c. 1996 Religion News Service
(RNS)-The long mugging of Bernie Goetz continues.
Twelve years ago, Goetz shot four kids on a New York subway train. The kids were after his wallet. Now, one of the muggers is back and he’s better armed and more ambitious. This time he’s packing a lawyer and he wants $50 million.
After the moment that made him notorious, self-defense became Goetz’s career. His batting average of self-preservation shows him two for three. He kept his money in the subway. He beat an attempted murder rap in criminal court. But he was convicted of having an unlicensed firearm and served eight months in jail. Now he’s back where he started in 1984 with the same hostile stranger reaching for his wallet.
But plenty has changed in America since Goetz earned the nickname “subway vigilante.” Many states have passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. This is not a happy evolution. Even the people who champion these laws would have to admit that they represent a breakdown of civil order. They are a symbol of too many bad guys and too few cops.
In the days of the old West, a hero could ride into a town and tame it. The Hollywood historian who wrote the Western persuaded us that a town could be tamed in one dramatic gunfight. When the smoke cleared, the bad guys who were still alive high-tailed out of there. They didn’t hang around to declare victimization and go shopping for defense lawyers.
But these days the script sometimes takes a startling new turn. After a crime is committed, roles are often swapped. The victimizers of the first act become the victims in act three. A magician with a law degree takes their vice and, Presto!, reverses it.
In Philadelphia the other day, convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal filed a $2 million suit against National Public Radio for first agreeing and then refusing to run his commentaries recorded on death row. Abu-Jamal alleges he is the victim of artistic censorship.
I am an NPR fan and have, from time to time, unloaded commentaries on that network myself. But I joined those who protested the idea that a cop killer would be a welcome addition to the stable of NPR blabbermouths.
My reasons were admittedly simple. I thought it would be tough on Patrolman Daniel Faulkner’s family to twirl the radio dial and encounter the regularly scheduled musings of the man who killed him. There was no talk of giving Faulkner’s wife equal time, and Faulkner himself is obviously unavailable for comment.
In the face of a lot of flak, NPR backed down.
Since then, Abu-Jamal has been much in the news. His appeal that his original trial was unfair was denied by the court last fall. It is now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Abu-Jamal’s lawyer, Gerry Peller, has filed suit against NPR for removing his client’s constitutional right of free speech. Peller argues that NPR changed its mind about the commentaries only after a lot of protests, some of them from elected officials. That means, according to Peller, that Abu-Jamal was a victim of government repression.
What it really means, of course, is that somebody at NPR got some belated common sense and realized that convicted murderers are not merely interesting people with fresh and unorthodox points of view like vegetarians or nudists. If it was diversity NPR was after, it could have signed up a few conservatives. Though, given the network’s philosophical bent, it probably considers murderers less extreme.
Once, we all knew who the victims were. They were the people who were minding their own business when calamity struck them. There is no evidence that either Bernie Goetz or Patrolman Faulkner went out looking for trouble. Goetz’s life changed and Faulkner’s ended when trouble made the first move.
We used to know the difference between victims and victimizers. Who stole the rulebook? And why?
MJP END FEAGLER
