “No Jesus No Peace, Know Jesus Know Peace.”

But a bridge has to be built between the normal and the marginalized. Christianity is our dominant religion, but there must be a space for those who find spiritual truth in other places, just as our schools must make room for kids who dress differently and don’t fit into the accepted idea of what normal is. On Saturday I decided to take a chance, and I hope my gesture can be accepted in the spirit it was intended. A small white board sits on the ground beside the “trench coat” sign I described earlier. I brought a marker with me, and I knelt in the mud and wrote this: “My tribe grieves with our Christian brothers and sisters. We may walk different paths, but we are all children of the divine. We love you.” I signed it with my online handle/craft name, Road Angel, and drew a small pentagram.

I can manage my own spirituality well enough, but can’t help noticing that even in the wake of a crime which resulted in at least small part from the failure of conventional society to respect those who are different, my own mode of expression was limited and prescribed by the dominant belief system. I thought back to whoever placed the sign saying that all people who wear trench coats aren’t killers – we praise individualism and tell our kids to be themselves, not to bow to peer pressure, to express their uniqueness, etc. But identity is negotiated, and self-image often fights a losing battle with the perceptions of the larger community. And now these children, these outcasts, must prepare to face people who are pledging to “be more vocal and assertive” about their beliefs.

I said earlier that there were shrines to individual victims, and the clear heroine of the tragedy, if number of tributes is a fair indicator, was Cassie Bernall. When the gunman asked, “Do you believe in God,” her affirmative reply was her death sentence, but it was also her entree into immortality in the Christian community. She died in what most Christians would see as the most noble way possible, as a martyr affirming God, and the Rev. Graham assured us Sunday that she was ushered directly into the presence of the Lord for her faith.

Cassie Bernall was indeed a heroine, even for those of us who don’t count ourselves as Christian, because these days we so rarely find somebody whose courage is genuine enough that they will die for their convictions. If I were faced with such a moment, I hope I’d have her bravery, but we never really know until the barrel rests against our heads, do we?

Again, however, there’s an element to the story that disturbs me. A major news outlet reported that for a time Cassie was involved with witchcraft and paganism (although what this means precisely is unclear). She was apparently locked in her room for a few days and was then sent by her parents to a Christian “boot-camp” where she rediscovered Jesus.

If this is an accurate accounting, then we have another dire example of the rage to conformity plaguing our culture. No matter how productive we might see the result as being, no matter how happy and loving Cassie Bernall turned out, the essential dynamic remains. The message is clear: we’ll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids don’t become like those trenchcoat/goth/Satanic/loser/geek/punk outcasts. Different. Bad. We need to understand that the pressure that brought Cassie back to Christianity is the same pressure that drives other youths to less noble ends.

Are Our Arms Really Open?

When I started writing this I don’t think I had a point, but maybe I have come to one through remembering what I saw. If I have, this is it: in this time of pain and grieving, we have to insure that it never happens again, but perhaps our best-intentioned efforts are doomed to failure.

The community has been hit harder by these events than anything I have ever seen with my own eyes before, although tragedies of equal or greater magnitude happen somewhere in the world on a frighteningly routine basis. Before last Tuesday I was, like so many other residents of the Denver Metro area, somebody who lived here, but who wasn’t from here. I’m a North Carolinian by birth and have always considered myself a Southerner. But as I grappled to understand why this tragedy hurt me so deeply and so personally, I finally came to understand that somewhere along the way this has become home. I wasn’t an outsider looking in anymore – Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have torn my community.

So when I look at the imperative above – make sure it never happens again – I can’t help worrying that my community is missing something important. If the culture’s failure to accept differences in others contributed to this deathlust, as the killers said it did in their diaries, then how can we help being concerned when our community is uniting around messages and images of conformity instead of diversity? Somebody in a trench coat reached out with that sign – “Not everyone who wears trench coats are killers” – but I haven’t seen the community of normalcy reaching back. The media coverage and the church services (some of which were televised here) have celebrated the All-American and the Christian, and in doing so they provide a powerful balm to people in need. But the others – the outcasts, the trenchcoats, the goths, the geeks – all those who fail to fit the conventional ideal, they were ignored, or worse, scapegoated, and so an open wound in our culture continues to seep.

These kids probably don’t really want to join the church youth group. But how much good it might do if they knew that the church youth group wanted them, wanted them as they are, and was willing to love and accept the person beneath the black clothing, the person hiding behind the pale makeup, the person who isn’t very good at sports, the person who finds solace in dark and tortured music, the person whose most rewarding moments of personal acceptance come in the imaginary triumphs of his or her role-playing game characters. How much good it would do for them to know that they don’t have to buy several hundred dollars worth of Nike and Gap clothing to be validated as human beings.

And if you believe that church youth groups aren’t like that, I should explain that a large part of why I walked away from the Christian church was that all the youth groups I was associated with during the first twenty years of my life were even more cliquish and less tolerant of those who were different, new, or simply uncool than my high school was.

Time will tell. But in this issue we may have an answer to the question on everybody’s lips, a question you see repeated over and over in the cards and posters littering Clement Park: “Why?”

If Cassie Bernall becomes an icon whose memory stands for inclusion, we will have made her death and those of her classmates meaningful beyond measure, and we will at least know that their tragic passing was not in vain.

But if, in the aftermath of Columbine, we fail to understand and bridge the gulf between “normal” and “outcast” then we will be doomed to continue asking why as hate and rage and loathing lay their claim on other schools in other communities around our nation.

B&W photography by Heather Butler.

Previously

• The enduring lessons of Columbine
• Was Columbine the rule or the exception?
  

Part two in a series

How did it happen? Why did it happen? There’s simply no way to measure how many hours have devoted to these questions in the ten years and four days since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School, and while we don’t (and never will) have all the answers, we do have some of them. Obviously a good bit of the discussion focuses on the individuals themselves, and other analyses cast a broader net, examining the social factors that shaped the individuals. In a way, the question we’re still debating perhaps boils down to nature vs. nurture. Were Harris and Klebold Natural Born Killers? Or are they better understood as by-products of deeper social trends and dynamics?

The answer is probably “All of the above,” but we can’t simply check C and be on our merry, uncritical way. Checking C isn’t the end of the conversation, it’s the beginning.

Nurture

In the Winter 2000 issue of 49th Parallel, Nicholas Turse (then a doctoral candidate at Columbia), offered up an intriguing theory: that Harris and Klebold were, in some respect, the young radicals of their generation, the Abbie Hoffman and Mark Rudd of the New Millennium.

While these young boys may have no Port Huron statement, no manifesto, and no coordinated actions (that we know of), they are a legitimate radical faction that may have one-upped the violent Weather Underground and the revolutionary Abbie Hoffman. These boys have truly embraced “revolution for the hell of it,” maybe better than Abbie ever did. The randomness of their “non-campaign” may be the ultimate expression of “rage against the machine,” ripping into the system, as it were, at its most vulnerable and fundamental level, perhaps more so than Weatherman’s bombing of the U.S. Capitol.

While these school-age killers have no Vietnam War to protest, and may be criticized by former hippies for having no cause for which to fight, I contend that the struggle in which these boys are engaged may be as fundamentally important as ending the war in Vietnam (or imperialism, or racism, etc.) was to the hippies, Yippies, Diggers, and Panthers of the bygone era. These children, while they do not articulate the sentiment or may not even realize it, are fighting a system as insidious as the military-industrial complex was to their 1960s counterparts. They are fighting the American educational system and, by extension, the so-called American way of life.

I was invited to contribute a response. In my dissent, I suggested that

Turse seems both right and wrong. His suggestion that “kids killing kids may be the radical protest of our age” is most apt (especially given that our age has produced so little in the way of radical protest otherwise). Harris and Klebold represent a contemporary mode of resistance to the dehumanizing character of the American machine, and it is hard to imagine that thirty years from now we will have forgotten the names of those who burned the word “Columbine” into the collective consciousness.

However, instead of Hoffman and Rudd, it seemed to me that the Columbine killers owed more to

the likes of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, as well as to a larger body of neo-Luddites whose discontent with technological society finds voice in the writings of Kirkpatrick Sale, Sven Birkerts, and Mark Slouka. The public mind hasn’t yet put these things together, but I suspect a critical minority will do so eventually. While Harris and Klebold weren’t attacking the machine per se, it’s hard to argue that the monolithic educational infrastructure that helped spawn them is somehow unrelated to the trajectory of technological society generally.

The intent of the killers aside for a second, contemporary society makes it hard for young rebels to find a clear focus:

For starters, millennial culture deprives would-be rebels of both easy targets and productive means of resistance. In the sixties the enemy was easy enough to identify; seemingly all grievances found a handy focus in the Vietnam war effort or the Civil Rights movement, or some combination of both. Youth resistance found clear symbols of institutional evil against which to rally, and thus radical protest was relatively focused. The social and political structure of the era was given to a more or less one-front conflict, with the enemy over there and the rebels over here. The terms of engagement were clear, a fact that dictated and sanctioned certain forms of resistance and ruled out others.

Would-be radicals at the Millennium face a war being fought on a thousand fronts. There is arguably as much or more social evil for a young radical to oppose, but it is diffuse and sometimes intangible. Being ostracized by your high school’s mainstream is perhaps a distressing thing, especially if routine physical harassment by the football team is part of the bargain. When the school ignores the grievance it begins to take an institutional shape. Still, that is a dramatically different thing than seeing friends coming back from Southeast Asia in body bags or watching redneck police turning the dogs on young people who differ from you only in skin color.

Millennial radicals have less obvious targets, and correspondingly their rage finds no moral sanction. The lack of outlets for this anger undoubtedly makes the problem worse—the sixties radical could work these impulses out in a nonviolent fashion that found increasing acknowledgment by the press. Regardless of public reaction, at least they knew someone was listening, a condition that simply did not exist for those unhappy with their lot at Columbine.

Even now, with a decade of hindsight, it’s hard for me to tell how right or wrong I was. We’re in the midst of such dramatic political, economic and technosocial upheaval that I feel like I’m trying to sketch a tornado from inside it.

Others have questioned the role of political and economic factors in breeding the culture from which Harrises and Klebolds might spring, though. Just last week, David Sirota lamented that our national discourse, such as it is, hasn’t “yet matured past gun control and video games.”

In a country that ascribes hubristic “exceptionalism” to itself and berates self-analysis as “hating America,” we seek absolution via scapegoat, and so we upbraid bogeymen like firearms and Xboxes. Similarly, in a democracy increasingly conducting its politics through red-blue filters and 140-character Twitter updates, we crave Occam’s razors — and none are sharper than oversimplified arguments about gun control and video games.

But what about the questions and answers that aren’t so simple? For example, isn’t violence a predictable byproduct of our economy? When torture victims are waterboarded, they freak out. When a winner-take- all economy tortures society, should we be shocked that a few lunatics go over the edge?

For three decades, we converted our economy into one that enriches the rich and stresses out everyone else. Paychecks dwindled, debts accumulated, health-care bills spiked. We now spend more hours working or seeking work, and fewer hours on parenting and rest — all while schools and mental-health services deteriorate.

Sirota is asking important questions here, questions that take us far past “why did they do it?” The deeper question that we have to consider isn’t about the past, it’s about the future – what kind of world are we building and what effect would we reasonably expect it to have on those who grow up in it?There are children in our nation right now for whom the verdict is still out. Their futures have not been decided. If Sirota is right, and if I was right in my fifth prophecy for the 21st Century, some are going to be school shooters. What is happening in their homes right this minute that will make that outcome more or less likely, and what can we do to affect that equation?

Nature

On the other hand… Dave Cullen, who is probably the single best source of journalism on Columbine, characterizes Eric Harris as a stone-cold sociopath.

Harris, who conceived the attacks, was more than just troubled. He was, psychologists now say, a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath — a smart, charming liar with “a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control,” Cullen writes.

Harris, a senior, read voraciously and got good grades when he tried, pleasing his teachers with dazzling prose — then writing in his journal about killing thousands.

“I referred to him — and I’m dating myself — as the Eddie Haskel of Columbine High School,” says Principal Frank DeAngelis, referring to the deceptively polite teen on the 1950s and ’60s sitcom Leave it to Beaver. “He was the type of kid who, when he was in front of adults, he’d tell you what you wanted to hear.”

When he wasn’t, he mixed napalm in the kitchen.

The picture that emerges from ten years of study suggests that perhaps the two killers were necessary elements in a toxic cocktail – a legitimately deranged sociopath in need of a follower and a weak-minded loser willing to be led. Would 4.10.99 have happened had they not found each other? And even given these facts, is there anything that could have been done – thinking back to Sirota’s reasoning above – that could have altered the outcome? Maybe not. And frankly, there’s no way to know, now or ever.

So what to do with the possibility that social context was irrelevant, that some people are born hard-wired for atrocity, that Harris was a genetically flawed Natural Born Killer.

Even if this is true, not all school shooters are Eric Harris. Disturbed, yes. Broken children all, and perhaps broken for different reasons. We still lack enough cases to pull together anything like a representative profile (and with luck it will stay this way). It seems uncontroversial enough to posit that there’s a pool of kids who, depending on the circumstances, might or might not snap. That “snap” might take a number of forms, not all of them harmful to others. But if this hypothesis strikes you as reasonable, it’s probably also not a stretch to suggest that greater stress (in all forms, including the political and economic dynamics that Sirota talks about) might nudge the likelihood of the snap in the wrong direction.

In the end, shootings happen and I fear they will continue to happen. If we knew more than we did we could perhaps better understand the nature vs. nurture question as it applies here. Maybe we’d know whether Harris and Klebold were the rule or the exception, whether the Columbine massacre could have been prevented. Hopefully we’ll someday get to the point where we can answer these questions in ways that decrease the probability of more Columbines.

What we can say, though, is that a diseased body will exhibit symptoms, and that suppressing the symptoms is no substitute for curing the disease.

________________

Previously: The enduring lessons of Columbine

Next: The power of symbols…

Recommended Reading

Dave Cullen, Columbine
Westword Columbine Reader
Salon.com Columbine coverage

“He has a hit list posted on his website! School won’t be safe on Monday!”

Many parents were so busy forwarding and reforwarding the text— they were “aggressively promoting the rumors about this danger to our children,” one school official told me—that they apparently didn’t take the time to actually check the Web site.

Police did check it, though: No hit list. No threats. Nothing inappropriate.

So, when Monday came, nothing happened.

At least, nothing violent.

“There were SO many people out today,” my daughter told me when I picked her up at the end of the day. “My English class had, like, ten people absent.” Other classes were apparently so sparse that teachers didn’t even bother to teach a lesson or give assignments.

While the school district hasn’t released the exact number of absentees, they did confirm around ten percent of the students from the middle school (which adjoins the high school) stayed home. The absentee rate at the high school was a little less than that. According to the attendance office, at least twenty students confirmed that they stayed home specifically because of the threats of violence, although one administrator admitted the number was probably higher.

“[I] will not be in school tomorrow,” one student’s Facebook page announced Sunday night. “[NAME] is NOT going to get me.”

“Are you going to go to school?” another student asked. “I don’t think I’m going to,” came another reply. “I really don’t want to die tomorrow, at least not by being killed by some dumb boy.”

“[NAME] is going to kill everyone,” another student posted. “[NAME] threatened to shoot up the school. It’s really scary,” added another.

Back in December, the unnamed student was involved in a series of disruptive behaviors, which school administrators and the student’s parents promptly and appropriately responded to. Problem solved. Case closed.

Except, supposedly, the student wouldn’t let it go. Rumor began circulating among the student body that the student vowed to get even.

“He’s really creepy, so nobody likes him to begin with,” one student told me. “He’s the kind of kid you’d expect to do something.”

“Every time the principals hear one of these reports, they investigate it,” Superintendent Diane Munro told me. “We cannot take the chance.” In every case, though, investigators found no evidence to suggest any of the rumors were true.

“We haven’t found any of them to be substantiated at all,” High School Principal Cynthia Havers reported to the school board at a meeting on April 21.

Administrators tried several times over the past few months to dispel the rumors, to no avail. Worried parents showed up at school board meetings to express their growing concern. The parents of the student in question showed up to defend their son. They took photos of anyone who spoke out against him. People got angry. Lawyers got involved.

At some point, over the span of months, rumor became accepted knowledge, and accepted knowledge became “fact”: On Monday, April 20, on the tenth anniversary of the Columbine shootings, the disgruntled student was going to go on a shooting spree of his own at Allegany-Limestone High School in rural western New York.

We have reason to worry about such threats. Aside from the specter of Columbine, this particular area is haunted by an even earlier memory. In 1974, a seventeen-year-old with a shotgun and a sniper rifle staked out a spot on the third floor of the high school in Olean, N.Y.—the town immediately adjacent to Allegany. Before he surrendered to police, he killed three people and wounded eleven others. (He later hung himself in his jail cell.) It’s considered the first school shooting in America.

So, at Allegany-Limestone, by the weekend prior to the Columbine anniversary, tensions among students were running at fever pitch. Students would be coming back to school after a two-week spring break, and none of them knew what to expect.

Then came the final supernova of text messages.

“Panic grew, in part, due to a very large number of text messages that went out over the weekend,” Havers said in her April 21 report to the board.

But even as parents and students began questioning whether kids should really go to school, Munro, Havers, and other school district officials were working with law enforcement agencies to conduct what Havers would describe as a series of “safety procedures” at the high school. The building was searched top to bottom.

On Monday, aside from the regular police officer assigned to the school, an additional sheriff’s deputy was on duty at the school and, district officials confirmed, there was an extra police presence outside the school as well. Teachers did patrols in the hallways. Administrators went into classes to talk with students about the situation.

My daughter and I talked about the situation Sunday evening, and I let her make up her own mind about going to school the next day. I told her I thought things would be fine, but I only wanted her to go if she felt comfortable. In the end, she did. So did many of her friends.

“there will be many precautions taken if all these parents are worked up about it,” a student posted on Facebook. “one crazy wack job isn’t preventing me from doing anything.”

Another student expressed some nervousness but refused to be intimidated: “he will know that we are scared of him if we back down.”

“i personally think none of us should have to be afraid to go to school though and someone should deal with that asap,” wrote another.

And that, perhaps, is the nub of the problem. Do students have to be afraid to go to school? Do parents need to worry about sending their kids off for an education?

That’s the cost of Columbine. That’s its lasting legacy.

And we saw it all across the country on Monday—although we see it lurking in almost every suspicious backpack in every dim hallway on any given day, too.

On Monday, a friend near Seattle, Washington said her son’s school had “a known text message threat.” The local 
police were involved, she said, but no parents were notified. “The principal sent a note to the students during first period saying the school was safe,” my friend told me.

Another friend near Boulder, Colorado said her son’s school had a full-scale evacuation on Monday because a couple from Nevada were geo-caching in the school’s front yard—digging up a time capsule buried by a history teacher a couple years ago—and school officials got suspicious.

“The school officials called police, who in turn became concerned about three stray backpacks, and initiated the lockdown, then the evacuation,” my friend wrote. “Nothing turned out to be a problem—the box, the backpacks—all were innocuous. No ill-intentioned text messages or efforts at a prank. But as you note, Chris, the legacy of Columbine (and its progeny, like Virginia Tech) has been to taint us all with such fear and anxiety that every incident becomes a massive deal.”

As parents, my friend and I agree that we would rather school officials play it safe rather than sorry. I’m pleased with the way my own school district handled the situation.

But I can’t begin to tell you how sad I am that all this has to happen in the first place. Nothing happened at Allegany-Limestone, but the entire community still paid a sad price. Even a false alarm cost massive amounts of time, manpower, money, lost productivity, and peace of mind.

“What we’re seeing is the power of fear, the power of rumor, and the dangers of today’s technology,” Munro told me.

What we’re seeing, in other words, is the power of Columbine’s legacy—and we are all diminished for it.

And Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

The inclusion of the two shooters provoked rage that ultimately ended up with their two crosses being torn down and burned. But Harris and Klebold were victims just as surely as they were murderers. As such, they too were deserving of a level of sympathy that, to the best of my knowledge, they never recivied.

These two profoundly disturbed young men gave warning signs to a world that, for a number of reasons, wasn’t equipped to detect them or to act upon them. Harris and Klebold’s friends missed or ignored the signs. Their families missed or ignored the signs too. As did the Columbine staff. And the police. Everyone who was in a position to do something to stop the Columbine tragedy before it happened failed to do so, and fifteen people died as a result. Another two dozen were injured.

39 injured or dead. But that’s the complete list of victims of the Columbine tragedy. All of the families of the injured and dead are victims too. As were their friends. As was the entire faculty, staff, and student body of Columbine High School. As was a significant percentage of the Jefferson County School District, faculty, staff, administration, students, and all their families as well. As were the two men serving sentences for firearms violations, and their families and friends.

We can count the dead and injured easily enough, but just as with the victims of the 9/11 attacks, the dead and injured represent but a small percentage of the true victims of the Columbine tragedy.

It is perhaps a cold comfort to all the victims that schools are safer today than they have ever been, that the state of Colorado has implemented an anonymous tip line that has supposedly prevented another 27 school shootings, and that the organizational barriers that prevented law enforcement, social services, and schools from sharing information on troubled students have largely been knocked down, at least in Colorado. After all, their nightmares and pain and loss can never be relieved by actions designed to prevent more school shootings.

Contrary to what was being said around Denver in late April and May of 1999, we are not all Columbine. We do not all grieve equally or in the same way or to the same deity(ies). But Zanis still had the right idea. He fought desperately to include Harris and Klebold because he understood that they, and their friends and families, were victims, too. Zanis ultimately failed, and I’m sure that there are those out there today who cannot bring themselves to consider the Harris and Klebold families with anything but derision and hatred.

I would ask that this week, as we read and listen to all the anniversary stories and reminiscences from that tragic day, all of us try to include all the multitude of victims, not just those most directly affected, in our thoughts. All the victims.

Image credit:
AP, from IndyStar.com

April 20, 2009: 11:19 am MDT

Ten years ago a co-worker turned to me and said something that I’ll never forget, no matter how long I live: “Hey, Sammy, there’s been a school shooting in Littleton.”

Since that day a great deal has been written and said about Columbine High School and the events of 4.20.99, and like a lot of other people I’ve tried my hardest to make sense of something that seemed (and still seems) inherently senseless. Tried and failed. Now, ten years on, the grief hasn’t fully dissipated here in the city that I have come to call home, and even if we manage to understand the whos, whats, and hows, there’s a part of us that’s doomed to wrestle forever with the whys.

We’ve learned a lot over the past decade, though, and as we mark the tenth anniversary of Columbine, let’s begin by recounting three important lessons.

1: The authorities cannot be relied on. From the emergency response through the investigation process, Columbine was a case study in how not to.

I hate to be overly critical of police because they really have to do a hellish job, but that day witnessed one of the worst failures by a law enforcement agency that we’ve ever seen.

Two officers exchanged fire with one of the teenage gunmen just outside the school door, then stopped — as they had been trained to do — to wait for a SWAT team. During the 45 minutes it took for the SWAT team to assemble and go in, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot 10 of the 13 people they killed that day.

The killers committed suicide around the time the makeshift SWAT team finally entered. But the SWAT officers took several hours more to secure the place, moving methodically from room by room. One of the wounded, teacher Dave Sanders, slowly bled to death. [Source]

If this is the book on how to operate, explain to me exactly why you need a SWAT team in the first place. Events would have played out more or less identically if the SWAT budget had instead been allocated to Parks & Rec.

The good news, as the article goes on to explain, is that the meltdown at Columbine led to “active shooter” training, which is credited with making police officers across the country far more effective in these kinds of cases.

Sadly, there’s no indication at all that the longer, more mind-numbing process of investigating and reporting has been improved. “Quagmire,” “spin,” “cover-up,” “embarrassment,” “lost” and “hidden” reports – at every turn those charged with getting to the bottom of the worst school shooting in history acted like they were auditioning for roles on CSI Hooterville.

If the whole story – or at least most of it – is known today, it is despite these officials, not because of them.

2: Religious interests will colonize your grief for their own ends. As I walked the grounds of Columbine and Clement Park a few days after the massacre, I was absolutely staggered at the extent to which the tragedy had been transformed into an explicitly Christian extravaganza. Which was a little fascinating, since it wasn’t a Christian school and unless you were sucker enough to believe that there was a religious tint to the killings (there wasn’t – more on this in a minute) the tragedy had about as much to do with Jesus as it did Kubla Khan. Still, the impromptu memorials prayed, beseeched, questioned and promised in a distinctly evangelical way that had to make non-evangelicals a little uncomfortable. After all, this was their town, too, and I can say with absolute certainty that it didn’t matter what your religion was or wasn’t. Columbine was personal and the grief it engendered was profound.

It wasn’t just my imagination, either. One prominent local minister said he felt like he’d been “hit over the head with Jesus.”

To top it all off, Billy Graham’s lackwit boy Franklin parachuted in to preside over a nationally televised Mournapalooza service. No doubt some were comforted by the presence of a bona fide religious carpetbagger, but it’s hard to see, looking back, how the needs of the community were actually addressed by the self-serving machinations of a C-list opportunist.

To put it in Chaucerian terms, we could have done with a little less Summoner and a little more Parson.

3: The mainstream press values the narrative above the facts. They were goths! It was the Trenchcoat Mafia! They were targeting jocks, blacks and Christians! Cassie Bernall said yes!

Lie. Lie. Lie, lie, lie. And damnable, intentional lie. Local and national “reporters” could have been outperformed by monkeys with Ouija boards.

Not that the run-of-the-mill press bumbling came as any real surprise – journalistic malpractice is well-known in Colorado. But ineptitude is one thing. Outright, overt, premeditated lies are quite another, and that’s exactly what both of Denver’s mainstream papers – the Denver Post and the recently-defunct Rocky Mountain News did when they ran the “Cassie Bernall said yes” story as fact. They knew, by their own admission, that it was false, so why did they lie? Well, the lie seemed to be providing comfort to a grieving city.

Take that as the foundational operating principle for a free press and see where it leads…

If some of us have sort of moved on, then, if we have somehow clawed our way to a modicum of closure, it has been against a backdrop of secrecy, deceit, ineptitude and a pervasive moral pathology born of evangelical self-righteousness. Whatever insights we have attained, whatever emotional peace we have found, it has all been accomplished without the help of our community’s central institutions. As a result, I suspect that many of us mark the tenth anniversary with a little anger, a little bitterness.

There’s not much I can do about that except to suggest that what happened ten years ago today was not a one-off. It has happened since and it will almost certainly happen again, and my deep suspicion is that these kinds of events arise, in part, as a result of the dysfunctions noted here. That is, the governmental breakdown, the evangelical circus and the unforgivable duplicity of those who were granted particular 1st Amendment freedoms so that they could safely tell us the goddamned truth were not results of Columbine. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems to me that these flaws in the fabric of our society existed well in advance of 4.20.99 and it’s hardly surprising that a sick system would spawn broken children capable of unspeakable barbarism. Nor is it surprising that the system would then cannibalize those children and their victims in order to slake its spiraling lust for ignorance and hatred.

Whatever was wrong ten years and one day ago is still wrong.

Next

• Was Columbine the rule or the exception?
• Columbine and the power of symbols
  

In this case, however, the crew of the Alabama managed to disable the ship at about the time the pirates came on board, according to a senior American military official. The four hijackers, apparently overrun by the ship’s crew, then loaded the captain into a lifeboat, shoved off from the Alabama and began negotiating for his release.

American officials praised the crew’s decision to disable the ship. The Alabama’s second in command, Capt. Shane Murphy, is the son of an instructor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who teaches a course on how to repel pirate attacks.

Capt. Murphy, with a specialty in unexpected situations, brings to mind Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, hero of flight 1549, who is an airline safety expert. This incident also echoes another flight — United
Airlines flight 93 on 9/11, when the passengers apparently thwarted the hijackers’ aims.

Meanwhile, the Alabama hijackers, in a lifeboat with the hostage captain and with a U.S. destroyer tracking them, are not exactly dealing from a position of power. Still, they’ll no doubt get something out of it, just a smaller ransom than these pirates have been accustomed to.

For a comprehensive survey of Somalian piracy, the New Atlanticist has compiled all its articles on the subject in this post: Somali Pirates Capture U.S. Vessel, World Attention.

More at Memeorandum, too.