Variations on a theme: Depravity

Two stories of a common theme, both from The Stranger‘s regular “Last Days” column, penned by David Schmader.

Last year:

FRIDAY, JUNE 1 The week continues with the aforementioned differently abled street brawler, thanks to the eagle eyes of Hot Tipper Genevieve: “As I was meandering my way through Westlake Center toward Pacific Place for this afternoon’s SIFF screening of the documentary Crazy Love (highly recommended) [Last Days seconds that recommendation], I saw a twentysomething woman in a kiwi-green halter top and tight capri pants who’d somehow managed to pick a fight with a slightly obese middle-aged woman in a wheelchair. And I mean a real fight. The sporty young woman would swoop in mantis-like for a strike only to be fended off with a skillful hook from her stationary adversary. Truly, the disabled pugilist dominated the fight, making solid contact with every blow, causing the other woman to dance back skittishly after failing to land a single solid punch. As I watched from a distance, I reflected on the epic proportions of the Manichaean duel taking place, thinking to myself that the meek shall inherit the Earth, indeed.”

And just a couple weeks ago:

SUNDAY, MAY 18 The week ends with an extraordinary tale of “religion gone bad and valiant community spirit” from that inexhaustible forum for freakery known as King County Metro, reported by heroic Hot Tipper Oscar. “I was riding the 18 headed downtown, when out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement. When I turned to look, I saw a man repeatedly hitting a blind woman seated at the front of the bus. An older gentleman seated next to the woman jumped up and tried to intervene, but a quick punch to the head knocked him back down into his seat. Once I realized that what I was seeing was real, I rushed the assailant and grabbed him by the arms while he yelled at me to ‘keep out of this. You got no idea what’s really happening here’ and the woman cowered and covered her head. He kept screaming about ‘being filled with the power of God’ and threatening to kill me for stopping him from doing God’s work. Three other passengers helped me hold him while another rider called 911. Another passenger was assisting the assaulted woman, who’d been hit so hard she was bleeding. The police arrived and apprehended the attacker, then took all of our names. While one young lady was telling her story, I heard her say that when the assailant got on the bus he saw the blind woman and said, ‘God says all sick people must die,’ then started hitting her. [Confidential to the psychotic assailant: Blind people aren’t sick, and all people must die. Back to Oscar:] The assaulted woman was checked by paramedics and declared physically okay, except for scratches and bruising, then got a ride home from a fire marshal. Thanks to all my fellow Metro riders who pitched in and stood up for someone unable to defend herself.”

You know, when I was a kid, I got the standard lecture about how bullies are just scared and desperate and looking for someone—anyone—whose misery might compensate for whatever the bully lacks. And this makes a certain amount of sense. But attacking the blind or the wheelchair-bound seems a particularly severe escalation that, at best, only testifies to a growing sense of depravity about humanity.

Better reading?

I added a new link to the blogroll earlier today. Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch, from WashingtonPost.com makes for good reading if political news is your thing.

Of course, I managed to get the link up as Mr. Froomkin heads off for a short break. He’ll be back on June 2.

Yeah. That’s my bad. Anyway, check out recent columns on Karl Rove, Bush’s recent dust-up with NBC, or the president’s wartime sacrifice. Or just drop the feed into your favorite viewer.

Or don’t. Not my business, I guess.

Pig what? (Basketball and the decline of empires)

The decline of an empire is something that, in history, seems very apparent. Few if any omens have been persuasive enough to shake the people awake. Rome still fell. And life goes on.

Argument One: The Seattle SuperSonics are preparing to leave town and it is only, really, after it is too late to do anything substantive and dignified about it that people are starting to panic. 

Argument Two: People are starting to panic.

Argument Three: The lawsuit attempting to keep the team in Seattle through the end of its lease is already a disaster, involving accusations of bad faith and suspicions of Machiavellian cabals.

Argument Four: The current owners of the basketball team have filed a motion asking that two witnesses—radio host Mitch Levy and author Sherman Alexie—be barred from testifying.

Psychologist needed: Ownership culture run amok

There is nothing like the perversity of prudish sexual obsession to shake off the doldrums after a couple of unproductive weeks. When you make the mistake of laughing so hard that your daughter asks you what’s up, and, well, she’s five years old, it’s not like you really want to explain the joke at this point. So you end up saying something mitigating. I came up with, “Silly people. Silly people.”

Let us hop back a few years to Le’a Kent’s examination of homophobia and politics, called “‘Abnormal, Wrong, Unnatural and Perverse:’ Taking the Measure (9) of the Closet“, written in the wake of the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance failed 1992 effort to institutionalize Christian bigotry in that state. Ms. Kent quoted Judith Butler:

Elsewhere in her discussion of Helms’s legislation, Butler delineates the same slide from homosexuality to pedophilia to sadomasochism that informs Measure 9:

“The exploitation of children” comes [immediately after sadomasochism in the text of Helms’s legislation], at which point I begin to wonder: what reasons are there for grouping these three categories together? Do they lead to each other, as if the breaking of one taboo necessitates a virtual riot of perversion? Or is there, implicit in the sequencing and syntax of this legal text, a figure of the homosexual, apparently male, who practices sadomasochism and preys on young boys, or who practices sadomasochism with young boys, a homosexuality which is perhaps defined as sadomasochism and the exploitation of children? Perhaps this is an effort to define restrictively the sexual exploiter of children as the sadomasochistic male homosexual in order, quite conveniently, to locate the source of child sexual abuse outside the home, safeguarding the family as the unregulated sexual property of the father?

The horses love to run

To revisit a point I made last month:

I have this thing about animals and competition. The horses love to run, say the advocates. Do we still add weight to slow them down if they’re screwing up the odds? And what the hell is that event that always used to make ESPN, with a riot of horses falling down a riverbank? Oh, hell yeah. The horses really seemed to love that one.

This just in, from the storied Kentucky Derby:

Eight Belles crossed the finish line second in the Kentucky Derby today and then jockey Gabriel Saez heard the worst sound possible – a pop.

Saez said the filly did not take a bad step, but he heard the pop and tried to pull her up.

“I tried to get her to stop,” he said. “I tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t stop.”

Eight Belles, in scoring the best finish for a filly in the Derby since Winning Colors won the race in 1988, suffered condylar fractures of both front legs. She was euthanized on the track.

But, hey, other than that, it was a good run.

Online campaign thanks Helen Thomas for effort last month

Okay, this is too cool to pass up. And it’s important, too. I suppose we should start with the important, which is a fantastic, even spectacular—by Beltway standards—exchange between venerable Hearst columnist Helen Thomas and White House Press Secretary Dana Perino regarding the ongoing saga of waterboarding and the torture question.

After a period of near disinterest by the White House press corps in the wake of an April 9 report by ABC news that put decisions regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques” much closer to the White House than officials had previously acknowledged, Thomas raised the issue during Perino’s regular press briefing on April 23:

Q The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?

MS. PERINO: Helen, you’re taking liberties with the what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is — I’ll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.

Q That’s not my question. My question is, why did he state publicly, we do not torture —

MS. PERINO: Because we do not.

Q — when he really did know that we do?

MS. PERINO: No, that’s what I mean, Helen. We’ve talked about the legal authorities —

Q Are you saying that we did not?

MS. PERINO: I am saying we did not, yes.

Q How can you when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it?

MS. PERINO: Helen, I think that you’re — again, I think you’re conflating some issues and you’re misconstruing what the President said.

Q I’m asking for the credibility of this country, not just this administration.

MS. PERINO: And what I’m telling you is we have — torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure — I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.

Q You’re denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.

Thomas, disgusted by the answer and the press corps’ complicity, rebuked her fellows: “Where is everybody? For God’s sake.”

Okay, yeah. Important and cool. But it gets even better. As word of the exchange—and the accompaniment C-SPAN footage—made its way around the web, an outpouring of gratitude made its way to Thomas. Musician and graphic designer Micah Fitch organized an online campaign to send flowers to thank her for her efforts. According to Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts of the Washington Post, at least fifty bouquets had arrived at Thomas’ office so far, and more than five hundred people contributed $4,300 to the tribute. Thomas intends to share the flowers with friends and hospitals.