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Two Days, Three Shitty Anniversaries And One Bloody Month

Today — April 19, and tomorrow, April 20 — we have a trio of tragedies to remember.

Full disclosure: I’m about to steal liberally from Wikipedia.

April 19, 1993: Waco, Texas

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), accompanied by several members of the media, attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located 9 miles (14 km) east-northeast of Waco, Texas. On February 28, shortly after the attempt to serve the warrant, an intense gun battle erupted, lasting nearly 2 hours. In this armed exchange, four agents and six Branch Davidians were killed. Upon the ATF’s failure to execute the search warrant, a siege was initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The siege ended 50 days later when a fire destroyed the compound when a second assault was launched. 76 people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and the sect leader David Koresh.

File:Mountcarmelfire04-19-93-l.jpg

April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It would remain the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated eleven of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations.

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for unlawfully carrying a weapon. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Terry Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested and within days both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, an American militia movement sympathizer, had detonated an explosive-filled Ryder truck parked in front of the building. McVeigh’s co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992), McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at Waco.

File:Oklahomacitybombing-DF-ST-98-01356.jpg

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School

The Columbine High School massacre (often known simply as Columbine) occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and 1 teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and the deadliest for an American high school.

April is also a bloody month for other days, like the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007 and the start of such bloody conflicts as the American Revolution and the Civil War. I could mention dozens of other bloody events that happened in April, but I think this is quite enough for now. If you want a fuller accounting of the bloodshed, check out this article by Chaotic Ramblings

I pray for everyone who died in those tragedies. As I write this, the sun is shining through my window, warming my hands as I pound away on the keyboard. I’m going to make this a good day, despite those bad memories.

I suggest you do the same.

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Telling the Tate-LaBianca Story: Truth and Embellishment

Update 7/30/20: Since writing this post, I’ve been in touch with David Oman and believe my criticism below was harsh. He has invited me to visit his house next time I’m in the area and I hope to do so. As I said before, when following a case like the Manson murders, everyone has a theory and some do, as Brian Davis noted, “worm their way” into the narrative by exploiting people who were there in the beginning. I will always come clean when I’m wrong.

***

A while back I wrote a post about how, in my opinion, Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice by Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, was the most important book ever written about the Manson Murders. Since then the book’s accuracy has been thrown into question. So let’s talk about it.

Brian Davis, host of the online Tate-LaBianca Radio Program podcast, which posts Sunday nights, contacted me by Twitter a few weeks ago after seeing one of my tweets on how important I thought Restless Souls was. He wrote, “Yes probably because it contains some of the most fabricated material about [Tate-LaBianca] ever. So in that regards it is important.”

Davis explained what he meant in a follow-up email:

I host a Tate-LaBianca radio program every Sunday online, and my listeners are very well versed about the murders and TLB-related material.

I can tell you they very much anticipated this book Restless Souls, but most were disappointed and had questions for Alisa.

I attempted to get Alisa on [the program] to speak about the book, but she declined, saying her publisher wouldn’t let her do any media without going through them. That was understandable, except it wasn’t true. She lied. She went on another website to answer questions. Prescreened. So as my listeners continued to pick apart the book, they continued to find many [discrepancies] in the book.

He says the worst example of fabrication is a section where prosecutor Steven Kay has a confrontation with former Manson follower and convicted murderer Patricia Krenwinkel. The scene is the prison yard, following her unsuccessful parole hearing. She lets it drop that she knows where Kay lives, and he asks if she’s making a threat.

Davis says that on June 24, 2012, he had Steven Kay on the TLB Radio Program and he claims that conversation never took place.

Historical biographers are accused of inserting made-up passages in their books all the time. Their excuse is usually that adding a fictional voice here and there is necessary to keep the narrative going but that the heart of their work is true.

Doris Kearns Goodwin was accused of making stuff up in her book on Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals. Specifically, she was raked over the coals for having Lincoln say “What’s up?” Critics asked: Who talked like that in the 1800s? (As it turns out, the phrase what’s up appeared 34 times in print in the 1860s, according to the Corpus of Historical American History. Whether Lincoln would have used the phrase is another question.)

Edmund Morris, who authored an excellent trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt, caught hellfire when he used fictional elements to tell the story of Ronald Reagan in Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.

I still think the Statman-Brie book is important, because it includes a lot of diary material from the Tate family that I believe is genuine. Are parts of it embellished with fiction? Probably. In that regard, I can understand Davis’ disappointment. And if Statman has ducked questions from him and others about the truthfulness of the book, that’s disappointing, too. Davis didn’t elaborate on whether the website in question received the publisher’s blessing to interview Statmen, but it’s more common than you might think for an interviewee to preview the interview questions.

If there are embellishments in the book, it can’t possibly be as bad as the fiction created by others attached to the Manson case. Take David Oman, who lives four houses down from the former Tate residence on Cielo Drive (I got a good look at the place during my November drive-by). Oman claims his home is haunted by the spirits of Tate and fellow victim Jay Sebring. The Ghost Hunters TV show even did an episode about it. I find it curious that he made these claims as he was making House at the End of the Drive, a horror film about a house being haunted by people killed in a house “at the end of the drive.” In my opinion, this is just another guy trying to make a buck off the case.

That’s the challenge when doing any research about the Manson case. Almost everyone involved seems to embellish here and there. What they offer may be a work that’s almost entirely true, but those embellishments throw everything else into question.

I don’t have a good answer to fix the problem. All I can do is stick to the truth in my own work and hope I don’t fall victim to that writer’s urge to embellish. Wish me luck.

Sharon Tate August 1969
Sharon Tate in August 1969, right before her murder
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Tate-LaBianca, 45 Years Later: A Strange Society of Manson Watchers

This week marks the 45th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders. I’m marking it first with a prayer for the victims and second by making note of some interesting people I’ve met as a result of this lifelong Manson obsession I have.

I’ve been to L.A. twice, and both times drove around to the two murder sites and other places.

Tate Home
Behind that gate, Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by minions of Charles Manson.

LaBianca Home
On the second night of terror, minions of Charles Manson went to this house and murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca

I’ve also read Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice, a book written by Tate family friend Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, niece of Sharon Tate.

After reading it, I declared it “the most important book ever written” on the case because it showed the struggle of the Tate family in the decades after the murders better than any book up to that point. The day that post published, co-author Alisa Statman sent me a thank-you on Twitter. We then engaged in an extended back and forth about the case. Statman is an interesting woman.

She lived in the guesthouse at 10050 Cielo Drive — site of the Tate murders — in the early 1990s at the same time Nine Inch Nails set up a recording studio in the main house and recorded The Downward Spiral. She also went on to strike up a domestic partnership with Sharon Tate’s youngest sister, Patti, which lasted until cancer killed Patti in 2000.

Restless Souls is a compilation of the unfinished memoirs of Patti, her mom, Doris, and her dad, Paul. You really get to see how they struggled with all of the media attention and personal demons in the years after the murders, and that’s what I liked about it. Doris is a hero to me, because she picked up the pieces and became a tireless advocate for victim’s rights, even counseling convicts.

I heard from others after writing that post, including Brian Davis, host of an online Tate-LaBianca Radio Program, which airs on Sunday nights. I’ve listened to some episodes and they’re quite good.

Davis believes parts of Statman and Tate’s book is fabricated, something I’ll explore in a future post. There are a lot of blogs and other media on this case, including the Helter Skelter forum and Truth on Tate-LaBianca. CieloDrive.com has a comprehensive set of links to those sites at the bottom of its homepage. In visiting all these sites over the years, I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of fighting and disagreement between them.

People really rip into each other over what did and didn’t happen, and almost everyone claims to be an expert. It goes to show how much passion and obsession this case has generated over the years. It’s certainly been the object of my obsessiveness.

Along the way, I’ve learned that there are people so obsessed with the case that they try to make themselves part of the story. The most glaring example is the late Bill Nelson. This guy basically stalked members of the Manson family and befriended Doris Tate. There’s a great write-up about him on Eviliz’s Manson Family Blog. The Tate family had a falling out with Nelson after learning he was a convicted sex offender.

This interview he did with Doris probably didn’t help.

He asks her questions and mentions the most gory details of her daughter’s murder with no sensitivity or decency whatsoever. I admit that I’ve been obsessed with the case over the years. But, boy, am I grateful that I never got as bad as that guy.

Related Posts:

Helter Skelter

Slaying Old Fears in the Hollywood Hills

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Leave Abigail Hernandez Alone

Trashing the victim in a crime is nothing new; we’ve been doing it forever.

That doesn’t make it right.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/MhfRUYUkq_0

After the Manson murders in 1969, for example, the newspapers were full of speculation about how the victims may have done themselves in by living a lifestyle that attracted dangerous people.

Today people are fixated on the case of Abigail Hernandez, a 15-year-old New Hampshire girl who recently returned home after being missing for several months. Nathaniel E. Kibby, 34, is now in jail, accused of holding her hostage for nine months.

On the surface, it seems like a simple case: A girl was kidnapped and, thankfully, she got home alive. Police made an arrest, and now the court proceedings begin.

The general public knows almost nothing about what really happened. But that doesn’t stop people from suddenly becoming experts. Listening to the radio during my work commutes this week, I’ve heard all manner of theories. The most popular theories:

What really happened? I have no idea, other than she was gone for nine months and recently returned home, and someone was arrested for allegedly kidnapping her.

Whatever happened behind the scenes, people need to chill out and stop slicing and dicing this kid’s life to bits. She is a teenager, a child.
Until the full truth comes out, people should stop trying to pass judgement.

We can better serve our communities and ourselves by dealing with our own private baggage instead of picking apart the motives of a kid.

Go home, rumor mongers. You’re either drunk or just assholes.

Abigail Hernandez Missing Poster

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Wherein I Run Afoul Of The U.S. Secret Service

My resolve against the inner demons is tested regularly.

Some are little tests, like being put in a room with all the food and alcohol I once binged on daily to see if I can resist the temptation.

Some are bigger tests, like getting lost en route to Washington D.C a few years ago with my wife and kids in the car. Getting lost in a car used to be the stuff my anxiety attacks were made of.

Then there are the huge tests, like the time I got an unexpected grilling from two U.S. Secret Service officers — incidentally, the day after getting lost on the interstate somewhere in New Jersey.

Mood music: 

[spotify:track:3ckQ5LMB0ORA45X0ozu9eR]

I wrote a full account of the encounter for CSOonline.com in “What it’s like to be grilled by the Secret Service,” so I won’t repeat it all here. That column captures it from a security perspective.

Here I’ll focus on the emotional part.

First, the gist of what happened: I was taking photos from my BlackBerry of Marine One (with President Obama aboard) taking off from the White House South Lawn. I guess I lingered there for too long, because the Secret Service thought I was taking surveillance photos. Two Android smartphones later, I’m amused they found BlackBerry-quality photos threatening.

One of them was pretty tough and didn’t believe my honest protests that I was just taking pictures and walking around there because I’m a White House history buff. One officer played bad cop, grilling me as if I were just caught red-handed robbing a bank. The other guy played the reassuring role. “We’re just going to get one of these for our records,” he cooed as he snapped a picture of my unshaven face.

Apparently nobody ever showed them the picture of the Brenners visiting the West Wing three months earlier. They did note that I was texting a lot as I walked, and they wanted to know who I was texting. When I told them it was Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s then-cybersecurity advisor, it knocked them off stride. I told them I was making dinner plans with Howard, that I was buying him dinner to thank him for giving me, the wife and kids the West Wing tour.

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” the meaner of the two cops asked.

As I told Howard what happened over burgers that evening, he had a good laugh.

I didn’t fault the Secret Service cops at the time. It’s not their job to know these things. It’s their job to nail terrorist activity when they see it. Could he have been a bit nicer to me, given that I was doing nothing wrong and all? Sure. But I try not to hold grudges.

It does say something about how much of a police state we’ve become in the decade-plus since 9-11, though. I also admit that if I could do it again, I’d be more belligerent. Government’s excessive reach into our lives has been laid bare since then. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been far more outraged.

Truth be told, the experience did freak me out. My back went into spasms and my hands shook for hours after. As they were in my face accusing me of running a terrorist surveillance mission, I was thinking to myself, “If these assholes haul me in, it’s really going to screw up the work I had planned for this afternoon.” I’m a typical OCD case, worrying that getting arrested will screw up the work day.

But it’s all good.

I didn’t go back to my hotel room and order $80 worth of food and a bottle of wine to comfort myself. A few years ago, a friendly encounter with Secret Service would have made me do that.

My mind wasn’t paralyzed, either. I got a lot of work done back at the hotel, even with the headache.

And hell, I got a pretty good column out of the experience.

Secret-Service-agents-death-investigated

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Never Too Late to Renegotiate Your Life

When you have legal problems, mountains of debt, bad relationships and a job that makes you unhappy, it’s easy to feel like there’s a point of no return, that this is how your life turned out and that’s that. It’s not true.

Mood music:

I can say that, because I’ve lived it.

I’m thinking about this after talking to a friend who allowed an addiction to get out of hand to the point where he’s now facing jail time. One of the points he keeps making is that if he goes to jail, his career is over. He won’t be able to provide for his family, and all will be lost.

I’ve felt like all was lost many times. I felt that way as a kid as the Crohn’s Disease shredded my insides and I simply assumed I wouldn’t live to see 30. I felt that way when my weight shot to 280 and I failed at one attempt after another to turn it around. I felt that way when relationships with friends and relatives snapped over the years. And I sure as hell felt that way when I was in a job I absolutely hated.

Yet here I am, with a job I love even after coming clean about old and frequently reappearing demons. I’m married with two kids and pushing 42 even though age 30 seemed unlikely in my teenage mind. My addictions can still be a knife in my side, but I’m having more success in controlling them than I ever have before.

That kind of blows the notion that there’s a point of no return to smithereens, in my humble opinion.

I’m betting my sister felt that point-of-no-return feeling back when she suffered from crushing depression. Yet this weekend I watched her getting married, looking happier than she’s looked in years, and thriving months into a new job.

I’m betting my father felt that point-of-no-return feeling in the months following his stroke last year. Yet there he was the other night, walking with the assistance of a simple cane — walker pushed to the corner — walking his daughter down the aisle and later dancing with her.

Yeah, life can seem brutally overwhelming sometimes. When you’re knee-deep in legal, financial or relationship problems, it can be hard to see coming out the other side with a better life.

But it happens. All the time. All it takes is the will to survive.

If you have that, then it’s never too late to renegotiate your life.

Phoenix Rising

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“Rolling Stone” Bomber Cover Sparks Outrage, But Why?

Before I deliver what will surely be an unpopular opinion, let me note the following: The Boston Marathon bombings happened on my home turf. That day, I was sickened by the video replays, scenes of people without limbs and word that one of the victims was an 8-year-old boy. I was as full of satisfaction as everyone else a few nights later, when one of the bombers was hunted down and captured.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IN9REo4Le6g

Several friends were at the marathon that day, and one family from our kids’ school community left the finish line a few minutes before the bombs exploded. Yeah, I was effected to the core.

Now I’m waking up to find a lot of outrage online because of the latest cover of Rolling Stone magazine, which features the face of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the young monster who carried out the attack with his older brother. Much of the anger is over the way he looks: like a rock star or someone to be celebrated. One friend ran a picture of the cover next to another Rolling Stone cover featuring Jim Morrison to illustrate the point. Business Insider  hissed that the magazine portrayed Tsarnaev as a “dreamy heartthrob.”

Rolling Stone Cover

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Here’s mine: People are making a bigger deal of this than it deserves.

Though Rolling Stone is primarily known for its essays on celebrities, it also has a history of covering current events, including crime and war. Charles Manson once graced the cover with the headline, “The Incredible Story of the Most Dangerous Man Alive.” The articles almost always involve a lot of investigative reporting and detail, although there’s a political bias to the writing, as well.

Charles Manson Rolling Stone Cover

Tsarnaev does indeed look like a rock star on the cover. He’s got that long, black, curly hair and boyish face (he is, after all, still a kid, at least in my book). But the headline and summary make it clear that this is not an expos&eacute on a dreamy heartthrob: “The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.”

It’s natural for us to want the bad guys to be denied their media spotlight. After all, many times the bad guys crave the coverage. But when a kid like this tries to kill a bunch of people, it’s important to ask why. How does a young person turn into a monster?

No matter what we learn and what we do to steer kids in the right direction, we can’t prevent all of them from turning violent. But we can still try, and in the Boston case, it’s useful to look at the family history that produced two murderers.

That he looks like a rock star on the magazine cover is unfortunate. If the magazine used the surveillance photos or a picture of a bloody, wounded Tsarnaev, we probably wouldn’t have the outrage.

But in the bigger picture, I think the outrage is pain misdirected.

The messenger is delivering an unpopular story, and when that happens our first instinct is to shoot the messenger.

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Obsessing About Snowden Blinds Us From Bigger Truths

I’ve hestitated to write about Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked details of top-secret mass surveillance programs to the press. People see him as either a hero or a traitor, but I’ve been conflicted.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/VRXpL8mdgpQ

I used to fear everything and wanted the government to do everything possible to keep me safe, even if it meant giving up some liberty. I eventually got past the fear and now believe we must live life to the fullest, even if it means we’re not always safe. That part of me distrusts government and considers Snowden a hero for exposing how much spying the NSA does on its own citizens.

I also write about information security for a living and have many friends in government. I’ve seen the risks they take to secure us from terrorists and online attackers and how they’ve resisted the urge to talk about what they see because they believe it would damage the greater good. Snowden used to work among them and, by doing what he did, betrayed them. That part of me thinks Snowden is a traitor. His flight from the authorities only solidified that feeling.

Yesterday I decided to take a position one way or the other. I invited friends on Facebook and Twitter to weigh in, and found that half of those who responded think he’s a hero and the other half think he’s a traitor.

But the comments made me realize that by focusing on Snowden and the NSA, we’re distracting ourselves from bigger truths.

The important thing is what this story says about many of us Americans:

  • How we get obsessed with hero worship without considering all the supposed hero’s motives. Those of use who mistrust government are quick to raise people like Snowden on a pedestal, viewing him as a brave soul who exposed government’s evil side. But when you flee and pass on government secrets to countries like Russia and China, countries far more challenged in the freedom department than the U.S., are you really heroic?
  • How we crave scapegoats because it’s easier to scowl at a scapegoat than consider how we allowed the government to spiral out of control. After 9/11, we were so scared that we willingly allowed the government to enact overreaching laws like the PATRIOT Act. We’ve been paying for it ever since.
  • How we miss the forest for the trees. The larger lesson is that we could change things if we were willing to do the work.

We need to stop the blame game and look at what we must do as Americans to change things for the better.

We must be willing to hold political leaders accountable and stop reelecting the very politicians who vote to authorize more and more government control.

We must own up to the fact that we allowed the government to head down this path. If we’re outraged about the end result, we have to reexamine how much safety we’re willing to give up in the name of liberty and push the government in whatever direction we set. Then we have to keep our eyes on the road instead of falling asleep at the wheel.

I admit all that is easier said than done. Democracy is a messy thing. Good people have a bitch of a time reaching consensus. We’re all conflicted and challenged by personal demons every day, and it can be hard to overcome those things to give better government the effort necessary. We’re all busy with family and work, which usually leaves little time for anything else.

Change is hard. But if we want it that badly, we have to work for it.

Edward Snowden

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Paula Deen and the N-Word

I’m not a fan of cooking celebrity Paula Deen. When I first heard The Food Network fired Deen for using the N-word in the past, I figured she got what she deserved. But part of me feels sorry for her.

Here’s one of three apology videos she made:

http://youtu.be/tDOezlc52z0

According to various news reports, including an item in The Huffington Post, Deen’s troubles stem from her admission that she used the N-word in the past. She said so as an attorney  questioned her under oath last month. “Yes, of course,” Deen said. “[But] it’s been a very long time.” Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, are being sued by a former manager of their Savannah, Ga., restaurant — Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House — who is accusing them of racism. From the HuffPost article:

The ex-employee, Lisa Jackson, says she was sexually harassed and worked in a hostile environment rife with innuendo and racial slurs. During the deposition, Deen was peppered with questions about her racial attitudes. At one point she’s asked if she thinks jokes using the N-word are “mean.” Deen says jokes often target minority groups and “I can’t, myself, determine what offends another person.” Deen also acknowledged she briefly considered hiring all black waiters for her brother’s 2007 wedding, an idea inspired by the staff at a restaurant she had visited with her husband. She insisted she quickly dismissed the idea.

If the accusations are true, Deen deserves the blow to her reputation, because it suggests she’s not being entirely truthful in that she and her family have no tolerance for racial slurs. But many of us would also be two-faced if we took joy in her predicament.

I’ve never cared about a person’s color, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. All that has ever mattered to me is that people be good to each other and live their lives with generous hearts. But as a young and stupid kid, I’d sometimes use the word for sheer shock value. It was the same attitude that made me think it would be cool to walk around wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt.

I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of angry hip-hop in which the artists used the N-word constantly. One of my favorites was Ice T’s band Body Count. This song gives you a pretty good idea of what unfolds throughout the album:

The songs were a reaction to how they dealt with racism, but my attitude was that if they used the N-word, I could. Racism never had anything to do with it.

Back then, I thought it was a big joke. In my drunken moments, I would play the most violent songs on the album (“Cop Killer” and “There Goes the Neighborhood”) and cackle myself blue. My attraction to that album illustrates what an angry person I was back then. I was spiritually adrift.

As I got older and matured, I got over it. Today, I hear the N-word and it makes me sick. I know the pain that word has caused so many good people, and it shames me that I once used it like it was nothing.

Having learned the lesson long ago, I can’t help but wonder if Paula Deen reached the same conclusion at some point — that racist language is intolerable. I hope so. The reaction against her is a sign that our society has become a lot more intolerant of racial hatred. It shows that society has evolved.

But we’re not done answering for the past.

In any event, I don’t her entire career should be destroyed over something she said decades ago, when a lot of us were using the same language.

Paula Deen

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If the Charges Are True, This Man Is a Monster

I tend to avoid the abortion issue, because it’s a no-win topic. But I’ve been following a murder trial recently that turns my stomach so severely that I can’t keep my mouth shut.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:21MwEJ8tHezcPy77BaELJ6]

The Catholic Church tends to label anyone who is against Roe v. Wade as being a baby killer. I don’t think the situation is that simple. I agree that abortion is wrong, tragic and evil. It disgusts me that some women choose to terminate a pregnancy because it’s inconvenient.

There are cases, however, when a pregnancy becomes a grave medical circumstance, such as when the mother’s life is in danger. This scenario is not abortion in my book; it’s a lost baby. And I’ve never met a person who was happy about losing a baby. They’re almost always devastated.

Yet the case of Kermit Gosnell is pretty straightforward. The Philadelphia abortion doctor is on trial for allegedly delivering live, screaming children and then snuffing them out. If the testimony of witnesses in this case are to be believed, and they seem pretty credible to me, this guy is a baby killer. He’s a monster who deserves a special place in Hell.

CNN paints the following picture:

A Pennsylvania doctor is accused of running a “house of horrors” in which he performed abortions past the 24-week limit allowed by law — even allegedly as late as eight months into pregnancy.

He used scissors, authorities say, to sever the spinal cords of newborns who emerged from their mothers still alive. …

Gosnell faces eight counts of murder: for the deaths of seven babies, and in the case of a 41-year-old woman who died of an anesthetic overdose during a second-trimester abortion.

The babies were born alive in the sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy, but their spinal cords were severed with scissors.

This story has not made the front page much. Melinda Henneberger of The Washington Post offers a possible reason:

I say we didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it’s genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That’s not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage.

That’s why I choose to write about this case today. This is a case study that forces us to look long and hard at our own positions. As disgusting as the details are, I think we need that look in the mirror sometimes.

If the charges are true, this man is a monster.
Kermit Gosnell