Blogcritics Author: Nicholas Stix

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Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

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Catching Bad Guys - No Hollywood Types Need Apply: An Interview with A U.S. Marshal

Nicholas Stix — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:41:20 EDT

Remember the big set piece in the movie The Fugitive (1993), when in a fiery train crash, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), wrongly convicted for his wife's murder, escapes from the bus taking him and other condemned men to the prison where they will soon be executed? Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones, in his Academy Award-winning role) shows up, immediately sizes up the local sheriff as an incompetent, country bumpkin, and takes control of the fugitive apprehension, giving his famous speech.“Alright, listen up, people. Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.”The federales are in charge! Hip, hip, hurray!In reality, such ignorant showboating would just about guarantee the suspect’s escape. (The fictional suspect got away, anyway, but that was because he was played by the then invincible Harrison Ford.) What does Marshal Gerard know about the lay of the land, escape routes, etc.? Nichts, nada, zilch.What does the local sheriff know about those things? Just about everything. And what he doesn’t know, his men know.Back in early January, a fugitive apprehension was undertaken that few people outside of Knoxville, TN and Lebanon, KY heard about at the time, in arresting suspects in what may end up known as the most gruesome crime of the year.In the wee hours of January 7, a white Knoxville couple, both of whom attended the University of Tennessee, Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, was carjacked and kidnapped outside of the home of friends.Christian and Newsom were bound and blindfolded, and taken to the house at 2316 Chipman Street in East Knoxville, where their captors engaged in an orgy of rape and violence. The captors anally gang-raped Newsom in front of his girlfriend, and orally, anally, and vaginally gang-raped Christian in front of her boyfriend. They beat both victims. They sprayed cleaning fluid into Christian’s mouth. After anywhere from 6-12 hours, they shot and killed Newsom, and desecrated his corpse, setting it on fire near some railroad tracks, dumping Christian’s 2005 Toyota 4-Runner nearby. (So much for the carjacking motive.) Approximately 24 hours after the initial kidnapping, the captors either strangled or asphyxiated Christian.The 4-Runner and Newsom’s desecrated corpse were found separately on January 7 by Christian’s father, Gary – with the help of his daughter’s cellphone company – and a railroad worker, respectively. A fingerprint belonging to convicted carjacker Lemaricus Davidson, 25, who had been released in August from West Tennessee State Penitentiary after serving a five-year sentence, was found in the 4-Runner. Davidson and his brother, convicted felon (attempted robbery) Letalvis Cobbins, 24, were then renting the house at 2316 Chipman Street, where on January 9 Knoxville police, seeking to serve an arrest warrant on Davidson, found Christian’s “battered” corpse stuffed in a large garbage can in the kitchen.On January 11, Lemaricus Davidson was arrested in an abandoned house on Knoxville’s Reynolds St. According to Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten, Davidson did not put up a struggle, and “cried” upon being led out of the house by lawmen. Ex-con (armed robbery) Eric DeWayne Boyd, 34, was also arrested. Boyd allegedly was harboring Davidson, and had gone out for groceries at the time law enforcement officers nabbed the latter.Letalvis Cobbins and George Geovonni Thomas, 24, were arrested in Lebanon, KY, on January 12. Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18, who had cooperated with authorities in Knoxville in the days just after the victims were found, was also arrested in Lebanon on February 1.Louisville-based, Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten of the Western District of Kentucky, who is responsible for the Lebanon area, and who led the inter-agency task force that apprehended Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas on January 12, was kind enough to give me an interview in which he explained how the Cobbins-Thomas fugitive apprehension went, and how fugitive apprehension in general works, this side of Hollywood.Marshal Knighten describes the personnel involved in the arrest as "a great big huge roundup of officers." He went on to say that the fugitives "were then taken to the Police Department, where they were interviewed by the detectives from the Knoxville Police who were doing the investigation."How many officers were involved in that roundup, sir?Oh, my God [laughs]. There was probably 25-30 law enforcement officers there.Now, you’re talking state, federal, local, everything.Yes, oh, yes. ‘Cause we had probably a dozen that came up from Knoxville, that were from the [Knox County] Sheriff’s Office and the [Knoxville] Police Department. And then we deputized them, because they were outside their jurisdiction.And the rest of them, I’m taking it, are, were Kentucky…Yeah, Kentucky State Police, Sheriff’s Department there, the local city police, and then, the entire, our whole Task Force here, that we have in Louisville.Now, what sort of a task force is that?It’s a joint law enforcement task force made up of feds, and state, and locals. We’ve got about a dozen people on it – U.S. Marshals, Kentucky State Police, Louisville Metro Police, Jefferson County Sheriffs, Oldham County Sheriff, University of Louisville Police, New Albany, Indiana Police across the river, Jeez (chuckles).So, you had people from all these different organizations working together on this roundup.Yes.And it went smoothly?Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.Now, how long – from when you first were notified of these fugitives – how long did it take from then until you actually got them in custody?Oh, as I remember, it was all in the same day. We got notified somewhere around oh, I guess, mid, mid-morning, that if I remember correctly, the Marshal’s Office in Knoxville contacted us and said we think these guys have run to Kentucky, and they’re in this little town, and, you know, they’re armed and dangerous and bad guys and all that stuff, and they sent us all the info within, we took the whole task force and went straight down there, met up with all the locals and came up with a plan on how we were going to surround the building, surround this house that they were in, in the meantime, the locals from Knoxville, and the county, I can’t remember if it’s Knox County, or…They all came up and met us, and we swarm in, and surround the house, and … got ‘em.And there was no resistance, right?Oh, no, uh uh.So, this is a very rapid response force we’re talking about.Oh, sure, yeah.I mean, in terms not just at the house itself, but in terms of your getting the information from the folks in Knoxville, and then putting together, mustering this force. I mean, how long did it take you, if you don’t mind me asking, to get all the people involved – the 25-30 officers – who then, you know, did the roundup?Well, it was quick, because half of ‘em work right here in our office. Yeah, we have a big task force room where they all work out of.All they do is get in their cars and drive down there and, you know, when they got down there, and they sort of looked over the situation. They started calling in the locals, the Sheriff’s Department, the local police, the Kentucky State Police, of course, came and brought some troops. Then … then … the locals from Knoxville showed up.We thought they might send one or two detectives, and they must have sent 10 or 12 officers.So, this was like a fire bell going off.RK: Yeah, buddy (laughs). They wanted to be involved in the apprehension, and of course, we totally supported ‘em.Now, do your folks from the task force get special supplementary training?Oh, well, yeah. First off, deputy U.S. marshals are trained in tracking down fugitives, but the local police agencies that work with us, we send them to training, our training academy, we send them to various training around the country, there’s the National Association of Fugitive Investigators, there’s the International Association of Fugitives … So, we send them out to training and things and it helps sharpen their skills to catch the bad guys.And do you have any idea how much time one of these local guys would spend in the course of a year training to be a fugitive investigator in order to work with you?Well, we find at least a week, at least 40 hours of training. And then we do sort of in-house training here and there and stuff right here in the office.Like continuing education?You have to, 'cause it’s, you know, they absorb so much from each other just working every day. You know, they work here with us a year or two at a time, and all you hear, they’re really good at it.So, they send you crack people, then.Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. They have their own agency, each agency has their own little system, that they screen their applicants that want to come to the task force, they interview them, and they pick the best of the best, and they send them to us and then all we do is just work with them and sharpen them a little better, and then when they go back to their agency, their agency rotates ‘em. Some rotate ‘em once a year, every year, and some rotate ‘em every two years, but you know, they go back with a lot of skills and experience, to really do a good job for their police agency there.See, now they come and they bring their own cases. So they don’t just come work federal cases. Each agency’s representative brings eight cases from their agency. Kentucky State Police comes, he brings murderers and rapists and robbers and thieves, and Louisville Metro, and Jefferson County sheriffs, they all bring their own cases to the table, and we sort of work through them and prioritize them, and no case gets shoved to the back, you know, and forgotten. We all try to catch ‘em. So, that’s the advantage of them putting someone on the task force, you have a team now, that with lots of resources and knowledge, that can work up the case, and try to identify and locate your bad guy.Well, that’s fascinating. I want to thank you for your time, Marshal Knighten.You’re welcome, sir.So, there you have it. No Hollywood theatrics, no Academy Awards … and no bloodshed. Just good, old-fashioned, new-fashioned police work, a model of local-state-federal cooperation, and two suspects in custody.On February 1, a Knox County grand jury handed down 46-count state felony indictments against Letalvis Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, and George Geovonni Thomas, including but not limited to theft, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, and felony murder and premeditated murder. Among other crimes, Thomas is charged with having shot Christopher Newsom to death. Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18, was indicted on 40 state felony counts, including aggravated rape, felony murder, and premeditated murder. Eric Boyd has only been charged federally with “being an accessory after the fact to carjacking.” All of the defendants are black.In Cobbins,’ Davidson’s, and Thomas’ respective cases, the U.S. Attorney’s office got the federal carjacking and weapons charges dismissed without prejudice (meaning that they may later be reinstated), so that the state trials may proceed first. The four state defendants will be tried separately and consecutively, beginning in May, 2008. Eric Boyd's federal trial date has yet to be set.In addition to the initial 46-count indictment, on May 18 Davidson was indicted on six additional state felony counts in the January 8 armed robbery of an employee in a local Pizza Hut, the attempted armed robbery of a female customer in the restaurant, and weapons possession charges. Davidson’s next court date in the Pizza Hut case is September 27, 2007.Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols has yet to declare whether he will seek the death penalty against Davidson, Cobbins, Thomas or Coleman.

New York-based, dissident journalist Nicholas Stix, has the dubious distinction of being arguably America's most frequently censored writer, having at different times outraged black supremacists, socialists, feminists, white supremacists, paleocons, neocons and libertarians. Still, he has managed to get over 600 articles past the censors.

Knoxville Horror: Trial Dates Set; MSM "Discovers" Case; Bloggers Continue Spreading Rumors

Nicholas Stix — Tue, 29 May 2007 04:48:50 EDT

The MSM is finally starting, ever so modestly, to report on Tennessee’s Knoxville Horror, even as far from the crime scene as Denver! (A tip o’ the hat to Modern Tribalist.)On May 17, Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner announced that the four defendants charged with having kidnapped, robbed, gang-raped, murdered, desecrated the corpses of, and stolen from Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, will each have a separate trial, each of which Judge Baumgartner foresees – perhaps a tad optimistically – as lasting two weeks. The state indictments can all be read here.Newsom was anally gang-raped, and then murdered several hours after being kidnapped; Christian was vaginally, orally, and anally gang-raped, and murdered approximately 24 hours after the couple was kidnapped. At one point, one or more of the defendants allegedly also poured cleaning fluid down the presumably then still living Christian’s throat, but a false report by Michelle Malkin notwithstanding, none of the defendants has been charged with torture.(Speaking of false reporting, 99 percent of the bloggers and Web sites I have read on the case, even Court TV’s usually reliable Crime Library, have been content to uncritically regurgitate an unsourced rumor that I traced back to neo-Nazi New York State radio host, Hal Turner, whereby the killers chopped off the living Christopher Newsom’s penis and at least one of the living Channon Christian’s breasts. The largely neoconservative bloggers in question, who claim to hate neo-Nazis, and who tar as a white supremacist anyone who is not racially correct, do not appreciate being told where they got their “facts” on the case. On May 18, after a four-month-long stonewalling campaign by law enforcement and justice officials, Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols’ special assistant, John Gill, insisted that the Internet rumors of sexual mutilation are “absolutely not true.” Gill’s statement has so far had no effect on the bloggers, and authorities in Knoxville have still not released the autopsy reports on the victims.)George Geovonni Thomas, 24, is charged with having shot Newsom to death and set his corpse on fire. Christian may have been strangled.According to a February 1 report by Fox News’ Knoxville affiliate, WATE, at least one of the killers dismembered Christian, placing her body parts in five separate garbage bags and putting the bags in a garbage can in the kitchen of the apartment of defendant-brothers Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, 24, and Lemaricus Devall Davidson, 25, where police found the bags. Between the February 1 report and May 17, the dismemberment of Channon Christian was no longer included in any of the reports this reporter has seen; I only came into possession of the aforementioned report on May 17, thanks to a reader’s help. Coincidentally, that same day, a report on CBS’ Knoxville affiliate, WVLT, spoke vaguely of police “finding Channon Christian stuffed in garbage bags.”In a May 27 story, however, the Knoxville News-Sentinel's Jamie Satterfield, who has reported on this story since the very beginning in early January, insists that Channon Christian was not dismembered, rather that "The fact is, Christian's intact body was wrapped in five trash bags." Satterfield reported early on that Christian's "battered" body had been found in a garbage can in Cobbins and Davidson's apartment.Jamie Satterfield has done an excellent job, as long as she has stuck to the physical facts of the case. However, in her May 27 article, she engages in a great deal of stealth editorializing that is contradicted by the facts of the case. Satterfield promotes the twin notions that the crimes committed against Channon Christian and Chris Newsom were not racially motivated, and that only a "white supremacist" would see them in such a light.Au contraire.And as long as the Knoxville authorities refuse to release the autopsy reports on the victims -- something this reporter tried for weeks to obtain -- honest people will not know whom to believe, regarding the condition of Christian's corpse.Ex-con Letalvis Cobbins, alias Letalvis Davidson, is scheduled for trial on May 12, 2008. Cobbins is indicted on 46 Tennessee state felony counts, including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated rape, felony murder, premeditated murder and theft. Cobbins was previously convicted of felony third-degree attempted robbery on May 19, 2003, in Queens, NY – he just celebrated his anniversary!Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18, was indicted on 40 state felony counts, including aggravated rape, felony murder, and premeditated murder. In a touching courtroom moment on May 17, according to WVLT reporter Gordon Boyd, Coleman “mouthed the words, ‘I love you’ as she was led out.” Coleman’s trial is set to begin on June 16, 2008.Coleman was referred to in initial reports in January as a “witness” rather than as a suspect, and was a source of much material that eventually went into the case against her and her fellow defendants. An able defense attorney would try and spin Coleman’s cooperation into a mitigating factor at trial, and if she is convicted, during the sentencing phase. (Although Tennessee is a death-penalty state, Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols has inexplicably refused to reveal whether he will seek the death penalty.) How loving Cobbins is presently feeling about Coleman’s cooperation with federal agents and local police may be another matter entirely.Cobbins’ ex-con brother, Lemaricus Davidson, was charged with the same 46 counts as Cobbins, and is scheduled to go on trial for them on July 14, 2008. (According to published reports, Eric Dewayne Boyd, 34, told federal agents that Davidson had confessed to him that he had murdered – “choked” – Channon Christian.) Davidson, convicted in Tennessee in 2001 of federal carjacking charges, a death penalty-eligible crime, and in spite of being a problem prisoner – but who among us is perfect? – served but a token sentence of at most five years, and was released only shortly before his alleged crime spree.In addition to the initial 46-count indictment handed down against Davidson on February 1, earlier this month, he was indicted on six additional state felony counts in the January 8 armed robbery of an employee in a local Pizza Hut, the attempted armed robbery of a female customer in the restaurant, and weapons possession charges. (Not noticing that Davidson allegedly had a gun trained on her when he allegedly tried to grab the customer’s purse, she resisted, and the “bewildered” robber was allegedly left holding the ripped strap.)Davidson’s next court date in the Pizza Hut case is September 27, 2007.The allegations so far are that beginning in the wee hours, Davidson spent all of January 7 variously carjacking, kidnapping, robbing, torturing and gang-raping Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian, and murdering Christian, and then headed out the next day, to rob people at the Pizza Hut. Busy fellow, he.Ex-con George Thomas, likewise indicted on the same 46 counts, is scheduled for trial on August 11, 2008. Thomas is charged with having shot Newsom to death. Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten reportedly said that Davidson wept when he was arrested.Ex-con Eric Boyd has been charged federally, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, with “being an accessory after the fact to carjacking,” for having allegedly helped Davidson flee apprehension. Boyd’s trial date has yet to be set. Boyd has not been charged with any of the state crimes. (Michelle Malkin also erroneously reported that Boyd was charged in the murders, kidnappings, and rapes of Christian and Newsom.)Cobbins, Davidson, and Thomas were also charged federally with carjacking and two counts of federal weapons felonies, but at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a federal judge dismissed the federal charges “without prejudice” (meaning that they may later be reinstated), so that the Tennessee state prosecutions could go forward first.Having separate, consecutive trials offers potential advantages to prosecutors. Earlier defendants may seek to impute all guilt for the crimes they are charged with to defendants who have yet to be tried, and may provide a wealth of information that can be used against their alleged accomplices. Or they could simply be fonts of misinformation and lies.For an example of such gamesmanship in the present case, when Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas were initially apprehended in Lebanon, KY, they reportedly claimed in affidavits to federal agents that Eric Boyd was in fact the rapist-murderer. So much for loyalty or gratitude.It is not known whether Cobbins or Thomas has of late made any public expressions of love to Boyd. Some black supremacist activists have, however, publicly expressed their love for Davidson, Cobbins, and Thomas.The more one learns about this case, the less justifiable the four-month-long national media blackout becomes. One could devote entire three-hour blocks of cable news time exclusively to this story, without ever having to use the endless loops or even partial repeat passages on which cable news relies for filler with big stories, while enjoying blockbuster ratings. How did the media suddenly develop an allergy to making money? (Editor's Note: Some material in this article which discussed the site Svengali Media has been removed. It was not essential to the main points of the article and functioned as a distraction because of the questionable nature of the site and the material contained on it. If you want to see this article in its original form, use the link below to the author's home blog.)

What Does Mike Francesa Have Against Willie Randolph?

Nicholas Stix — Sun, 1 Apr 2007 15:56:00 EDT

On March 4 on his New York TV sports talk show, Mike'd Up on NBC's New York affiliate, Mike Francesa snubbed New York Mets skipper, Willie Randolph. Francesa was talking about the Mets' prospects this season. He observed that they had gotten by in 2006 with great hitting, and that "the Mets" would paste together a starting rotation, and had a great bullpen. He pointed out that the team had an aging starting rotation for the coming season, with the caveat, that if necessary, "Omar will make a move" for a starting pitcher. It was always "the Mets," whoever they were, as if the managing were done by an anonymous committee, vs. "Omar." Not once did Francesa mention Randolph.Now, I was not a believer in Willie Randolph when he was named Mets manager in 2005. Randolph had never managed; not in the big leagues, and not in the minors. The Mets had just endured two years of the Art Howe fiasco. I had never wanted them to hire Howe in the first place, and if I didn't want owner Fred Wilpon taking a chance on a green manager prior to Howe, that was doubly the case after he had passed through town. (And Howe was experienced! He'd been a failure in Houston and a success in Oakland.)Wilpon had likely hired Howe because he was the anti-Valentine. Bobby Valentine had been one of the best managers in Mets history, and he got the team to the World Series in 2000 for the last time, after a 14-year drought. (I can't seem to recall the name of the team they went up against.) Valentine was brilliant and had a maniacal work ethic, but he could be sneaky and was too much in love with his own cleverness, like the time he started circulating a rumor that slugging catcher and team captain Todd Hundley was partying too late at night, or another time when he got thrown out of a game, and thought he could fool the ump by sneaking back onto the bench wearing a Groucho disguise. Still, he gave his all for Wilpon, and the team gave its all for Valentine. Valentine's stressing of the fundamentals and preparation had much to do with the team having one of the greatest infields of all time under his stewardship (John Olerud at first base, Edgardo Alfonzo at second, Rey Ordonez at shortstop, and Robin Ventura at third).But Wilpon hated Valentine, and let his animus cloud his judgment. Apparently, he decided that he would hire the diametrical opposite of Valentine, and so he hired Howe, a guy who didn't belong in New York.When Wilpon fired Howe after two years of misery, I wanted him to hire a proven winner. When he went with Randolph instead, I was afraid he'd put race politics over winning. After all, Major League Baseball obliges every team with a managerial opening to interview at least one black candidate, even if the owner has no interest at all in the guy. Violation of the affirmative action program results in fines. The Tigers paid such a fine back in 2000. They had an opening and knew exactly who they wanted to fill it - fiery Phil Garner. So they interviewed only one man for the job. They offered the job to Garner, and he accepted. But because the Tigers didn't dissimulate to some poor black guy looking for a manager's job, they had to take a hit. Conversely, had they lied to a black candidate, and told him they were legitimately interested in him, the league would have been most happy, and the team could have saved thousands of dollars.Willie Randolph once got such an interview offer. To his credit, Randolph asked the executive on the phone if he was being invited simply to fulfill the league's quota, and the executive had the decency to honestly answer the question. At that point Randolph said, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'Randolph's 2005 Mets had a shaky beginning, losing their first five games, but then went on a winning streak, and by the end of the season, were 83-79, their first winning season since 2001. Simply put, Willie Randolph turned around a franchise that had been mired in a loser mentality. The following year, the Mets went 97-65, won their division for the first time since 1988, and in the League Championship Series against the Cardinals, were an inning away from going to the World Series.Last Sunday, Francesa momentarily departed from his Yankee-sniffing norm, and devoted a real segment to the Mets, and while he didn't totally snub Randolph - that would have caused a scandal - he might as well have. In the midst of an extended interview with Mets GM Omar Minaya, Francesa mentioned Randolph for all of three seconds, noting that the Mets had granted him a contract extension (through 2009).Look, I'm not a mindless Willie Randolph fan. For instance, he favors Latin players over whites. Randolph had a rule that there was to be no playing of music in the locker room. Yet, when some Hispanic players flouted the rule, he did nothing. So, the rule doesn't apply to Latins.Of course, it was Omar Minaya's decision to stack the team with Latin players in the first place, and they can play. Minaya, one of the smartest GMs in the game, has put together a very competitive team. But as I have previously noted, some of the players he variously signed and traded for - specifically Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado - hold the Mets' predominantly white fan base in contempt. You know, the folks buying the tickets and filling Shea Stadium? (Jose Reyes, by contrast, treats the fans royally.) But that's on Minaya, not Randolph. And Minaya is the guy Francesa is treating with kid gloves.Randolph also has an irritating tendency to abuse pitch-arounds, in walking less-than-intimidating hitters (e.g., number eight hitters, in order to pitch to the opposing pitcher), a tendency which blew up in his face a few times last season.Given that subtle (or unsubtle?) pressure from Omar Minaya may have had something to do with Randolph's ethnic double-standard, he takes half a rap for that sin, grievous though it is. And given that the occasional unnecessary intentional walk is overshadowed by the effort most of his players put out for him almost every day, and the results he has gotten, Randolph is certainly one of the better managers in the game.So, Mike, what's the story?

25 Years After John Belushi's Death, His Cult Lives On

Nicholas Stix — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:24:40 EDT

John Belushi is dead! John Belushi lives!Twenty-five years after John Belushi (1949-1982) died (culminating a four-day binge in which he drank enough booze, snorted enough coke, and had a companion/drug dealer/fellow addict shoot him up with enough heroin-cocaine speedballs to kill a herd of elephants), all too many writers still can't think straight about him.During the last two to three years of his life, Belushi, who at his best was a wild man, careened down a path of steadily degenerating drug addiction. He either had a death wish, a teenager-style sense of immortality, or as a speedball-induced psychopath, was so far gone as to be past thinking in terms of death or immortality.According to Tanner Colby, however, none of the foregoing applies. Colby co-wrote a biography of the comic actor, Belushi. I guess that makes him an expert. Colby asserts that, "John Belushi, deep down, was a stable guy who knew who he was, had a lot of confidence, wasn't superficial but with no great internal trouble. I think that what happened to him was largely due to fame. For a year and a half, he was as big as Elvis."And deep down, I'm seven feet tall. So much for experts. In case you're wondering, Colby's co-author was Belushi's widow, Judy.John Belushi was never as big as Elvis - and I'm not even an Elvis fan. Had he been a nameless junkie, no one would have gone to prison for what he did to himself. Indeed, considering the depths of his abuse of drugs and alcohol, it's amazing he lasted as long as he did.The cloyingly sentimental, unsigned March 5 Associated Press article, read by tens of millions, sounds like something from a fan site: "[He] brought renewed attention to Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and other R&B giants." That suggests, ridiculously, that Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin had somehow faded into obscurity until Belushi rescued them. The writer succeeds in one swell foop at racially patronizing both Belushi and two of the greatest singers of the recorded sound era.The brief hagiography also approvingly quotes fellow comic, Richard Belzer, calling Belushi an "impish genius."Tanner Colby is kidding, right? Very stable, no internal trouble, and a regular Buddhist monk. Oddly enough, in a 2005 interview plugging his book, Colby painted a very different picture of Belushi. "Our book captures all three sides of John, I think. There's the hardworking actor dedicated to his craft, there's the warm, generous and lovable guy who was everybody's best friend, and then there's the wild and self-destructive John who was racked by his own insecurities and driven to extremes."When Belushi died, I gave in to sentimentalism, too. When his brother Jim came up, I looked down on him as a lightweight hanging on to his brother's coattails. I have since revised that estimate, and now think better of Jim Belushi.John Belushi probably did "fulfill his potential." He had a good run: Four years of sometimes excellent work on the then new Saturday Night Live and two movies, Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1981). The rest you can forget.John Belushi was a talented guy, but Chaplin he wasn't. Nor was he Keaton, Lloyd, Marx, Gleason, Silvers, or Van Dyke. He wasn't Robin Williams or Billy Crystal. He simply did not have the sort of talent to justify the hype devoted to him. That may sound cruel, but I bet you that 25 years after Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith die, people won't be swooning the way they just did over John Belushi.As anyone who saw Van Dyke on his first eponymous sitcom, his special Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman, inBye Bye Birdie (stage and screen), Mary Poppins (1964), The Comic (1969), and in his various supporting movie roles knows, he had that sort of talent.The same can be said of Griffith who started out as a comic monologuist, gave brilliant performances in the 1957 Elia Kazan drama, A Face in the Crowd, the stage and screen versions of the comedy No Time for Sergeants, and who for eight seasons carried The Andy Griffith Show, which was for many years the only show to end its run #1 in the Nielsens.I guess Van Dyke and Griffith just lived too long. Sometimes dying young can be the best career move of all.In addition to dying young, John Belushi has benefited from a sycophantic press: The general decline in talent that made and continues to make him seem greater than he was; the narcissism of people who think their own mediocre generation was the best; and his nostalgia function for people now in their late thirties and forties, for whom memories of watching Belushi are inseparable from memories of their youth.The oddest aspect of the nostalgia is that during his brief career as a star, Belushi was singularly abusive towards the press.When his friend died, then-Rolling Stone reporter Charles Young recalled, "We weren't close, exactly, but if you were a journalist, just having John not hate you was an accomplishment. A number of reporters speak bitterly of John to this day because he dumped food on their heads or spat on them."They may speak bitterly, but they don't write bitterly about him.When Belushi died, some Hollywood types -- producers and directors, most notably -- lost out on millions in potential earnings. In a town where friends are about as rare as in Washington, Belushi had some friends, although most of them would be more accurately described as acquaintances, buddies, and associates. Not only was he at times very generous -- he reportedly shared some of his wealth, financing businesses for less wealthy buddies -- but some people did care about him. The lost fortunes and broken hearts are what make Belushi's death reverberate in Tinseltown even today. That's why people who knew Belushi made sure the companion/drug dealer/drug user who shot him with the fatal speedball, Cathy Evelyn Smith, was arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.Not that they had anything against drug dealing in general - hell, some of their best "friends" were drug dealers.Had someone written a script about a last night on earth as dramatic as John Belushi's, people would have snickered in disbelief. As Corey Mitchell recounts, Belushi started out with Nelson Lyon, an old Saturday Night Live writer buddy and Cathy Smith, a former backup singer for The Band, who played many roles for Belushi, including being his main supplier of hard drugs. (Typical of such accounts, Smith is portrayed in the harshest possible light.) While club-hopping, the three ingested great quantities of alcohol and cocaine, and throughout the night and the next morning, Smith shot up the needle-shy Belushi several times with speedballs.In Belushi's last hours, in his bungalow at the celebrity hotel, the Chateau Marmonte, Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro visited him at different times. According to Corey Mitchell, "... Williams popped in and snorted a few lines of coke, but was creeped out by Smith. He thought she was a little too crusty [?] for Belushi and wondered what he was doing with this lowlife. Williams bolted and told Belushi, 'If you ever get up again, call.' Sometime after 3:00 AM, actor Robert DeNiro knocked on Belushi's door.... The scene inside the room was not pretty, so DeNiro decided to not stick around."Before he cleaned himself up, Robin Williams almost killed himself with cocaine. In his 1986 one-man show at the Metropolitan Opera House, he told a joke based on his experiences that became an instant classic, "Here's a little warning sign if you have a cocaine problem ... If you have this dream, where you're doing cocaine in your sleep, and you can't fall asleep and doing cocaine in your sleep and can't fall asleep AND YOU WAKE UP and you're doing cocaine! BINGO!"Although Robert DeNiro reportedly never had a drug problem, he has known many people who did and has since become famous for his interventions, one of which, in 1998, may have saved the life of actor Tom Sizemore. (In 2001, DeNiro's ex-wife, Grace Hightower, claimed he had a drug problem, but that was in the context of a custody battle. Given that high-priced divorce lawyers representing women routinely coach their clients to charge their exes with outrageous crimes, including having sexually molested their children, such charges have about as much prima facie credibility as a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times.)Sizemore had given a legendary performance as Sgt. Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan (1998) before the intervention, and later did equally brilliant work as the star of TV's L.A. Robbery Homicide Division (2002), but a new arrest for domestic violence would cause the show to be cancelled and was merely the beginning of yet another descent into hell for its star. Sizemore is an actor of a visceral power, at times comparable to a young Brando or DeNiro, but as a drug-fueled psychopath, he may just outdo John Belushi.In 1982, Penthouse reporter Allan Sonnenschein interviewed Belushi's longtime Saturday Night Live colleague, "Blues Brother," and close friend, Dan Aykroyd. Aykroyd expressed both his love for his late friend and some observations unclouded by sentimentality.PH: "Do you think John was hanging around with the wrong people at the end?"Aykroyd: "The people he really liked were worthwhile people... at the pinnacle of this industry--the best in music, rock-n-roll, films, and television. These were John's real friends, the people who were most worthwhile to him. And he would never have gotten into his drugged-out condition with them. Some of these vermin he was hanging around with at the end were talentless, worthless individuals with no specific skills or contributions to make to this world. And John could really be a monster, an out-of-control monster with them. He had to be straight with the people he held in esteem. He was respectful and more lucid in conversation and much more together when he was around people he respected. The reason he was with these other people is because they allowed any behavior."Treating the famous and powerful with respect is not grounds for praise. If you treat people you deal with like dirt, people who have done nothing to you, that makes you dirt, not them. While Belushi by all accounts had a good side, he was human, all-too-human. I'd love to see an account of him treating mere civilians with respect.Charles Young's obituary for Belushi embodies both the hagiographic and the realistic approach. "John had the Burn, that charismatic flame in the eyes that only the greatest artists in any field possess. If he'd sobered up and spent more time studying his craft, he could have been another De Niro or Brando. As it was, he never quite figured out that TV-skit acting and movie acting require different techniques. His movies weren't great. I loved him because he didn't take shit from anyone. And he was howlingly funny. His tragedy came in never realizing that drugs aren't rebellious, a common flaw in counterculture heroes.""I loved him because he didn't take shit from anyone"? That's how a teenager talks. That just won't do. Excepting perhaps a mass-murdering mob capo di tutti capi or dictator, every grownup has to take at least some crap from someone. As Young himself reported, an awful lot of people took an awful lot of crap from John Belushi.I can't end this profile on a note of teenaged bravado.The simplest and most concrete expression of John Belushi's charm came from Dan Aykroyd, who confessed that he had loved his friend so much that he might have let Belushi talk him into shooting up together. "When he came up to my family's farm to meet my parents, he got out of the car as my father was walking down the front steps and jumped up and did a flip for him! It was like, 'Here I am. I'm Dan's friend. I'll do anything you want.'"

The Death of a President

Nicholas Stix — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:18:30 EST

Forty-three years ago this month, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of these United States, was felled in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist and dishonorably discharged Marine.For most of my life, November 22 was always commemorated as one of the darkest days in American history. In recent years, such commemorations seem to have been fading.President Kennedy was riding that day in a motorcade with his wife, Jackie, Texas Gov. John Connally and the latter’s wife, Idanell, and Texan Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kennedy had come to Texas to shore up a rift among Texas Democrats.As soon as she saw her husband had been hit with gunfire, Mrs. Kennedy showed herself willing to sacrifice her own life to save her husband’s. She threw herself across her husband to shield his body from further gunfire as if she were a secret service agent, rather than America’s First Lady. Alas, it was too late.Gov. Connally also was wounded, and his wife, Idanell Brill "Nellie" Connally, helped save his life by “pull[ing] the Governor onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung).”Later that day, aboard Air Force One, Vice President Johnson was sworn in as America’s 36th President.On April 10, 1963, Oswald had attempted to assassinate right wing Army Gen. Edwin Walker; one hour after assassinating the President, he murdered Dallas Patrolman J.W. Tippit, before being arrested in a Dallas movie theater, during which Oswald tried to shoot yet another policeman. Two days later, Oswald was himself murdered by Jack Ruby, as lawmen sought to transfer Oswald from police headquarters to the Dallas City Jail.Jack Kennedy has become, like his erstwhile fling, Marilyn Monroe, a Rorschach Test, onto which people (particularly leftists) project their preoccupations. Thus do conspiracy obsessives – “theorists” is much too kind a term – project the notion that the President’s assassination had issued out of a conspiracy so immense, including at least two assassins, and dozens of string pullers and marionettes, with the identity of the specific participants – the Cosa Nostra, the CIA, Fidel Castro, et al. – depending on the imaginings of the obsessive in question.Likewise has Kennedy’s presidency been fetishized by left wing obsessives and family retainers, who have turned him into a socialist demigod who supported massive economic redistribution and radical “civil rights.”The best way of summing up the real JFK versus the fantasy version propagated by the Left and by Kennedy courtiers since his death is by comparison and contrast to President Richard M. Nixon, Kennedy’s opponent in the 1960 election (an election that JFK’s father, Joe Kennedy Sr., may well have stolen for him, with a little help from friends in places like Cook County, Illinois, and Duval County, Texas).Kennedy has been portrayed as a left wing saint and Renaissance man, who gave us or supported (or would have, had he lived) the War on Poverty, civil rights for blacks, and utopia. Nixon, by contrast, was a right wing Mephistopheles (“Tricky Dick”), and an anti-intellectual, racist, fascist warmonger.Politically, Kennedy and Nixon actually had much in common. Both were unapologetic anti-communists in matters domestic and foreign. Nixon successfully prosecuted for perjury the traitor and Soviet spy, Alger Hiss (which inspired the Left to work tirelessly thereafter to bring about Nixon’s destruction), while Kennedy (“Ich bin ein Berliner”) was an unequivocal supporter of West Germany against Soviet imperialism, and risked nuclear war when he faced down the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (Due to the statute of limitations, Nixon could not prosecute Hiss for treason or espionage.) On the negative side of the ledger, Kennedy betrayed the exiled Cuban anti-communists who carried out the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba by withholding promised air support, thus turning the invasion into a fiasco.Domestically, at least in fiscal matters, Kennedy was considerably to the right of Nixon. Early in Kennedy’s administration, he signed off on what was then the biggest tax cut ever which set the economy on fire. In light of Kennedy’s fiscal conservatism and belief in self-reliance (“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”), it is highly unlikely that he would have signed off on a program for massive federal welfare programs. The War on Poverty was the idea of Lyndon Johnson, who exploited the nation’s mourning for JFK to ram his programs through Congress.By contrast, Nixon introduced price-and-wage controls, a move that was far to the left economically of the Democratic Party, even after Kennedy. And it was Nixon, the hated “racist,” not Kennedy or even Johnson, who institutionalized affirmative action. Note that over 30 percent of blacks voted for Nixon for president, over three times as high a proportion as ever would vote for George W. Bush for president.For over thirty years, leftist Democrats have sought to tar and feather Nixon as a “racist” for his “Southern Strategy” of appealing to Southern whites with promises of “law and order.” The presuppositions of the leftist critics are: 1. A non-leftist may not campaign for the votes of groups that may potentially vote for him, but rather must hopelessly chase after the votes of people who will never vote for him, thereby guaranteeing his defeat; and 2. Because the explosion in crime was primarily the fault of blacks, no politician may ever campaign on behalf of “law and order” (in other words, see #1).Since leftists have long controlled the media and academia, no successful counter-movement has ever been waged against the Democrat Northern Strategy that continues to this day inflaming and relying on racist blacks for their violence and their votes.If anything, Nixon was a stronger supporter of “civil rights” than Kennedy. When Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested during the 1960 presidential campaign, Nixon wanted to call King’s parents in support but let his advisers talk him out of it. Conversely, Kennedy did not want to make the call, but let his adviser, future senator Harris Wofford, talk him into calling “Daddy” King, which resulted in Kennedy winning the black vote.In August 1963, the Poor People’s March, in which Martin Luther King Jr. would give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, was almost shut down by the Kennedy Administration without King even getting to speak.The march had been organized by A. Philip Randolph, the legendary socialist founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first successful black labor union. Randolph was planning on giving a radical leftwing speech written by Stanley Levison, a communist advisor to both Randolph and King, but as historian David Garrow tells in his biography, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, acting in his brother’s name, threatened literally to pull the plug on the demonstration were Randolph to deliver the planned speech. Randolph relented, and gave a considerably toned-down speech.There is no record, to my knowledge, of Nixon ever censoring a political speech, much less one by a civil rights leader.As for Southeast Asia, Kennedy got us inextricably involved in the War in Vietnam; Nixon got us out.Kennedy repeatedly jeopardized national security, both as a naval intelligence officer during World War II, and while President, due to his obsessive womanizing. By contrast, even Nixon’s sworn enemies have failed to find any evidence of his cheating on his beloved wife, Pat.And as for the two men’s intellectual status, Nixon was clearly superior. The notion of Kennedy as an intellectual was the product of a PR campaign engineered and financed by the future president’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. The elder Kennedy got his son’s undistinguished, pro-appeasement (echoing the elder Kennedy, who was a Nazi sympathizer) Harvard senior thesis, Why England Slept, published as a book, after having it rewritten by erstwhile family retainer, New York Times columnist Arthur Krock; later, the book Profiles in Courage was ghostwritten for JFK by another family retainer, Theodore Sorensen, in order to give the young senator the “gravitas” necessary for a run at the White House. Working on behalf of JFK and Joe Kennedy, Arthur Krock campaigned relentlessly with members of the Pulitzer Prize board, and succeeded in gaining JFK the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, yet another fraudulent Pulitzer that has never been rescinded.(Shortly after Kennedy was elected president, he would stab Krock in the back, using future Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee as his tool of choice.)Liberal Kennedy-biographer Richard Reeves (obviously not a Kennedy family retainer) has reported that both of JFK’s books were “knockoffs” of works by Winston Churchill, and plagiarized Churchill.And yet, in my childhood, children of all ages were taught in so many words, that Kennedy was a god-genius, and we learned to worship everything about him.About forty years ago, when I was in second or third grade, my mom bought me a paperback copy of Profiles in Courage through the Scholastic Book Service. I read at least one of the eight profiles, but all I recall is that at one point, the author wrote a paragraph that wound on for over one full page. Since the author was supposedly JFK, and everyone knew that JFK was a genius, that meant (at least it did to my young mind) that writing endless paragraphs was a sign of genius.And in 1977, when I took my first philosophy course, at Sullivan County Community College in the Catskills, my professor, Richard Magagna, bragged that he had the same talent for reading incredibly rapidly by scanning left and right while plowing down the middle of the page that JFK had had. Well, perhaps Magagna had that talent, but I doubt that Kennedy did. More than likely, it was yet another JFK-as-genius myth. After all, had Kennedy been so brilliant, he never would have written or approved his inept, never-ending paragraphs.Richard Nixon, on the other hand, really did write a series of important books on politics. But although Nixon was a true Renaissance man, he was a Republican, and so while the Kennedy hagiography of the press, Hollywood, and academia would slavishly promote the myth of Kennedy as Renaissance man, in the same parties’ corresponding demonography of Nixon, the last thing they were going to do was to give Nixon due credit for his very real intellectual accomplishments.Meanwhile, in a dissenting voice from the left, in former conservative Garry Wills’ 1982 JFK book, The Kennedy Imprisonment - A Meditation On Power, Wills depicts Kennedy as a ruthless, pathologically lying sociopath.So, where does that leave us? Must we choose between the fictional but pervasive image of JFK as saint-genius and Wills’ version of him as Devil? If we jettison our illusions about the political leaders we support being compassionate, kindly, fatherly (or insert your romanticized cliché of choice) types, and admit that the ruthless, pathologically lying sociopath has been a frequent Oval Office type, that still does not free us from the obligation of weighing the virtues of this sociopath against that one.While it is ludicrous to speak of a man who – through no fault of his own – inhabited the office for only two years and ten months as a “great president,” John F. Kennedy had his moments. He gave us a tax cut of historic dimensions, faced down the Soviets, founded the Peace Corps, and started the race to the moon that culminated in 1969 with Neil Armstrong’s world historical walk. And that ain’t chopped liver.

Election: GOP's 50-Year Reich Collapses

Nicholas Stix — Wed, 8 Nov 2006 08:51:53 EST

Geniuses George W. Bush and Karl Rove had the attitude that their Republican and conservative base (aka "the suckers") had no choice but to vote GOP. Such arrogance resulted in Bush and Rove having a rude, 1994-style awakening.Immediately after the 2004 election, many Republicans smugly predicted that the GOP would rule -- as in, both houses of Congress and the White House -- for fifty years. Well, this must be the year 2054, because it's over. Republicans were crushed in House races, losing at least 23 seats, and even in the Senate, where although the dust has not yet settled, it looks as though the Democrats may also win the Senate.Everything worked for the Democrats: gay baiting, in the case of Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), and race baiting in the case of Sen. George Allen (R-VA), the Jewish junior senator from Virginia. (Don't accuse me of Jew-baiting - he's one of my people!)When Democrat congressmen sleep with under aged pages, they respond by showing contempt to Congress, running for re-election, and winning, but when a Republican congressman sends "salacious correspondence" to pages, he not only must resign, but be the target of a criminal investigation.If only Foley had been a socialist, he'd have been celebrated by the media and the Democrats, or at least given a pass. (After all, when a Democrat accuses you of lusting after young boys, he's complimenting you, the way tenured gay academics speak fondly of the late Aaron Copland's lecherous ways.) As for racism, were Democrats held to the same standards, there wouldn't be a Congressional Black Caucus. (I'm sorry, but there is just no clean way to talk about such garbage.)The wrong conclusions are almost guaranteed to be drawn from this election. The media are not yet talking about the President's base, which stayed home. I've been saying for months that George W. Bush holds his Christian Evangelical base in contempt. (May 28: "And to sweeten the pot for his social and religious conservative base (or as Karl Rove would call it, 'the suckers'), he will propose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage."One month before the election, the Evangelical advisor who was one of the people who had initially run the White House's faith-based initiative, came out with a book in which he told of White House aides rolling their eyes about Evangelicals, and speaking derisively of prominent Evangelical leaders as "nuts."I guess "the suckers" didn't fall for GOP campaign posturing on gay marriage, and its supposed toughness on terrorism. So, who're the suckers?!I guess that fiscally conservative Republicans and libertarians also found an alternative (i.e., staying home) to voting for a cut-taxes-and-spend GOP.The media and other politicians are going to see this election purely as a referendum on the war, while ignoring the President's Open Borders policy. As Fox News' Shepherd Smith observed late Tuesday night, once the carnage was unmistakable, "There has never been a civilization in history that has survived that hasn't controlled its own borders."Smith also quipped, regarding the close Virginia senate race, in which conservative Democrat former Navy Secretary James Webb currently (2 a.m., Wednesday morning) leads neoconservative Republican Sen. George Allen by 5,700 votes, "Virginia is for Lawyers." "There will be a recount, and then there will be lawyers."As far as the war is concerned, will any of our best and brightest rethink their approach to warfare? Don't hold your breath. If our leaders continue to construe "war" in such a vague, open-ended, utopian fashion ("nation-building," "exporting democracy," etc.), then no matter how many battlefield victories our side achieves, they will keep expanding the mission until we are defeated.And if we fight "multicultural" wars, in which the rules of engagement are perverted, and our troops require the permission of lawyers (female, natch), before they may fire on a terrorist leader; and our soldiers and Marines must stand by and watch while the streets erupt in chaos and looting, so that the media will not show white American men killing Arabs; if the enemy is permitted to turn mosques into ammo dumps, troop depots, and embattlements, while our boys are handcuffed from fighting accordingly; and if we are not so much as permitted to name the enemy, or to even name our operations as we see fit, because it might offend the enemy, then we might as well all bend over for the Religion of Terror right now, because America will never win another war under such terms.Yet another mistake was in claiming that all people, everywhere, want the same things we do (peace and democracy). Arabs will die before they'll accept peace, and they will vote, if necessary, to end democracy.There was a realpolitik case to be made for war in Iraq, and I made it in early 2003. But I never supported a multicultural, humanitarian war.Many conservative and Republican voters stayed home over immigration. While I can't say how many did, it was enough to tip Congress over to the Democrats. The two geniuses, George W. Bush and Karl Rove, can take credit for that, though I doubt they will.Far from ruling for 50 years, if an amnesty -- "wearing such deliberate disguises" -- goes through, the GOP may never control Congress again. However, that would suit George W. Bush, busily at work abolishing America in favor of a North American Union, just fine.

Terrell Owens: Just Selfish, Or Bipolar?

Nicholas Stix — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:04:32 EDT

After all-pro Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens’ reported suicide attempt Tuesday night, don’t be surprised if we hear of a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (aka manic-depression) in his case. Owens has long been known to be a maniac; indeed, he has gotten much more press over the years for his obsessively attention-seeking acting out than he has for his spectacular receptions and runs after catches. Some lowlights follow; many more have been catalogued by James Alder, and some videos that would embarrass a sensible person may even be seen at Owens’ own official Web site.There was the time in 2000, in a game in Dallas when Owens played for the San Francisco 49ers, when after scoring a touchdown, he ran to the middle of the field, to dramatically place the football, in order to insult and humiliate the Cowboys’ players and fans (and embarrass his own team). And then he scored again, and repeated his performance.In 2002, there was the notorious “Sharpie” incident, when Owens tucked a Sharpies pen into his sock, which he whipped out in the end zone upon scoring a touchdown to sign the ball, which he then handed to his financial advisor, who by the way, was “sitting in an end zone luxury suite rented by Shawn Springs, the cornerback he had just beaten on the scoring play.”In November 2004, ABC used Monday Night Football to plug its steamy Sunday night show, Desperate Housewives, by airing a spot just before the game in which gorgeous blonde Desperate Housewives co-star Nicolette Sheridan, appeared in the Philadelphia Eagles’ locker room, wearing only a towel, and seduced Owens, who was wearing his Philadelphia Eagles uniform. The spot ended with Sheridan doffing her towel and jumping into the arms of Owens, who said that the team would just have to do without him.After the spot caused outrage among viewers, ABC halfheartedly apologized for it two days later, but the apology, like the stunt, cost it nothing. Viewers were outraged and Owens’ team was unhappy, but the network had gotten the buzz it sought.Notwithstanding Owens’ heroic performance playing on a badly injured ankle and leg in a losing struggle in the 2005 Super Bowl, he has often put his ego before NFL rules, and even before the good of his team of the moment.In 2001, after Owens' screw-up caused his team, the 49ers, to lose to the Chicago Bears, Owens criticized his coach, Steve Mariucci.In 2004, Owens sought free agency, but his agent missed the free agency deadline, yet Owens insisted that the rules be waived in his case, and that he be permitted to sign with the Philadelphia Eagles. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue indulged him.As James Alder wrote, “Because they retained his rights, the 49ers then traded him to the Baltimore Ravens, but Owens refused to report to his new team. He expressed his desire to play in Philadelphia, and filed a grievance, claiming he should be granted free agency. After a series of negotiations, a deal was worked out between the three teams which sent Owens to Philadelphia where he signed a seven-year, $49 million deal against the advice of the players’ union.”Prior to the 2005 season -- i.e., after only one season in Philadelphia -- Owens demanded that the Eagles renegotiate his contract and increase his $7.5 million salary. During summer camp that year, Owens engaged in bizarre behavior, refusing to speak to teammates or the media. But when he was suspended for one week by head coach Andy Reid, Owens, while purportedly snubbing reporters, did “crunches” in front of his house before an audience of reporters and cameramen.Halfway through that season, Owens publicly insulted his team’s Pro Bowl/Super Bowl quarterback, Donovan McNabb, saying that the team would have been more successful with Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. There was a racial subtext to the insult, because Favre is white and McNabb (like Owens) is black, a subtext that McNabb made explicit, when he complained about Owens comparing him unfavorably to a white, as opposed to a black quarterback. (Note that while McNabb was then in his prime, the once-dominant Favre was over the hill.)Owens was ordered by Coach Reid to publicly apologize, both to the team and to McNabb. Owens apologized only to the team. Reid responded by again suspending Owens, initially for one week, then for four weeks, which effectively was for the balance of the season, since Reid then announced that Owens would no longer play for the Eagles.Owens’ history of bizarre, narcissistic, and disruptive behavior also includes throwing numerous tantrums on the sidelines during games, which in the pre-Owens NFL were grounds for permanent benching.While psychiatry cannot credibly excuse Terrell Owens’ character defects, the reported suicide attempt throws his manic behavior in a new light. Thus, the possibility obtains that Owens’ doctors may suggest to him that he try out a regime of lithium, the standard treatment for leveling out bipolar disorder’s violent yins and yangs.I have a talented but irresponsible cousin who I’ll call “Geoffrey,” who got committed to psycho wards for nervous breakdowns over forty times in about twenty years (between the time he was roughly 15 and 35). Then he was put on lithium, and managed to remain a free man for a few years. Since I haven’t heard from or about Geoffrey in twenty years, I don’t know if he continued taking his meds -- or staying off the weed he so loved -- or if they continued helping him, but he was reasonably sane for a while.Then there was the time during the last summer I spent on Martha’s Vineyard, in 1986, that I saw Geoffrey sitting in an Edgartown saloon called “The Café” (pronounced "kayf") over a plate of nachos and melted cheese. I sat down at the table with him, and he looked up at me and asked, “Do I know you?”This was just nine months after we had spent a day hanging out together in New York. I still don’t know if Geoffrey was spaced out on the lithium or the pot.If I hear of Terrell Owens getting put on lithium, and then one day, in a state of honest bafflement, looking at his head coach and asking him, “Do I know you?,” I guess I’ll have my answer.

Seven at New Orleans Times-Picayune Win Duranty-Blair Prize

Nicholas Stix — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:31:53 EDT

New Orleans Times-Picayune reporters Brian Thevenot, Gordon Russell, Jeff Duncan and Gwen Filosa; managing editors, news, Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea; and editor Jim Amoss, are the newest winners of the Duranty-Blair Prize for Journalistic Infamy, for their September 26, 2005 attempt to “untell” the story of the savage violence that befell New Orleans just before and after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29 of last year.The previous Duranty-Blair winner was former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, who engineered what became known as the “Memogate” (aka Rathergate) hoax, shortly before the 2004 election, in an effort to swing the election toward Democrat presidential challenger, Sen. John Kerry (MA).The Duranty-Blair Award is this author's creation, named for two of the most notorious scoundrels in the history of American journalism, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair, both of whom were New York Times reporters. On April 17, the Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for a September 26, 2005 story that had immediately been discredited by the bloggers “ziel” of Your Lying Eyes and Eric Scheie at Classical Values.Thanks primarily to the new Duranty-Blair winners, one year and three weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall the general public knows much less about what happened in New Orleans than it did a year ago.The two most influential stories on post-Katrina New Orleans were both published by the Times-Picayune, the city’s only major newspaper, on September 6 and September 26, 2005, respectively. For brevity’s sake, hereafter I will refer simply to “9/6” and “9/26,” respectively.When 9/6 was published, telling tales of bone-chilling savagery, it immediately became part of the worldwide, 24/7, mainstream media (MSM) echo chamber. Twenty days later, 9/26 thoroughly contradicted and sought to discredit 9/6, painting a picture of New Orleans as racked with looters, desperation, and contaminated floodwaters, yet free of violence. The 9/26 story never cited 9/6, much less noted that 9/6 had been published by the same newspaper, and that one of the 9/26 reporters, Brian Thevenot, had been the sole author of 9/6. The 9/26 story immediately became part of the worldwide, 24/7 MSM echo chamber with no MSM personalities questioning the veracity of 9/26, mentioning the discrepancies between the two stories, or the fact that both stories were published by the same newspaper. Whereas the politically unpalatable 9/6 story was sent down the memory hole, the politically acceptable 9/26 story has been promoted ever since by the MSM. Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling.In 9/6, entitled, “Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives; Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center,” Times-Picayune reporter Brian Thevenot wrote of visiting a room at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center which held four corpses covered in sheets, and of the National Guardsmen, a combat veteran from the War in Iraq who accompanied him and who was left “shell-shocked” by what he saw. “[Mikel] Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. ‘It's not on, but at least you can shut the door,’ said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.”Thevenot also quoted Brooks as saying that there was “a 7-year-old with her throat cut" in the freezer. “He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor. ‘There's an old woman,’ he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. ‘I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death,’ he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair….”In a featured article by Brian Thevenot in the October/November 2005 American Journalism Review, “Apocalypse in New Orleans,” he repeated his most dramatic stories.In 9/6, the only story Thevenot related from National Guardsmen which was not based on claims of first-hand knowledge, was the following: “One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5-years old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was gang-raped.”Note that the Guardsmen were quite sure that, as with the seven-year-old, they had the five-year-old’s corpse.Realizing after 9/6 that they had violated the taboo against presenting black folks behaving badly, especially after blacks across the country had voiced outrage at the media for referring to black looters as, um, “looters,” (and for even referring to black refugees as “refugees”) and/or because Times-Picayune editors and staffers remembered, ‘Hey, we’ve got to live here,’ the newspaper reversed course, and “untold” the huge story it had broken.Unlike Superman, however, the folks at the Times-Picayune could not reverse time by flying against the Earth’s axis more rapidly than the speed of light, so they had to be more creative.In case the reader has come to believe that 9/6 was indeed a phony story and thus would tend to believe a story contradicting it, I ask him to keep in mind the following points: Thevenot and the Times-Picayune did not retract or correct 9/6; and as I will demonstrate in this series, through the work of many journalists, including some at the Times-Picayune, 9/26 was itself a fraudulent story.Discredited from the Get-GoIn 9/26, entitled “Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated; Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated; 6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center,” Times–Picayune reporters Brian Thevenot, Gordon Russell, Jeff Duncan and Gwen Filosa, claimed to have followed up on and disproved the most dramatic stories, including 9/6.The initial criticisms made against Thevenot & Co. included:1. That following 9/6, but prior to 9/26, the 9/6 story’s most dramatic charges “of dead children in the Convention Center” had been denounced by police Superintendent Eddie Compass as “vicious rumors,” but the Times-Picayune had never printed a correction (Bonnie Wren);2. The charge that the 9/26 claim that rumors” and “exaggerations” had asserted that there were over 200 corpses at the Superdome, was a straw man argument intended, by counterposing it to extremely low “true” body counts, to discredit all stories of post-Katrina mayhem ("ziel" at Your Lying Eyes); and3. The 9/26 charges that the most dramatic stories about the Convention Center were “exaggerations” and rumor-mongering would mean that Thevenot and the Times-Picayune had been guilty of “exaggerations” and rumor-mongering (Eric Scheie).Regarding the second criticism, it is only in Thevenot’s solo December/January AJR article, in which he claimed to be debunking claims of 300 corpses warehoused at one school, that he cited one specific media report, a September 5, 2005 article in London’s Financial Times, that he said spoke of masses of corpses warehoused in a school in St. Bernard Parish. I do not recall hearing or reading echoes of the Financial Times article at the time.As for the second and third criticisms, respectively, on September 26, in “Who’s Complaining About Exaggerations?,” Scheie scratched his head, in response to 9/26 and Thevenot, since Thevenot was “condemning” bad reporting, while “By implication, he's now saying that his own story, which I was unfortunate enough to link before in the assumption that it was accurate, was either lying or exaggerated…and completely failing to point out that his own story played a key role.”The Four Faces of BrianLet me sum up the World According to Thevenot (and Co., in the case of 9/26).1. In 9/6: Every atrocity in the book occurred in the convention center;(Ditto, in the October/November AJR article, which Thevenot surely wrote prior to 9/26);2. In 9/26, Thevenot, Russell, Duncan and Filosa claimed that “rumors” were responsible for the beliefs worldwide about savagery in post-Katrina New Orleans, and strongly suggested that there was in fact no savagery at all, and no firing on rescue workers and other helpers (soldiers, doctors, contractors seeking to repair the breaches, et al.) at the Convention Center, Superdome, or anywhere else in post-Katrina New Orleans. Indeed, they cited Orleans Parish (known elsewhere as New Orleans) DA Eddie Jordan as saying that “authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week …”And based on the 9/26 quote of Louisiana National Guard Maj. David Baldwin, who insisted that despite 30,000 desperate people, a substantial proportion of whom would have been criminals, being stuck for five days without food, water, toilets or electricity in the Superdome, only one gunshot was fired the whole time, we would have to conclude that the Superdome was the safest place in American’s most violent city.But what about the Convention Center?According to 9/26, in spite of 20,000 people being stuck for five days in the Convention Center in even worse conditions (e.g., no security) than in the Superdome, a detachment of 1,000 soldiers and police led by Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux later “found no evidence, witnesses or victims of any killings, rapes or beatings.”The 9/26 team also reported NOPD SWAT team leader Capt. Jeff Winn’s claim that in spite of “aggressively frisking” suspects in the Convention Center, his officers did not find a single weapon.If Col. Thibodeaux and Capt. Winn are to be believed, in the days immediately following Katrinathe Convention Center was the safest place in America.When the Superdome and Convention Center refugees were sent to other cities, and local officials did criminal background checks on them, the officials found that up to 54.7 percent of the refugees, including men and women, had criminal records. When other cities requested help from the Department of Homeland Security with criminal background checks of refugees, DHS refused, presumably anticipating embarrassing results.Nowhere does the 9/26 team admit to having caused the “rumored” beliefs in question.3. On October 3, Thevenot apparently lied to Eric Scheie, in asserting that Thevenot had retracted 9/6;4. In Thevenot’s December/January AJR article, he asserted that 9/26 was a “correction” of 9/6, and again argued that in spite of massive looting, New Orleans was not plagued by violence in Katrina’s wake. That would have been a first in human history.* * *The first law of lying is plausibility.In a rare positive aspect of 9/26, the reporters did suggest that low official estimates of post-Katrina rapes may not have been accurate.“Corrections” and “retractions” are formal acts undertaken by newspapers when they have been shown to have botched a story. They are typically brief, appear on page two in the paper version, and are typically added to the Web version of the original story online. In extreme cases, an editor will assign a different reporter to redo the original story, from scratch, in a story that will be billed as a correction. In the latter case, as occurred in July 2003, when New York Times reporter Lynette Holloway dramatically botched a music business story with huge financial and legal implications, the newspaper will also fire the reporter who screwed up or, as in Holloway’s case, permit her to resign. In the most dramatic case, in May 2003, in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabrication/plagiarism scandal, the Times published a 14,000+-word correction.In Thevenot’s December-January AJR story, he attacked Eric Scheie and other bloggers who made valid criticisms of him, while refusing to name them -- so that readers could not check out the criticisms for themselves -- and without giving the context for their criticisms: “Some branded me a hypocrite for writing about myth-making after I'd earlier reported one of the myths, the ‘30 or 40’ bodies.”Instead, the only Internet critic Thevenot named was ChronWatch’s Lester Dent, whose criticism Thevenot was, so he says, able to refute. In the meantime, Lester Dent seems to have vanished.On October 1, Eric Scheie of Classical Values reported receiving an e-mail from Thevenot, in which the latter complained, “Did you somehow miss the portion of the follow-up story in which I debunked my own myth about the 40 bodies in the freezer? Did you not bother to read the whole story? I admitted my own mistake, under my own byline, and in again in interviews with news stations and newspapers that interviewed me about myths at the Dome and Convention Center. And now you purport to expose me after I exposed myself?”Thevenot was referring to 9/26, but nowhere in that story had he admitted his mistake. And while in his second AJR story, two months after having written to Scheie, Thevenot did confess to having spread the “myth about the 40 bodies in the freezer,” even there he did not claim to have made said confession in his media interviews. Indeed, had he done so, his celebrity likely would have vanished. He was being interviewed for having busted a “myth,” not for having foisted one on the public, and then “corrected” it.While millions of civilians heard of or read 9/6 and/or 9/26, the second AJR story was primarily read by a few thousand leftwing journalism professors not known for their diligence or intellectual integrity.Is it possible that some exaggerated statements were made about specific acts of violence in the Superdome or the Convention Center? Anything’s possible. But jumping from one bandwagon to another is not good for one’s ankles, especially when one has no good reason for jumping, and the person prodding one to jump has been exposed as a serial liar.

The Tears of Pedro Martinez

Nicholas Stix — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:24:24 EDT

When New York Mets ace Pedro Martinez came out of last night's game in Pittsburgh after only three ineffective innings and 68 pitches, and with his team losing 4-0, he sat down at the end of the dugout bench and held his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking."Is he crying?" blurted out Mets announcer Keith Hernandez. Then, thinking better of it, Hernandez went silent.It has been a rough season for the future Hall of Famer. The 34-year-old righthander was sidelined for much of spring training with a toe injury. Due to a strained right calf, he hadn't started a game since August 14. And earlier, due to a freak hip injury, he had missed a month wrapped around the All-Star break. Thus his record was only 9-5 coming into last night's game, in which the Mets had the opportunity to clinch the NL East Division title with a win or a Philadelphia loss.But then, as a young player in the early 1990s' Dodgers organization, Martinez' frail little body (5'10" and maybe 160 lbs.) was considered inadequate to the rigors of being a big league starting pitcher -- which it was -- and thus the Dodgers used him as reliever, before unloading him to the Montreal Expos. You might say that Pedro Martinez has been defying nature ever since.The hip injury came during a game in which Martinez donned a long sleeve shirt under his jersey. The home plate umpire decided the shirt was too long, and ordered Martinez to go into the clubhouse and cut the sleeves. While following the ump's orders, Martinez slipped on the clubhouse floor. Thereafter, he pitched a few ineffective starts, before being sat down, and getting treatment for the hip.Note that "freak" injuries and aging pitchers (see also: aging quarterbacks) go together. And Pedro is an old 34. In other words, those "freak" injuries aren't freaky, but rather signs of a body that is breaking down after over 2600 innings on the mound. After the game, Mets announcer Gary Cohen observed, "It's been one thing after another this year for Pedro: The toe, the hip, the calf."One of the Mets announcers had just observed that Martinez had "the weight of the franchise on his shoulders." Mets skipper Willie Randolph had just announced that Martinez would be the Game 1 starter in the playoffs.After watching the scene on the bench, Gary Cohen asked if Martinez was just unhappy with his performance. His partner, Keith Hernandez, responded, "Unhappy with your performance to the point of tears? You're a professional. Rome wasn't built in a day."Later in the game, Mets reporter Chris Cotter informed fans, "He just reached his pitch count ... some pretty high-level sources said there was no indication" that the calf strain had been aggravated. [A pitch count of 68? Gimme a break, Chris.]After the game, which the Mets lost, 5-3, for Martinez' sixth loss, SportsNet NY again showed the image after Martinez came out of the game, of Mets skipper Willie Randolph with his arm around his shoulder, talking to him, and patting him on the back, followed by Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson. Then the two men left Martinez, and the shoulder-shaking began. [In SNY's sports round-up following the postgame show, that part of the tape was cut; viewers only saw Martinez heading for the showers.]After the game, Keith Hernandez opined, "If it's just from a bad game, it's an overreaction ...," while Gary Cohen observed, "It's unusual to see elite athletes react in this way."After the game, speaking from SNY's Manhattan studio, postgame show host Matt Yaloff said, "The champagne is on ice, as is Pedro Martinez' right calf."So much for those "high-level sources." (As Ron Darling would later note, "The Mets play everything close to the vest.")Continuing, Yaloff recalled that we'd seen Pedro get creamed before, and even lose in the playoffs. "We've never seen THAT."Yaloff cautioned Mets fans against becoming hysterical, although as both hosts observed, the team's postseason chances depend to a large degree on Martinez' health.Yaloff's studio co-host, former Mets pitching great Ron Darling, said of Martinez, "Seeing that scene in the dugout lets me know that he is not in the place he wants to be on September 15.""He's the only guy in the Mets rotation that has a cape, like Superman, when he's good. Tonight, he wasn't."Yaloff spoke to the irony of the Mets being one game away from clinching the divisional championship, while the player who had turned around the franchise in two short years was "hanging his head" in the Mets dugout.In Mets manager Willie Randolph's routine post-game meeting with the press, Randolph repeated the company line: "He's fine."When asked if Martinez would be making his next start, Randolph said, "Yes, he is." Randolph responded to a rephrased version of the same question, "No, I said he's fine."Randolph also tried to deflect attention from Martinez' reaction, saying that players often become emotional in the heat of battle ("he's a warrior"), citing the recent case of Mets rookie pitcher Brian Bannister."Like I said, he's a competitor, a warrior. I see that all the time. Guys can't do anything on the bench, without it being reported."From the studio, Ron Darling reacted with, "We report that as the truth. But the fact is that he couldn't get the Pirates out over three innings ... and that's a sign -- not the sign -- that he's not ready yet." [The Pirates are the second-worst team in the league; only the Cubs are worse.]Then the show returned to Pittsburgh, where Pedro Martinez answered questions from reporters.The first question was about the condition of his calf."No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. I was just a little frustrated, and I was about to snap, and Willie [Randolph] had to ... "[Martinez would later contradict himself to a different reporter, admitting that he could not push off from the calf, and that since in pitching, everything starts with the legs, he could not command his pitches; thus did pitching at all become a risky matter.]Reporter [each following question came from a different reporter]: You've pitched badly before [unclear] -- why tonight?"Because I worked my ass off, and I didn't see the results that I was expecting. And only I know what I go through everyday, working, and I tried to get back on track, and now, you know, I [unclear] an opportunity to show my teammates and show the team that I'm going to be back, and it wasn't quite as high as I was expecting, and my physical body didn't feel quite as well as I was expecting, you know, for the time being, and the performance also was a little bit off from what I was expecting....""I was expecting to have a little better command, have better breaking balls, and have more command of my pitches, and I didn't have any of them."With only two weeks left in the regular season, a reporter asked Martinez if he is concerned as to whether he can be ready in time for the playoffs."I'll have to say I still have plenty of time to do it. It's just that when you come off so many days without throwing the ball, you want to make a statement. You know, you want to look better for your teammates. Today was a special day - is a special day for us, and I wanted to do a little bit better."Reporter: Were you actually crying?"I was about to, I was about to snap, and later on [unclear], thank God, Willie was there, and told me, 'It's going to be o.k.' I was just about to snap, ... and actually, I felt like crying at that time, out of frustration, but I kept my composure...."A reporter asked a question about players crying."You just don't see [players crying]. Normally we do it in the locker room...."Reporter: You know, a lot of people have been waiting for you to get back, a lot of Mets fans, waiting for that division, they see this game, and there's probably going to be some, "Oh, no"s. What is your response?"'Oh, no'? Well, they need to be patient, because, three innings in what, thirty days? Isn't it enough ... They'd be impertinent to ask for that. [A reporter laughs.] My first three innings, I'm trying to get back, and I'm going to be back. If they want to throw the white towel now on me? It's up to them. I'm not throwing it yet."I hope that Martinez' proud, defiant attitude pulls him through. I don't recall him weeping after either of his defeats in league championship games at the hands of the Yankees in 2003 and 2004. But an elite athlete may exhibit the "unusual" reaction of which Gary Cohen spoke, if his body betrays him in such a way as to cause him to fear that his time may be up. After all, since the 2004 postseason, Pedro Martinez has been pitching very well on little more than personal pride and a defiance of nature.

9/11 Blues

Nicholas Stix — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 09:56:02 EDT

In a quiet TV ad that has been running in the New York market, people silently show where they were on 9/11, when they heard the news. A woman sitting on her bed leans over slightly; a man stands in what looks to be an empty firehouse common room; another man on a deserted subway platform points to an empty subway car. The isolation speaks to lost loved ones and comrades not in the picture, to the aloneness of grief that has not subsided.The ad is for an organization seeking to get the stalled 9/11 memorial moving again. I don’t know anything about the organization, so I can’t say whether they’re the good guys or the bad guys in a politicized battle. I hope they’re the good guys.In any event, seeing the ad, or film clips or images from 9/11, I feel the same as I did back then.A few weeks after 9/11, some of the most powerful commercials ever made were broadcast. One of them, sponsored by Dow Jones, the stock market people, showed a few silent men in business attire standing in an office, looking into the camera. But they were not grieving. One man in particular stood out. He was a tall, broad-shouldered black man of about 40 in shirtsleeves, arms crossed, and with a grimly determined jaw. The word “strength” flashed on the screen.Another ad, by local talk radio station WABC, showed a few well-chosen words on a backdrop of red, white, and blue, with the voices of children in the background.There are some things from which you’re not supposed to “move on,” at least not in the public sense.I realize that some people who lost the love of their life that day have since fallen in love with, or even married, someone else. I am the last person to begrudge them their happiness. That’s the private sense of “moving on.” Those who were directly hit on 9/11 will never feel the same about that day as the rest of us. But if someone told me he no longer felt moved at the anniversary of 9/11, I would think him less than fully human.Not everyone feels the same.Some qualify the worst day in American history as “one of the worst days.”I can still remember getting up that morning at 10 a.m. As I wrote at the time, on the radio an announcer intoned, “The World Trade Center is under attack.”We were only able to get a snow-filled picture from the local CBS affiliate (the other broadcast channels all had had their antennas on the roof of one of the WTC towers). We saw the remaining tower, amid clouds of debris from its sister tower, which had just gone down. I figured it was all an overly dramatic version of those Emergency Broadcast System tests (“This is a test... ”). But it was no test. Three thousand dead in New York, the Pentagon, and a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania attest to that.Remembering HeroesSome positives remain from that day.A handful of heroic passengers and crew members on United Airlines Flight 93 took a stand and stopped that airliner from reaching the terrorists’ likely target, the Capitol Building. Rudy Giuliani, who himself escaped from the World Trade Center that morning by the skin of his teeth, and lost many friends there, gave a lesson for the ages in leadership and grit.(Although I have criticized Giuliani’s shortcomings much more incisively than have his ever-raging Democrat opponents, who in a handful of different ways simply express their homicidal rage over a white, heterosexual, male Republican winning election in a city with a 5-1 Democrat advantage in registered voters, seeing him speak at the fifth-year remembrance, it was as if the Mayor had just returned from a long vacation. We New Yorkers shall not see his like again.)And giants walked the earth: 343 firemen and 60 policemen, as well as “civilians” like 24-year-old Sandler O’Neil, an equities trader, and Welles Crowther, a Nyack, New York volunteer fireman, ran straight into the mouth of hell to save countless others, never to re-emerge. As Tennyson wrote in “The Charge of the Light Brigade,”When can their glory fade?O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honor the charge they made, Honor the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred. It will take a latter-day Tennyson to do justice to their sacrifice.Too Many SyllablesOur president, who seems to have lost his way, in seeking to fight wars in Moslem countries, while leaving our own nation unguarded against invasion and terrorism, has recently said that we are at war with “Islamic fascists.” Former Navy secretary and 9/11 Commission prima donna John Lehman found that phrase unsatisfactory, and in an op-ed essay that has been making the rounds via syndication, has insisted that we are at war with people who misrepresent Islam.Would Lehman resurrect “the religion of peace” motif?The Bush administration continues to muddle a national understanding of the conflict we are in by calling it the “war on terror.” This political correctness presumably seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, but it comes at high cost. This is not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes.We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. No, Mr. Secretary, we are at war with jihadis motivated by a proper interpretation of the Islamic faith. The problem isn’t “Islamism,” it’s Islam.And yet, I fear that the President’s tough talk about “Islamic fascists” is just election-year rhetoric, meant to fire up the base (i.e., “the suckers”).Bad news: Last year, the federal government made over 95,000 Arab Moslems from terrorist-supporting countries, the largest number in over 20 years, permanent lawful resident aliens. (A tip ‘o the hat to VDARE.com’s Brenda Walker.) We should instead have been ejecting them from or refusing them entry into the country.But it gets worse. On September 11, Rob Sanchez, who edits and publishes the Job Destruction Newsletter, reported that President Bush “and Saudi King Abdullah brokered a deal to fast track thousands of Saudi students into the USA. You probably don't need to be reminded where the 9/11 terrorists came from or of the fact that most of them used student visas. If there is any doubt about whether Bush is insane, this ought to erase them.”As reported by the Associated Press, in “US Schools Compete for Thousands of Saudi Students,”The program will quintuple the number of Saudi students and scholars here by the academic year's end. And big, public universities from Florida to the Kansas plains are in a fierce competition for their tuition dollars. The anonymous AP reporter continues, without irony, “The kingdom's royal family — which is paying full scholarships for most of the 15,000 students — says the program will help stem unrest at home by schooling the country's brightest in the American tradition. The U.S. State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim world.”In Saudi, “unrest at home” typically means Al Qaeda. The “program will help stem unrest at home” by exporting it here. The Western-schooled Moslem terrorist has become so common as to be a cliché. I wish I could say the AP article was dated September 9, 2001, but it was in fact published on Saturday.On top of the President’s embrace of Arab Moslems, articulate Jew-haters (with whom I am in bed politically on immigration – arrrrgh!) are promoting the 9/11 blood libel, according to which not jihadis, but Jews did it! (The most exhaustive study of the 9/11 blood libel was undertaken by Richard Shand.)Remembering Cowards and TraitorsAnd treason never seems to go out of fashion. New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is reportedly bragging, in a new New York magazine story, about how he stood up to President Bush’s pressure not to compromise the National Security Agency program eavesdropping on the cell phone calls of domestic Al Qaeda supporters. The compromising of that program won the paper, in the person of Timesman James Risen, yet another dubious Pulitzer Prize.One could easily yearn for the sort of national unity of purpose immediately following 9/11, for a contemporary “moral equivalent of war,” notwithstanding that – as millions seem to have forgotten – we are still at war! But then one recalls that less than three weeks after 9/11, already unity was lacking.Talking of an impending “quagmire” in Afghanistan (yes, Afghanistan!), the New York Times tried to sandbag America out of striking back against Al Qaeda. Now that real torture, administered exclusively by Arabs, has returned to the daily routine at Abu Ghraib prison, the disloyal newspaper that used exaggeration to fabricate a “torture scandal” at the same prison, in order to hamstring the war effort, has fallen silent.Immediately following 9/11, the socialist/communist Left insisted that we not exact “revenge” against those who had attacked us. Eventually, they called on our troops to shoot their own officers. When pro-Japanese traitors such as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad sought to undermine the war effort following Pearl Harbor, they were jailed for the duration for sedition.And in late September 2001, the Rev. Al Sharpton spoke for millions of frustrated blacks who were outraged over and jealous of the seemingly indomitable Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s pre- and post-9/11 triumphs, in spite of Sharpton’s earlier threats to do to the city what Al Qaeda ultimately did do.We elected you mayor, not Messiah. You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. Decency, indeed, Rev. Al. And who is “we”?And there was no lack of stupid Democrat tricks, like former counter-terrorism czar Dick Clarke writing a thoroughly dishonest book about 9/11, in order to try and help the Democrats win the 2004 election, or Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger getting caught stuffing classified, pre-9/11 national security documents in his underwear at the National Archives, after he had already stolen and destroyed other essential documents, in an attempt to protect his old chief from the judgment of history for the latter’s lapses against Islamic terror.You can’t even count on war anymore for national unity.In remembering 9/11, we must not forget the heroes... or the heels.