History has power, whether it’s factual or in a distorted form. It can be a positive force or a negative one. Those who distort history seek power as shown in two recent examples: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust never happened. The late Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat claimed there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon or by Herod. Many Muslims are taught this kind of history across the Middle East and believe it. Consequently, they see Israelis as evil invaders with no right to exist. For them, such distortions justify “wiping Israel off the map” as Ahmadinejad and Arab leaders threaten. Palestinians have already done so literally - the maps used by Palestinian schoolchildren do not depict the state of Israel - only Palestine. In these two cases, rewriting history would seem preliminary to perpetrating a second Holocaust.
Israel exists today because one of the first acts of the newly-created United Nations was to recognize Israel as a country in 1948. The western world felt pity for Jews because of what Nazis did to them. An ancient people, Jews had lived in what is now Israel for more than a thousand years before being dispersed around the world in the Great Diaspora after rebelling against the Roman Empire. It was Rome that destroyed the second Temple built by King Herod. Although a small number of Jews remained in the Holy Land after the Diaspora, most endured as residents of other countries - where they suffered countless persecutions for two more millennia. Some Jews became Zionists around the beginning of the 20th century and returned to their ancestral homeland in relatively small numbers. After World War II this trickle became a flood and the new Israel became a reality.
Dore Gold was Israel’s UN Ambassador from 1997-99. In an interview about his recent book, “The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City” he said, “I felt it was necessary to respond to the charges that Yassir Arafat made at the end of the Camp David summit in July 2000 that denied the core of our Judeo-Christian heritage. As you might remember he tried to assert that there never had been a Temple in Jerusalem. But what he essentially did was to throw a stone of historical lies into a lake and its ripples spread all over the Middle East.”
If Palestinian Arabs can be convinced that the Nation of Israel was foisted upon them out the blue by western countries acting through the United Nations, they can be convinced that their suicide-bomber sons who kill Israelis are heroes who will enjoy their virgins in Paradise. If other Arab Muslims can be convinced that their socioeconomic backwardness is a result of historical western oppression, recruitment of suicide-bombers and other terrorists to kill Jews and Americans will be much easier. That’s power gained through both selective history and distorted interpretations of history.
Soviet schoolchildren were taught that Russians invented the light bulb, the radio, the television, and many other things actually invented in the west. Soviet citizens grew up believing communism wonderful, capitalism evil, and that communism would eventually spread over the whole world. Thus they were willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to accomplish it. That’s power gained in the same way - distorting history.
Other people selectively interpret history to justify their inertia in the present. Some of my Irish ancestors were accustomed to blaming British oppression for whatever miserable circumstances in which they found themselves. The British certainly did oppress the Irish for centuries, but even though Britain’s domination had been over for generations, many Irish held on to it as an excuse for their largely self-induced misery.
Once I wrote a column urging Mainers to vote “No” on a referendum question that would have allowed Indians to open casinos in this state as they have in so many others. I questioned the status of Indians as citizens with different rights other Americans and whether that was justified. In that context I acknowledged that many Indian tribes suffered savage oppression at the hands of some European countries. However, I also pointed out that many Indian tribes had perpetrated similarly savage oppression against one another before the Spanish, French, English or Portuguese ever arrived in the Americas. Europeans had treated each other savagely at various times also and nobody has a monopoly on suffering. History shows us that very few escape.
Citing such politically incorrect aspects of history stirred up a hornet’s nest as Indians from around the country flooded my principal, my superintendent, my school board, and my state teacher certification office with angry letters, phone calls and emails declaring me unfit to teach. Clearly, a lot of Indians cherished their victim status even more than the Irish did, and they weren’t going to tolerate alternative viewpoints from this columnist. I even got a telephoned death threat.
History has power however it’s used, and pointing out its misuse as I did can be a very unpopular - even risky - undertaking. Still, it must be done. Now, about those "Bones of Jesus," . . .
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Middle School Shuffle
They shuffle along, their heels dragging with each step, making a statement. It says to those who watch and listen that they don’t care much where they’re going and they’re not in a hurry to get there either. They re-laced their sneakers, not in the typical crisscross pattern you see out of the box, but in a horizontal, parallel pattern. After putting the sneakers on, they don’t pull the laces tight. The result is loose-fitting footwear, the heel of which thumps the floor as they walk - the middle school shuffle. Those who consider themselves coolest do it, but if patterns of past fads hold, soon nearly all will.
It’s another way for an adolescent to attract attention that can be seen and heard. It’s a display of purposeful slovenliness or studied carelessness, and it’s arriving just as the low-riding pants with exposed boxers craze is fading away. It is similar, however. Practitioners of either fad take great pains to appear as if they don’t care how they look - as though they can’t be bothered to pull up their pants or tie their sneakers - as if such mundane considerations are beneath them. Thankfully though, the shufflers who try very hard to appear lazy are not all lazy students. Some are, but the fad crosses the entire spectrum from lazy to diligent - so far at least.
Over my three decades in public education, I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go, way too many to list. Once it was friendship bracelets - a kind of miniature macramé of colored strands or strung beads tied around wrists or ankles. They were harmless and kind of nice actually, in that the bracelets were meant to proclaim a camaraderie or one kind or another. Then there were stickers - shiny and colorful and depicting almost anything. More recently, there were - I don’t know what to call them - key chain-like things hanging from numerous zippers on the backpack every student lugs around. As they walked down halls on the way to homerooms in the morning or to their busses at afternoon dismissal, there was a cacophony of key chain doodads banging into each other as they swung back and forth. It was like the shuffle in that it called attention through sight and sound.
Hairstyle changes over the decades are too numerous to chronicle here. I can’t think of anything that can be done to hair that hasn’t been on display. Piercings, too, appeared in many variations, however not so many as in the wider world, thank goodness. As a boy reading National Geographic, I was appalled by the ways people in primitive societies mutilated their bodies according to local fashions. There were pictures of people who forced wooden disks into slits cut in their lips to stretch them out so they could put in bigger and bigger disks. They attached weights to their ear lobes to stretch them down so much that eventually they flopped onto their shoulders. They stuck things through their nostrils and carved patterns into the skin of their faces, backs, abdomens, and God knows where else. All of it was bizarre to my young eyes, but practitioners stared boldly into the camera lens as if proud of how they looked. I asked my parents why anyone could choose to look that way. They laughed of course, and told me that different people had different ideas of what was attractive. I believed they were answering me truthfully but it was hard to accept. It still is.
Primitive piercings started years ago in middle school when girls made numerous holes along the edges of their ears and filled them with metal. Then some boys wore earrings. Then metal began appearing on nostrils, lips and eyebrows. Most often, a student would come in on Monday morning with something stuck in his or her face, the surrounding flesh looking puffy and red. When I had occasion to speak with the student and make eye contact, a troubled self-consciousness was obvious. I’d avoid looking directly at the wound, but there was an unspoken awareness in both of us that it was there. Not one ever asked, “How do you like my new nose ring?” and I never asked, “What they heck did you do that for?” Mutual courtesy, I guess.
Outside of school I’m seeing more bizarre body mutilations on people here in the rural western Maine mountains as our civilization regresses toward the primitive. I see the ear stretcher things and the lip stretcher things I thought were so bizarre forty years ago in National Geographic. Hopefully I’ll be retired before they start showing up on the fourteen-year-old bodies of my students. Meanwhile, I’ll tolerate the middle school shuffle as long as it lasts.
It’s another way for an adolescent to attract attention that can be seen and heard. It’s a display of purposeful slovenliness or studied carelessness, and it’s arriving just as the low-riding pants with exposed boxers craze is fading away. It is similar, however. Practitioners of either fad take great pains to appear as if they don’t care how they look - as though they can’t be bothered to pull up their pants or tie their sneakers - as if such mundane considerations are beneath them. Thankfully though, the shufflers who try very hard to appear lazy are not all lazy students. Some are, but the fad crosses the entire spectrum from lazy to diligent - so far at least.
Over my three decades in public education, I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go, way too many to list. Once it was friendship bracelets - a kind of miniature macramé of colored strands or strung beads tied around wrists or ankles. They were harmless and kind of nice actually, in that the bracelets were meant to proclaim a camaraderie or one kind or another. Then there were stickers - shiny and colorful and depicting almost anything. More recently, there were - I don’t know what to call them - key chain-like things hanging from numerous zippers on the backpack every student lugs around. As they walked down halls on the way to homerooms in the morning or to their busses at afternoon dismissal, there was a cacophony of key chain doodads banging into each other as they swung back and forth. It was like the shuffle in that it called attention through sight and sound.
Hairstyle changes over the decades are too numerous to chronicle here. I can’t think of anything that can be done to hair that hasn’t been on display. Piercings, too, appeared in many variations, however not so many as in the wider world, thank goodness. As a boy reading National Geographic, I was appalled by the ways people in primitive societies mutilated their bodies according to local fashions. There were pictures of people who forced wooden disks into slits cut in their lips to stretch them out so they could put in bigger and bigger disks. They attached weights to their ear lobes to stretch them down so much that eventually they flopped onto their shoulders. They stuck things through their nostrils and carved patterns into the skin of their faces, backs, abdomens, and God knows where else. All of it was bizarre to my young eyes, but practitioners stared boldly into the camera lens as if proud of how they looked. I asked my parents why anyone could choose to look that way. They laughed of course, and told me that different people had different ideas of what was attractive. I believed they were answering me truthfully but it was hard to accept. It still is.
Primitive piercings started years ago in middle school when girls made numerous holes along the edges of their ears and filled them with metal. Then some boys wore earrings. Then metal began appearing on nostrils, lips and eyebrows. Most often, a student would come in on Monday morning with something stuck in his or her face, the surrounding flesh looking puffy and red. When I had occasion to speak with the student and make eye contact, a troubled self-consciousness was obvious. I’d avoid looking directly at the wound, but there was an unspoken awareness in both of us that it was there. Not one ever asked, “How do you like my new nose ring?” and I never asked, “What they heck did you do that for?” Mutual courtesy, I guess.
Outside of school I’m seeing more bizarre body mutilations on people here in the rural western Maine mountains as our civilization regresses toward the primitive. I see the ear stretcher things and the lip stretcher things I thought were so bizarre forty years ago in National Geographic. Hopefully I’ll be retired before they start showing up on the fourteen-year-old bodies of my students. Meanwhile, I’ll tolerate the middle school shuffle as long as it lasts.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Endless Campaign
Presidential candidates are announcing that they’re intending to begin forming exploratory committees to determine whether they will at some future point announce. Others have announced that they definitely intend to announce soon that they’re thinking about running. Others are running - flying actually - all over the country trying to convince voters they’d make the best president. I’m getting sick of it already and the election is more than a year-and-a-half away.
“I think this whole process is stupid,” said Newt Gingrich. “Ronald Reagan announced in November, 1979. John Kennedy announced on January 2nd, 1960, and at that time it was the earliest announcement in American history. . . . This idea [of campaigning so early] . . . is a full-employment program for political consultants.”
I was in the audience two weeks ago in Washington listening to Gingrich and there were three more possible or actual candidates still to speak - Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but I didn’t fly down for that. I wanted to listen and discuss the challenging issues facing us with other thinking conservatives and it’s hard to get even a handful of such people together here in western Maine. I watched, listened and participated in intelligent debate on immigration, affirmative action, the war on radical Islam, the role of government, why conservatives lost in November, and many other subjects. I met conservatives from all over the country while eating breakfast, lunch and dinner each day.
The highlight of Mitt Romney’s speech was not Mitt Romney’s speech. It was his introduction by New Hampshire’s own Mark Steyn. I’d recently finished Steyn’s most recent tome: “American Alone: The end of the world as we know it,” a brilliant treatise on the demographic transformation of Europe and the resulting Islamic threat to western civilization itself. Steyn managed to scare the hell out of me and his other readers while giving us belly laughs on every other page. No small feat, that.
The best session of the weekend was when Steyn sat with Jonah Goldberg and Rob Long of National Review Online. They started at ten Saturday night after most of us had a few drinks and expounded on political and social issues and associated personalities for about ninety minutes. If I ever laughed harder I can’t remember when. I wish I could remember their lines but there was no script. It was all off-the-cuff. One of them, I think it was Rob Long, remarked about sharing a cab with antiwar demonstrators who gathered on the mall earlier that day a few blocks from our hotel. His cab-mates asked if he was going to the rally, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue about the war during the short ride. Steyn said he’d had a similar experience near an antiwar rally in London where he’d seen a contingent calling itself “Queers for Palestine.” He said he found it ironic that if those “queers” ever actually went to Palestine with their signs, they’d be stoned to death. When asked if he was part of the demonstration, he simply told cab-mates he was with “Queers for Palestine” to approving nods.
The most sobering thing I heard during the conference came from Gingrich: “At some point down the road, we run a serious risk of losing two or three [American] cities to nuclear weapons, and it’s a lot better to act now before we lose a city.” This was only the biggest problem in a long list he enumerated while commenting on the endless presidential campaign. “We need to work on our problems . . . We don’t need the two parties running off into corners to yell at each other . . . It would be historically wrong to spend all of 2007 raising money in order to run in 2008, in order to take office in 2009 . . . [We need to think] How are we gonna fix these things?”
November, 2008 is the first election since 1928 that we won’t have either an incumbent running for reelection or an heir-apparent vice president on the ticket from one of the parties. It’s wide-open on both sides for the first time in eighty years. It looks like the beginning of the Boston Marathon out there with crowds of candidates covering the landscape and they should worry about wearing out voter interest before 2008 even arrives. After all, people complained when stores started playing Christmas carols right after Thanksgiving. Now we’re hearing them after Halloween. We all like Christmas carols, but not that early. We don’t want to hear them for two months straight, because after just a few weeks they start to ring hollow. By Christmas Eve, we don’t want to hear them anymore.
Why can’t we do it like the British do and get it all over with in three weeks? Is it possible that we’ll be so sick of listening to presidential candidates by the first Tuesday in November, 2008 that nobody will show up at the polls?
“I think this whole process is stupid,” said Newt Gingrich. “Ronald Reagan announced in November, 1979. John Kennedy announced on January 2nd, 1960, and at that time it was the earliest announcement in American history. . . . This idea [of campaigning so early] . . . is a full-employment program for political consultants.”
I was in the audience two weeks ago in Washington listening to Gingrich and there were three more possible or actual candidates still to speak - Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but I didn’t fly down for that. I wanted to listen and discuss the challenging issues facing us with other thinking conservatives and it’s hard to get even a handful of such people together here in western Maine. I watched, listened and participated in intelligent debate on immigration, affirmative action, the war on radical Islam, the role of government, why conservatives lost in November, and many other subjects. I met conservatives from all over the country while eating breakfast, lunch and dinner each day.
The highlight of Mitt Romney’s speech was not Mitt Romney’s speech. It was his introduction by New Hampshire’s own Mark Steyn. I’d recently finished Steyn’s most recent tome: “American Alone: The end of the world as we know it,” a brilliant treatise on the demographic transformation of Europe and the resulting Islamic threat to western civilization itself. Steyn managed to scare the hell out of me and his other readers while giving us belly laughs on every other page. No small feat, that.
The best session of the weekend was when Steyn sat with Jonah Goldberg and Rob Long of National Review Online. They started at ten Saturday night after most of us had a few drinks and expounded on political and social issues and associated personalities for about ninety minutes. If I ever laughed harder I can’t remember when. I wish I could remember their lines but there was no script. It was all off-the-cuff. One of them, I think it was Rob Long, remarked about sharing a cab with antiwar demonstrators who gathered on the mall earlier that day a few blocks from our hotel. His cab-mates asked if he was going to the rally, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue about the war during the short ride. Steyn said he’d had a similar experience near an antiwar rally in London where he’d seen a contingent calling itself “Queers for Palestine.” He said he found it ironic that if those “queers” ever actually went to Palestine with their signs, they’d be stoned to death. When asked if he was part of the demonstration, he simply told cab-mates he was with “Queers for Palestine” to approving nods.
The most sobering thing I heard during the conference came from Gingrich: “At some point down the road, we run a serious risk of losing two or three [American] cities to nuclear weapons, and it’s a lot better to act now before we lose a city.” This was only the biggest problem in a long list he enumerated while commenting on the endless presidential campaign. “We need to work on our problems . . . We don’t need the two parties running off into corners to yell at each other . . . It would be historically wrong to spend all of 2007 raising money in order to run in 2008, in order to take office in 2009 . . . [We need to think] How are we gonna fix these things?”
November, 2008 is the first election since 1928 that we won’t have either an incumbent running for reelection or an heir-apparent vice president on the ticket from one of the parties. It’s wide-open on both sides for the first time in eighty years. It looks like the beginning of the Boston Marathon out there with crowds of candidates covering the landscape and they should worry about wearing out voter interest before 2008 even arrives. After all, people complained when stores started playing Christmas carols right after Thanksgiving. Now we’re hearing them after Halloween. We all like Christmas carols, but not that early. We don’t want to hear them for two months straight, because after just a few weeks they start to ring hollow. By Christmas Eve, we don’t want to hear them anymore.
Why can’t we do it like the British do and get it all over with in three weeks? Is it possible that we’ll be so sick of listening to presidential candidates by the first Tuesday in November, 2008 that nobody will show up at the polls?
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Rape, Injustice, Anger
(Two Maine papers declined to publish this in 2005 when I submitted it - afraid of lawsuits, they said. Only one paper in New Hampshire, The Conway Daily Sun, ran it. Now that I have a blog, I've decided to put it out there again.)
A fourteen-year-old retarded girl was abducted from the Maine Mall and raped two years ago. Three Nigerian immigrants were arrested and charged with gross sexual assault. Newspaper and television coverage was widespread and, this being every parent’s nightmare, a lot of people heard about it. Very few, however, know how it finally turned out. I didn’t know myself until the girl’s mother, Laurie Stanley from Bridgton, called me. She was crying with frustration and asked me to write about it.
The Nigerians got away with it, essentially, and this fact was all but ignored by local media. Charges against Kingsley Nwaturocha were dropped. Dan Eneagu and Okey Chukwurah pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. Eneagu got a suspended sentence and two years probation. Chukwurah got a $1000 fine. That’s it. The Portland Press Herald ran a tiny news brief buried in the December 10, 2003 issue, saying: “A Nigerian man accused of raping a 14-year-old Gorham girl in Old Orchard Beach last year has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and has been released after his attorneys said the man would receive a death sentence if deported.”
The York County District Attorney’s office contacted Laurie Stanley the day before trial to tell her that Eneagu would be killed in Nigeria if he were deported. “Is that what you want?” a woman from the DA’s office asked her over the phone. “As mad as I was that they raped my daughter,” she said, “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want them to die.” I listened silently. “What would you have done?”
“If they raped my daughter,” I said, “execution would be fine with me.”
Semen found in the girl matched Eneagu’s DNA. A rape conviction would have been a slam-dunk, yet the DA’s office offered a plea bargain on the belief that the men would be deported and executed in Nigeria if convicted of felony rape. That seemed suspicious to me. Checking into it, I discovered that a rape conviction is extremely difficult under Islamic law and it would have been highly unlikely for those men charged with rape in Maine to be accountable there. I called Eneagu’s attorney, Nicholas Mahoney, several times to ask where he got his information but he didn’t return my calls.
Islamic law, or “Shari’a,” considers a woman’s testimony worth only half that of a man’s. Robert Spencer, author of “Islam Unveiled,” wrote in his article “Rape in Islam: Blaming the Victim” that four Muslim male witnesses are required for a conviction and that “without these witnesses and a confession from the accused rapist, the victim will stand condemned by her very accusation: she wasn’t raped, so she must be guilty of zina.” Zina, under Islamic Law, is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Nigeria, women found guilty of zina are sentenced to death by stoning.
York County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Moskowitz negotiated Eneagu’s plea bargain and I asked him if he verified the defense attorney’s execution claim. He told me he called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they had no idea about it. Then, he consulted an immigration lawyer in Portland, who referred him to “a Nigerian” in Portland whose opinion was that “there was a good chance Eneagu would be killed.” When I related what I had learned about Islamic law, he said I was comparing apples to oranges because Eneagu would have been deported already convicted, and would not likely be re-tried in Nigeria. When I asked Moskowitz if he thought justice was done, he said he had no regrets about how he handled the case and would do the same thing again.
I called the immigration lawyer Moskowitz talked to, an attorney name George Hepner. He said he didn’t have an opinion about Eneagu at the time and referred Moskowitz to Najim Animashaun of South Portland. Animashaun is Muslim, a practicing attorney in Maine. He has also practiced in the UK and in Nigeria. He told me he didn’t specifically recall consulting with Moskowitz on the Eneagu case either, although he might have. He said he often discusses hypotheticals concerning certain legal cases and does remember talking to Eneagu’s attorney, Nick Mahoney. He told me it was very unlikely Eneagu would have been executed. Eneagu is not a Muslim and Islamic law is only applied to Muslims. He said though Islamic law is practiced only in some parts of Nigeria and death sentences are often made, they’re seldom carried out. When I asked why, he said Islamic officials are afraid of executing someone wrongly because they themselves would be accountable in the afterlife if they made a mistake.
Laurie Stanley called me originally, not just because the men were never convicted of rape, but also because she read another tiny news brief in the Portland Press Herald that day last September about Kingsley Nwaturocha against whom the rape charge was dropped. He was granted $95,000 because he claimed to have been beaten by corrections officers at the York County Jail while awaiting trial. “I was trying to get my daughter into a residential school to protect her because it was getting to point that I couldn’t handle her,” Stanley said. “I was afraid she might go off with someone like she did at the Maine Mall, but the school wouldn’t pay for it and the state wouldn’t either. And now he gets all that money. My daughter was raped, bitten, and burned with a cigarette. They gave her herpes. She had to be tested for AIDS. She was robbed of her innocence, and he gets $95,000!”
Stanley found an attorney willing to file suit against Nwaturocha, but he discovered that the Nigerian had gotten his payoff three months earlier and moved to Maryland. Believing the money to be gone by then and because it would be difficult to file suit in a state so far away, the attorney dropped the case. Stanley’s frustration became unbearable and she wanted the story told. After seeing how everything turned out, she wishes now the men were executed.
My inquiries into this sad case produced as many questions as answers. Why didn’t the York County DA’s office scrutinize the defense’s execution claims more closely? Why didn’t they just enforce Maine law instead of worrying about Nigerian law? Why would the local media virtually ignore the plea bargain? Were they afraid of public outrage? Was it overzealous opposition to the death penalty? Why delay reporting the $95,000 settlement for three months? Was it sympathy for immigrants? Whatever it was, two of those men are still here, free to walk among us, and they don’t have to register as sex offenders because they were never convicted of rape.
A fourteen-year-old retarded girl was abducted from the Maine Mall and raped two years ago. Three Nigerian immigrants were arrested and charged with gross sexual assault. Newspaper and television coverage was widespread and, this being every parent’s nightmare, a lot of people heard about it. Very few, however, know how it finally turned out. I didn’t know myself until the girl’s mother, Laurie Stanley from Bridgton, called me. She was crying with frustration and asked me to write about it.
The Nigerians got away with it, essentially, and this fact was all but ignored by local media. Charges against Kingsley Nwaturocha were dropped. Dan Eneagu and Okey Chukwurah pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. Eneagu got a suspended sentence and two years probation. Chukwurah got a $1000 fine. That’s it. The Portland Press Herald ran a tiny news brief buried in the December 10, 2003 issue, saying: “A Nigerian man accused of raping a 14-year-old Gorham girl in Old Orchard Beach last year has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and has been released after his attorneys said the man would receive a death sentence if deported.”
The York County District Attorney’s office contacted Laurie Stanley the day before trial to tell her that Eneagu would be killed in Nigeria if he were deported. “Is that what you want?” a woman from the DA’s office asked her over the phone. “As mad as I was that they raped my daughter,” she said, “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want them to die.” I listened silently. “What would you have done?”
“If they raped my daughter,” I said, “execution would be fine with me.”
Semen found in the girl matched Eneagu’s DNA. A rape conviction would have been a slam-dunk, yet the DA’s office offered a plea bargain on the belief that the men would be deported and executed in Nigeria if convicted of felony rape. That seemed suspicious to me. Checking into it, I discovered that a rape conviction is extremely difficult under Islamic law and it would have been highly unlikely for those men charged with rape in Maine to be accountable there. I called Eneagu’s attorney, Nicholas Mahoney, several times to ask where he got his information but he didn’t return my calls.
Islamic law, or “Shari’a,” considers a woman’s testimony worth only half that of a man’s. Robert Spencer, author of “Islam Unveiled,” wrote in his article “Rape in Islam: Blaming the Victim” that four Muslim male witnesses are required for a conviction and that “without these witnesses and a confession from the accused rapist, the victim will stand condemned by her very accusation: she wasn’t raped, so she must be guilty of zina.” Zina, under Islamic Law, is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Nigeria, women found guilty of zina are sentenced to death by stoning.
York County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Moskowitz negotiated Eneagu’s plea bargain and I asked him if he verified the defense attorney’s execution claim. He told me he called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they had no idea about it. Then, he consulted an immigration lawyer in Portland, who referred him to “a Nigerian” in Portland whose opinion was that “there was a good chance Eneagu would be killed.” When I related what I had learned about Islamic law, he said I was comparing apples to oranges because Eneagu would have been deported already convicted, and would not likely be re-tried in Nigeria. When I asked Moskowitz if he thought justice was done, he said he had no regrets about how he handled the case and would do the same thing again.
I called the immigration lawyer Moskowitz talked to, an attorney name George Hepner. He said he didn’t have an opinion about Eneagu at the time and referred Moskowitz to Najim Animashaun of South Portland. Animashaun is Muslim, a practicing attorney in Maine. He has also practiced in the UK and in Nigeria. He told me he didn’t specifically recall consulting with Moskowitz on the Eneagu case either, although he might have. He said he often discusses hypotheticals concerning certain legal cases and does remember talking to Eneagu’s attorney, Nick Mahoney. He told me it was very unlikely Eneagu would have been executed. Eneagu is not a Muslim and Islamic law is only applied to Muslims. He said though Islamic law is practiced only in some parts of Nigeria and death sentences are often made, they’re seldom carried out. When I asked why, he said Islamic officials are afraid of executing someone wrongly because they themselves would be accountable in the afterlife if they made a mistake.
Laurie Stanley called me originally, not just because the men were never convicted of rape, but also because she read another tiny news brief in the Portland Press Herald that day last September about Kingsley Nwaturocha against whom the rape charge was dropped. He was granted $95,000 because he claimed to have been beaten by corrections officers at the York County Jail while awaiting trial. “I was trying to get my daughter into a residential school to protect her because it was getting to point that I couldn’t handle her,” Stanley said. “I was afraid she might go off with someone like she did at the Maine Mall, but the school wouldn’t pay for it and the state wouldn’t either. And now he gets all that money. My daughter was raped, bitten, and burned with a cigarette. They gave her herpes. She had to be tested for AIDS. She was robbed of her innocence, and he gets $95,000!”
Stanley found an attorney willing to file suit against Nwaturocha, but he discovered that the Nigerian had gotten his payoff three months earlier and moved to Maryland. Believing the money to be gone by then and because it would be difficult to file suit in a state so far away, the attorney dropped the case. Stanley’s frustration became unbearable and she wanted the story told. After seeing how everything turned out, she wishes now the men were executed.
My inquiries into this sad case produced as many questions as answers. Why didn’t the York County DA’s office scrutinize the defense’s execution claims more closely? Why didn’t they just enforce Maine law instead of worrying about Nigerian law? Why would the local media virtually ignore the plea bargain? Were they afraid of public outrage? Was it overzealous opposition to the death penalty? Why delay reporting the $95,000 settlement for three months? Was it sympathy for immigrants? Whatever it was, two of those men are still here, free to walk among us, and they don’t have to register as sex offenders because they were never convicted of rape.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Anarchy At The Capitol
Last week, I attended National Review’s "Conservative Summit" in Washington, DC. The hotel is on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill, so I went down a day early to check them out. On a windy-cold Friday morning I walked to the White House, but the gates were closed and a park ranger told me that nobody could go in without getting a pass from his congressman or senator three to six months in advance.
“Hmm,” I said. “When was the last time a citizen could walk up as I have and go in?”
“September 10th,” he answered.
“Hmm,” I said, again. Then I backed off so he could attend to a group with the necessary passes. Soon, a guy walked toward me in one of those dark, knee-length woolen coats businessmen wear and with a curled wire coming down from one ear and disappearing under his collar. Something about the look in his eyes told me he’d killed before or he’d made up his mind that he would if he had to. He looked at me as though I were a potential threat, then stood nearby, keeping me in his peripheral vision. I walked toward him and he turned sharply. “How long has it been since someone like me could walk up to the White House and go in?” I asked.
He softened a bit and said, “I’m not sure. Before September 11th.”
“Is it okay if I take some pictures through that gate?” I asked.
“Sure. You can walk around the curved sidewalk there and take a picture from the front if you want to.”
“Thanks,” I said and did so.
After that, it was two miles to the Capitol where I could watch my Congress and Senate in Action. If it wasn’t so cold and blustery, I’d have walked, but I took a cab which delivered me at the foot of Capitol Hill. Looking up I saw signs declaring the big stone steps in front off-limits to citizens like me. Two Capitol Policemen stood at the bottom of the stairs to keep people away while others prowled further up. One had an assault rifle. I walked up and asked him if I could go in. He pointed back down the hill. “See that tent down there?” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Go down there, get a pass, and you can take a tour.”
I waited in line at the tent, shivering, until I got a pass. Then I had to wait another forty-five minutes for the tour to begin. Finally, we gathered near a side entrance to go through a kind of portable security building. I had to empty my pockets, take off my shoes, and walk through a metal detector. The House had taken the day off and I wasn’t allowed into the Senate Chamber. When my tour was over, I investigated wherever there were no signs telling me not to. It wasn’t long before another Capitol Police officer approached, pointed to a door, and told me to leave.
Outside again, I could see workers setting up speakers on the mall in preparation for Jane Fonda’s antiwar demonstration scheduled for the next day. If my conference got boring, I planned to walk over and observe.
It didn’t. The conference was fantastic. I stayed at the hotel until it ended Sunday afternoon, then rushed to the airport. The next day, I saw a link on the Drudge Report about anarchist vandalism at the Capitol. According to an article by Jackie Kucinich in The Hill newspaper:
“Allowed”? I couldn’t even walk on those steps but anarchists can deface them? Kucinich went on:
Who allowed them? Kucinich continued:
Oh really?
Gee thanks, Chief.
First Amendment rights? That explanation is supposed to make me feel better? I’m a law-abiding citizen who got kicked out by the same Capitol Police who the next day allowed 300 antiwar anarchists to tag it and pose for pictures next to their graffiti? While our soldiers are fighting and dying overseas? Is this how it’s going to be with Democrats back in control of Capitol Hill?
I’m pissed.
“Hmm,” I said. “When was the last time a citizen could walk up as I have and go in?”
“September 10th,” he answered.
“Hmm,” I said, again. Then I backed off so he could attend to a group with the necessary passes. Soon, a guy walked toward me in one of those dark, knee-length woolen coats businessmen wear and with a curled wire coming down from one ear and disappearing under his collar. Something about the look in his eyes told me he’d killed before or he’d made up his mind that he would if he had to. He looked at me as though I were a potential threat, then stood nearby, keeping me in his peripheral vision. I walked toward him and he turned sharply. “How long has it been since someone like me could walk up to the White House and go in?” I asked.
He softened a bit and said, “I’m not sure. Before September 11th.”
“Is it okay if I take some pictures through that gate?” I asked.
“Sure. You can walk around the curved sidewalk there and take a picture from the front if you want to.”
“Thanks,” I said and did so.
After that, it was two miles to the Capitol where I could watch my Congress and Senate in Action. If it wasn’t so cold and blustery, I’d have walked, but I took a cab which delivered me at the foot of Capitol Hill. Looking up I saw signs declaring the big stone steps in front off-limits to citizens like me. Two Capitol Policemen stood at the bottom of the stairs to keep people away while others prowled further up. One had an assault rifle. I walked up and asked him if I could go in. He pointed back down the hill. “See that tent down there?” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Go down there, get a pass, and you can take a tour.”
I waited in line at the tent, shivering, until I got a pass. Then I had to wait another forty-five minutes for the tour to begin. Finally, we gathered near a side entrance to go through a kind of portable security building. I had to empty my pockets, take off my shoes, and walk through a metal detector. The House had taken the day off and I wasn’t allowed into the Senate Chamber. When my tour was over, I investigated wherever there were no signs telling me not to. It wasn’t long before another Capitol Police officer approached, pointed to a door, and told me to leave.
Outside again, I could see workers setting up speakers on the mall in preparation for Jane Fonda’s antiwar demonstration scheduled for the next day. If my conference got boring, I planned to walk over and observe.
It didn’t. The conference was fantastic. I stayed at the hotel until it ended Sunday afternoon, then rushed to the airport. The next day, I saw a link on the Drudge Report about anarchist vandalism at the Capitol. According to an article by Jackie Kucinich in The Hill newspaper:
Antiwar protesters were allowed to spray paint on part of the west front steps of the United States Capitol building after police were ordered to break their security line by their leadership, two sources told The Hill.
“Allowed”? I couldn’t even walk on those steps but anarchists can deface them? Kucinich went on:
Approximately 300 protesters were allowed to take the steps and began to spray paint ‘anarchist symbols’ and phrases such as ‘Our capitol building’ and ‘you can’t stop us’ around the area, the source said.
Who allowed them? Kucinich continued:
[Capitol Police Chief] Morse said, "While there were minor instances of spray painting of pavement by a splinter group of Anarchists who were seeking a confrontation with the police, their attempts to breach into secure areas and rush the doors of the Capitol were thwarted. The graffiti was easily removed by the dedicated staff, some of whom responded on their day off to quickly clean the area.”
Oh really?
[Chief Morse] added "It is the USCP's duty and responsibility to protect the Capitol complex, staff and public while allowing the public to exercise their First Amendment rights … at the end of the day, both occurred without injury to protesters or officers.”
Gee thanks, Chief.
. . . [P]olice had to stand by and watch as protesters posed in front of their graffiti [and were] instructed to make no arrests.”
First Amendment rights? That explanation is supposed to make me feel better? I’m a law-abiding citizen who got kicked out by the same Capitol Police who the next day allowed 300 antiwar anarchists to tag it and pose for pictures next to their graffiti? While our soldiers are fighting and dying overseas? Is this how it’s going to be with Democrats back in control of Capitol Hill?
I’m pissed.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Old Enemy
A Muslim has been elected to the US House of Representatives. Should we be worried? Yes.
There would be no problem if he were a moderate Muslim. I’ve heard they’re around, but I wish they’d speak up so I can be sure. Anyway, our first Muslim congressman doesn’t seem to be one. His name is Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota. He’s is a past (I hope) member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and supported by CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), an organization with ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are not moderate. They are enemies of the United States. This is a problem.
That very few Americans understand it’s a problem is our biggest problem. That’s why the war isn’t going well. People don’t understand what we’re up against. For this, I blame President Bush.
Mr. President? You’re inarticulate and you know it. So hire someone who speaks well to educate America about who our enemies are. First, let’s stop calling this the War on Terror. Let’s not call it the War in Iraq or the War in Afghanistan either. Let’s call it what it is: The War Against Radical Islam. If you like acronyms, call it WARI. We can refer to the Iraq Theater or the Afghanistan Theater but keep reminding us that our enemies are global. You started off well, warning countries that they were either with us or against us, and that if they supported Islamic terrorists, they were enemies. People began to understand that we’re not fighting a country, but a fanatic, transnational movement.
You went into Afghanistan to rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Great. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan and you didn’t go after him. Mistake.
You went into Iraq to rout Saddam. Great. Four American civilians were murdered, mutilated, burned, dragged, stomped on and hanged from a bridge in Fallujah by terrorists. American soldiers were ready to clean out Fallujah in response. Great. But for months you held them back. Mistake.
Moqtada Al Sadr defied you and our soldiers had him surrounded, ready to destroy his Mahdi Army. Great. But you held them back. Mistake.
Iran and Syria called your bluff, sending weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis. You’ve allowed it for years. Mistake.
People are losing confidence in you.
Our enemy isn’t new and Congressman Ellison’s swearing-in ceremony is instructive here. After some controversy about taking his oath of office with his hand on a Koran instead of a Bible, he sought to neutralize it by using a Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The irony is that Jefferson very likely used that Koran to study what motivated the Barbary Pirates who sold over a million white Europeans and Americans into slavery. These Muslim pirates had been raiding American and European ships, killing and enslaving men, women and children all over the Mediterranean. Women were sold as concubines while boys were castrated to serve as eunuchs in their harems. With future president John Adams, Jefferson questioned a Barbary representative in London, asking by what right they were raiding and enslaving Americans. As Jefferson later reported:
“The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Sounds familiar, no? Later, as president, Jefferson made war on the Barbary pirates. It’s likely that the same Koran Ellison used for his oath, Jefferson used it to read about the “right” of Muslims to kill, rape and enslave non-Muslims. If a Muslim should be killed in the process, he’d go straight to Paradise (to enjoy the services of 72 black-eyed virgins for eternity, as Jihadists believe today). Jefferson wouldn’t appease the pirates as European leaders and his predecessor President John Adams did. Adams paid them tribute amounting to as much as 20% of the federal budget. Jefferson knew what the Koran said and he got tough. “Millions for defense,” he declared, “but not one cent for tribute.” He sent the US Marines to Tripoli and the rest is history. “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of . . .” You know the words.
We face the same enemy Jefferson did, only now they have a worldwide reach and are fueled by petrodollars, giving them access to weapons of mass destruction. Iran, Syria and Pakistan house and support them but deny doing so, and although the whole world knows they’re lying, we’re reluctant to call their bluffs. President Bush started well, but buckled under intense criticism from American appeasers, European appeasers, and their media minions.
Yet he’s our commander-in-chief. He must educate Americans about the nature of our enemy and why we can’t negotiate with them - why we need to take the war to Iran and Syria rather than wait like sitting ducks while they orchestrate cross-border raids on our soldiers in Iraq. The rest of us have to buck up and prepare for the sacrifices necessary to win. That’s what you do in war. Americans - Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims and atheists - must band together and win this. There’s no other way.
There would be no problem if he were a moderate Muslim. I’ve heard they’re around, but I wish they’d speak up so I can be sure. Anyway, our first Muslim congressman doesn’t seem to be one. His name is Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota. He’s is a past (I hope) member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and supported by CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), an organization with ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are not moderate. They are enemies of the United States. This is a problem.
That very few Americans understand it’s a problem is our biggest problem. That’s why the war isn’t going well. People don’t understand what we’re up against. For this, I blame President Bush.
Mr. President? You’re inarticulate and you know it. So hire someone who speaks well to educate America about who our enemies are. First, let’s stop calling this the War on Terror. Let’s not call it the War in Iraq or the War in Afghanistan either. Let’s call it what it is: The War Against Radical Islam. If you like acronyms, call it WARI. We can refer to the Iraq Theater or the Afghanistan Theater but keep reminding us that our enemies are global. You started off well, warning countries that they were either with us or against us, and that if they supported Islamic terrorists, they were enemies. People began to understand that we’re not fighting a country, but a fanatic, transnational movement.
You went into Afghanistan to rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Great. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan and you didn’t go after him. Mistake.
You went into Iraq to rout Saddam. Great. Four American civilians were murdered, mutilated, burned, dragged, stomped on and hanged from a bridge in Fallujah by terrorists. American soldiers were ready to clean out Fallujah in response. Great. But for months you held them back. Mistake.
Moqtada Al Sadr defied you and our soldiers had him surrounded, ready to destroy his Mahdi Army. Great. But you held them back. Mistake.
Iran and Syria called your bluff, sending weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis. You’ve allowed it for years. Mistake.
People are losing confidence in you.
Our enemy isn’t new and Congressman Ellison’s swearing-in ceremony is instructive here. After some controversy about taking his oath of office with his hand on a Koran instead of a Bible, he sought to neutralize it by using a Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The irony is that Jefferson very likely used that Koran to study what motivated the Barbary Pirates who sold over a million white Europeans and Americans into slavery. These Muslim pirates had been raiding American and European ships, killing and enslaving men, women and children all over the Mediterranean. Women were sold as concubines while boys were castrated to serve as eunuchs in their harems. With future president John Adams, Jefferson questioned a Barbary representative in London, asking by what right they were raiding and enslaving Americans. As Jefferson later reported:
“The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Sounds familiar, no? Later, as president, Jefferson made war on the Barbary pirates. It’s likely that the same Koran Ellison used for his oath, Jefferson used it to read about the “right” of Muslims to kill, rape and enslave non-Muslims. If a Muslim should be killed in the process, he’d go straight to Paradise (to enjoy the services of 72 black-eyed virgins for eternity, as Jihadists believe today). Jefferson wouldn’t appease the pirates as European leaders and his predecessor President John Adams did. Adams paid them tribute amounting to as much as 20% of the federal budget. Jefferson knew what the Koran said and he got tough. “Millions for defense,” he declared, “but not one cent for tribute.” He sent the US Marines to Tripoli and the rest is history. “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of . . .” You know the words.
We face the same enemy Jefferson did, only now they have a worldwide reach and are fueled by petrodollars, giving them access to weapons of mass destruction. Iran, Syria and Pakistan house and support them but deny doing so, and although the whole world knows they’re lying, we’re reluctant to call their bluffs. President Bush started well, but buckled under intense criticism from American appeasers, European appeasers, and their media minions.
Yet he’s our commander-in-chief. He must educate Americans about the nature of our enemy and why we can’t negotiate with them - why we need to take the war to Iran and Syria rather than wait like sitting ducks while they orchestrate cross-border raids on our soldiers in Iraq. The rest of us have to buck up and prepare for the sacrifices necessary to win. That’s what you do in war. Americans - Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims and atheists - must band together and win this. There’s no other way.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Bothered By Today
Watching the Today Show bugs me and I try to avoid it. I tend to watch a Maine NBC affiliate for local news, weather and sports and the Today Show comes on as I’m leaving for work. Why does the Today Show bug me?
One thing is the crowd of people outside the studio window trying desperately to get noticed. They act like their greatest ambition in life is to appear on television, even if means that millions of Americans see them behaving like attention-starved adolescents. My guess is they don’t live in New York City. They’re tourists whose idea of an exciting vacation is standing in the cold for hours every morning outside the studio in case a camera should do a three-second pan of them returning from a commercial break. They jump around and wave their handmade signs so they can go back to wherever they came from and tell their friends what they did. Their signs should read: “I don’t have a life!” or “I’m desperate to be on TV so I’ll know I really exist!” or “Dignity? What’s that?” I think it’s the crowd that bugs me the most.
No. Maybe it’s not them. The hosts in the studio bug me too. When it was Katy and Matt, they sat and talked to the cameras while behind them through the windows we saw the crowd of American suck-ups gesticulate in their intense need to be recognized. Producers wanted the fawning crowd as a backdrop while Katy and Matt appeared cool and sophisticated as they told us what stories Americans should consider important. The message for viewers is: See how people want Katy and Matt to interpret the world for them? They know what’s best for us, so listen. The hosts behaved as though all this were the natural order of things. Later, they would go outside and mingle with the peasants as if granting a royal audience. Putting a microphone up to the bumpkins’ lips is like allowing them to kiss the ring. Many seemed about to pee their pants with excitement. Maybe it was the smug hosts that bugged me the most.
But maybe not. Katy Couric has been missing for months. Maybe it’s the incongruous programming that bothers me. Early in the broadcast, important guests visit and are questioned about weighty issues. Presidents and other powerful officials discuss the most pressing problems of our time. Doctors discuss medical breakthroughs. Yet these segments are followed by witless stories about clothing fashions. Anorexic women with pouty faces strut toward cameras wearing ridiculous-looking get-ups while the hosts ooh and aah. Is the show about news or is it about frivolous fashion trends? Politicians are guests. Actors and singers are guests. Last week, Katy’s replacement, Meredith Viera, said to Madonna: “You can kiss me if you want to.” Maybe she was kidding. Maybe not. Is this stuff a reflection of what America has come to? Maybe it’s the frivolous programming that bugs me most about the Today Show. I’m not sure.
Maybe it’s Matt Lauer. If someone bugs me, the shrinks say, it’s because he triggers something I’ve been avoiding in myself and I have to look at that. What is it about Matt Lauer that gets under my skin? Maybe he reminds me of guys I knew in high school who weren’t athletes, but talked about a sport as if they knew more than the people who played it. They were the guys who, when they talked to you, they seemed more concerned about how they sounded than what they were saying. Their words were not for your benefit, but for whomever else might be listening. They’d talk to you only if others more important weren’t available and if some showed up would drop you in mid-sentence and without a backward glance. Also, Matt seems genuinely interested in fashion trends and wedding preparations. No straight guy I know is interested in wedding plans or bridal dresses. A guy has to pretend to be interested if his fiancé is telling him, or if he has to pay for the wedding his wife and daughter are planning. Those are the only times. Okay, maybe one more. If his boss’s wife is talking to him about that stuff he’ll pretend he’s interested.
Wait. I think I have it. Maybe what bugs me the most is that the Today Show has been the most popular morning broadcast for many years running, so it obviously appeals to a broad segment of American Society. That means most Americans really like this kind of stuff and my tastes are out of synch with the rest of the country.
Yeah, that’s it. That’s what bothers me about the Today Show.
One thing is the crowd of people outside the studio window trying desperately to get noticed. They act like their greatest ambition in life is to appear on television, even if means that millions of Americans see them behaving like attention-starved adolescents. My guess is they don’t live in New York City. They’re tourists whose idea of an exciting vacation is standing in the cold for hours every morning outside the studio in case a camera should do a three-second pan of them returning from a commercial break. They jump around and wave their handmade signs so they can go back to wherever they came from and tell their friends what they did. Their signs should read: “I don’t have a life!” or “I’m desperate to be on TV so I’ll know I really exist!” or “Dignity? What’s that?” I think it’s the crowd that bugs me the most.
No. Maybe it’s not them. The hosts in the studio bug me too. When it was Katy and Matt, they sat and talked to the cameras while behind them through the windows we saw the crowd of American suck-ups gesticulate in their intense need to be recognized. Producers wanted the fawning crowd as a backdrop while Katy and Matt appeared cool and sophisticated as they told us what stories Americans should consider important. The message for viewers is: See how people want Katy and Matt to interpret the world for them? They know what’s best for us, so listen. The hosts behaved as though all this were the natural order of things. Later, they would go outside and mingle with the peasants as if granting a royal audience. Putting a microphone up to the bumpkins’ lips is like allowing them to kiss the ring. Many seemed about to pee their pants with excitement. Maybe it was the smug hosts that bugged me the most.
But maybe not. Katy Couric has been missing for months. Maybe it’s the incongruous programming that bothers me. Early in the broadcast, important guests visit and are questioned about weighty issues. Presidents and other powerful officials discuss the most pressing problems of our time. Doctors discuss medical breakthroughs. Yet these segments are followed by witless stories about clothing fashions. Anorexic women with pouty faces strut toward cameras wearing ridiculous-looking get-ups while the hosts ooh and aah. Is the show about news or is it about frivolous fashion trends? Politicians are guests. Actors and singers are guests. Last week, Katy’s replacement, Meredith Viera, said to Madonna: “You can kiss me if you want to.” Maybe she was kidding. Maybe not. Is this stuff a reflection of what America has come to? Maybe it’s the frivolous programming that bugs me most about the Today Show. I’m not sure.
Maybe it’s Matt Lauer. If someone bugs me, the shrinks say, it’s because he triggers something I’ve been avoiding in myself and I have to look at that. What is it about Matt Lauer that gets under my skin? Maybe he reminds me of guys I knew in high school who weren’t athletes, but talked about a sport as if they knew more than the people who played it. They were the guys who, when they talked to you, they seemed more concerned about how they sounded than what they were saying. Their words were not for your benefit, but for whomever else might be listening. They’d talk to you only if others more important weren’t available and if some showed up would drop you in mid-sentence and without a backward glance. Also, Matt seems genuinely interested in fashion trends and wedding preparations. No straight guy I know is interested in wedding plans or bridal dresses. A guy has to pretend to be interested if his fiancé is telling him, or if he has to pay for the wedding his wife and daughter are planning. Those are the only times. Okay, maybe one more. If his boss’s wife is talking to him about that stuff he’ll pretend he’s interested.
Wait. I think I have it. Maybe what bugs me the most is that the Today Show has been the most popular morning broadcast for many years running, so it obviously appeals to a broad segment of American Society. That means most Americans really like this kind of stuff and my tastes are out of synch with the rest of the country.
Yeah, that’s it. That’s what bothers me about the Today Show.
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