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| | Today, Tookie Williams
was shot up full of lethal drugs in order to kill him so that
American Justice can be served. It did kill him. Now he's fucking dead.
See you on the flip side Tookie. Keep it real. Yeah Arnold had him
snuffed. And a lot of fucking good it's done too. So very productive,
the death penalty. Such an efficient expenditure of energy and money.
Such a waste of human life and potential. Honestly, what's the point?
What good did it serve besides making a few people feel better,
imagining their own dead loved ones can finally sleep in peace and
allow a few smug, self-rightous smegheads to pat themselves on the
back. I'm
not even going to bother going into why I think the death penalty is
wrong. Why I think the State should not have the authority to kill its
own citizens. Why no human has the right to take another's life unless
in self-defense or defense of another. Why human and societal
imperfection considered, a trial by jury can never be expected to be
100% fail safe at the best of times. Not that I'm knocking trial by
jury, on the contrary I think its a vital right too often waived in this
decaying system. All I'm
saying is even the best legal system can make a mistake. And just so
you know there is some debate about whether ours is the best. But
that's irrelevent. You can never give back a life if you make a
mistake, once you've taken it. At least if
you have a guy in prison for life and new DNA evidence comes up that
aquits him, while you can't give him back his missing years, he at least
has his remaining ones. If someday it's proved Tookie was innocent...well, all
they will be able to say is "OOOPS!!!" But that...that isn't even the
fucking point right now.
All I can really say and the first thought that hits me is:
What a waste.
This guy was doing some good with his life, goddamit. Trying to make
amends as best he could for the mistakes he'd made. Frankly that's more
than a lot of us, maybe most of us, do, let alone convicted murderers.
You don't see Charles Manson talking to troubled teenagers. Timothy
McVeigh didn't give a fuck. Whether he did the deed they say he did or
not it's painfully obvious that Tookie Williams was trying to do his best
to fix his own fucked up karma and pick up what he could of his own mess in the time he had left.
Today Arnold and the State of California snuffed out his life.
Yeah Arnold. It's a mystery how this guy is even in this posiiton. It's
beyond ludicrous, and it's beyond the looking glass. Arnold in
Wonderland. It blew my mind that Californians voted for what is
essentially a cartoon
character. I wasn't around when Reagan was making movies so i dont know
if it felt the same way when he switched to politics. But Arnold will
always just be a big dumb musclebound fool to me. I actually kinda
liked him
when he was just doing sometimes entertaining action movies. He seemed
like he had a sense of humor. Could laugh at himself unlike Stalone or
the rest of those goons. But it was probably all just a big P.R.
prelude to this, the absolute absurd main act. Arnold the Guvenator.
Yeah I could write a separate essay on that whole bizzaro phenemonon. I
quickly decided I didnt like Arnold when I saw what he was like behind his onscreen persona. And this feeling was only
reinforced when i learned more about
him then I really ever wanted to in the run up to the california recall
election. The last action hero was in fact nothing but a
misogynist, groupie-groping hitler admirer! Then I saw what he did as
govenor, a
sharp turn to the hard right. Not even really holding up the
pretense of
being the supposed moderate Republican (practically an oxymoron these
days) he'd advertised himself as. But when it
comes down to it, all one really sees when one looks at Arnold is a
narcissistic bodybuilder who spent way too much time looking
at himself in the mirror at a formative part of his life and has never
quite
been able to get over himself. This pathetic dipshit probably really
does see
himself as some sort of great man and not the punchline most of the
rest of us have come to despise. I imagine that his self-conception is
of a kind of American demagogue
imported from the ashes of old German fascism and the father figure
adoration of Freud's worst wetdreams. You could take Hitler seriously
though. Charlie Chaplin moustache or no. Even Chaplin's own portrayal
of the great dictator in its scathing satire has done nothing to
lessen the sheer horrific majesty
of Hitler's seemingly unadulterated
evil as it exists now in the collective consciousness of our culture.
How many people automatically and almost unthinkingly reach for Hitler
as a source of analogy when seeking to convey unimpeacable evil?
Was any of this what Arnold had in mind when he said he admired Hitler
for his "strength"? God only knows. But my point is that Hitler could
be taken
seriously almost to the point of embodying the concept of evil itself
in the modern world. He's practically usurped Satan's own dark throne
in his solidification of this role as the
premere villain of the twentieth century, much as a cartoon Sadamn
Hussein did in the South Park movie. But Arnold's not even three
dimensional
outside his movies. Still got
the same damn one-liner quips while running for
"govenator". For the last four years half of my brain has simply wished
to deny
that many of the events that did took place. "No Bush didnt win (read:
steal) the elections". "No. No. No. That didnt happen. No. They didn't
use that as excuse to invade Iraq. No, goddamn it, this shouldn't be so easy for them. Why is
it unfolding like a fucking action movie script. Why??". But of course all these horrible things, they did happen. And now the perpetrators of demonic imagined destiny are writing
history as fast as they can and re-writing it even faster.
But this whole
Arnold shit. Jesus. Why didn't he just literally run as the
character "the Terminator" from the 2nd movie. Cos that's who people were
fucking voting for. I goddamn guarantee it.
Anyway...I
won't ever understand how you fuckwits in California who voted for him
think...maybe you just dont...that would explain a lot of things
actually. Well, the long and short of it is I'm actually toying with
the idea of throwing away all my Arnold movies. At the very fucking
least I hope
that heartless fuck loses his re-election campaign. God, if ever there
were a silver lining to come from this let it be that. Please Lord
terminate this flop of a sequel before it gets produced. So what
do you think? Should I get rid of The Terminator, The Terminator 2 and
Total Recall? They're pretty decent movies. Maybe I won't throw them
away. I understand
how melodramatic that would be. Equally absurd wouldnt it be? Do I
really want to give in to that rather lame impulse? Or is it the
principle of the thing? And what principle is that?
Maybe I should send them to him with a note that says "from a
former fan" like a friend suggested. I was never that much of fan
though. The Terminators are good movies. and Total Recall. Maybe Last
Action Hero. That's about
it. Predator pretty much blows. And Conan the Barbarian might be the
worst movie I've ever seen in my life, bar none. But even though the
explanation of time travel is ludicrous and
nonsensical and contradictory in those terminator movies (it was way
more coherent in the Back to the Future series) they are damn
entertainting. I just bought "The Terminator" part one from a thrift
store for a
dollar and believe it or not I watched it for the first time a couple
weeks ago. Yeah I may hate
fucking fascist Arnold as a person. And in fact I do. I may think
he is just overall a bad person,
frankly. And well, yes that's also true. But I believe we ought to be
able to separate a person's art
from the personality and actions of the artist. Just cos you don't like
the artist or disagree with him on this or that or even your most
cherished values, it doesn't mean the art automatically sucks
too or that you should force yourself to stop enjoying it. Salvador
Dali may have supported Franco and even been a bit of a fascist himself
but that doesnt stop him
from being my favorite painter. Axl Rose may be a fucking douche bag
and always was but theres at least three or four rocking songs on the
first Guns N' Roses album. Hmm maybe that's not the greatest example.
Charles Manson may have been....but....look at your game
girl...hmm..never mind. I think you get my point.
It really is a shame that we can't just send a Terminator back in time
to prevent Arnie ever coming to power in the first place or maybe just
melt him down after the terminator movies. I'm not advocating his death
of course, just the death of his career and ability to cause the deaths
of others as he's done today. What gets me is that this shmuck took a
week to decide the life of the
man. Making a great show of his wise deliberations. His careful
considerations. His quiet determinations. And then? After rasing hope
to an apropriately unrealstic level...he
fucking kills him anyway. And the result of all this pondering? What
did the "great man" conclude in the end. What was the basis for his
decision? His
explanation amounts to "Tookie didnt say he was sorry so I had to whack
him". Here is a a closer paraphrase of what Arnold actually said:
"One thing he hasn't done is the one thing he needs to do, show
remorse."
Yeah, except Tookie claims he's innocent. How the fuck are you
supposed to apologize and show remorse for murders you say you didn't
do? Huh? Huh? Answer that you musclebound ignoramous!!!! Just assuming that it's at least possible that
Tookie is indeed innocent of
these crimes like he claimed, then this fucking kindergarten cop-out is
asking
an impossible burden of the man. What does he want him to do? Fucking
lie and just say he did it even though he didnt???? Fucking hell! What
is
this? Theater? Should we have Bertolt Brecht write some melodramatic
yet strangly moving music for it? Is this just a show? Yeah it is cos
he's
supposed to show
remorse. Don't have to feel it. Just show it. One more time you fucking
Austrian anthropoid ape-man, lets run through this puzzle once more time you meatheaded moron and see if
you can piece it together. Here it is again:
So, just hypothetically for the sake of argument
just saying he was
innocent, should he have apologized for the murders anyway
and shown remorse even though he didn't do them? That's absurd. That's
a Tom Stoppard play!!! No, it's Samuel Becket!!!!!!!!You made us wait
for Godot for a week Arnold. Why make absurd theater of this whole thing?
Admit it fucker! You were always gonna kill him and you were never
gonna spare him.
Now, you might think perhaps I'm being too harsh on this Hitlerphiliac
hulk who fancies himself worthy to dish out death to the deserving. I
admit I've sometimes been guilty of this vice in the past. So let me
attempt to adopt a more
reasonable, a more fair and balanced, a less emotional, a less cynical
attitude. Let us attempt to crawl inside the mind (such as it is) of
the Blonde Beast himself. Just what was Arnold thinking. What was his
thought process.
Perhaps it went something like this: Perhaps Arnold just thought "well
the facts show the Big Black Man did it and the
facts can't be wrong so if he says otherwise he's lying and he's
unrepentent, and so it is right that he should die". Maybe you
are pursuaded by the line of reasoning that goes "he can't be pardoned
for what he won't admit to". Maybe that is a convincing and rational
argument worthy indeed of our consideration. Yeah maybe. Maybe Twins
was a good
movie. In some alternate universe. Maybe in some weird bizzaro Arnold
world, a movie that revolves around a pregnant male body builder
sounded
like a good premise for a plot, was a critical smash and a blockbuster
success...maybe or maybe it just sounded like a good idea at the time.
Maybe. And Maybe I'm running out of lame Arnold references and
should just get to the point already. Well all this may very well be
true.
But the thing is...everyone who follows this line of reasoing is presupposing Tookie's guilt. And the
facts of the case just aren't that clear. Are they ever really crystcal
clear
when human life is at stake? When race is a factor? When...yes, yes but
in this case it really is a little murky. So think about this:
From what I've read two of the star witnesses for the prosecution were
convicted felons who were promised benefits in exchange for testifying
which one would think might compromise their testimony just a little.
Sure, sure, sure. I know. That's how it always goes. That's how the
system
works. No big deal. No big aberration. Just business as usual. Yeah????
And ??? AND??? The point isn't whether this shit happens or even
whether it happens a lot. The point is if and when it happens, is it
right and doesn't it comprimise the furtherance of justice? And do I have
to even ask this last question? Do we care about justice? Do we care
about truth or do we just care
about guilty verdicts and finding scapegoats? I'm not saying he's
innocent. Who really is
these days afterall? Throw a rock. Tookie was very fucking far from
being a saint. The guy founded the Crips. Hardly a spotless little
lamb.
Sacrificial goat maybe. But not a blameless lamb. Okay. But he wasn't
convicted for starting a street gang and whatever shit he presumably
did that he didn't
get cought for. And, at least in theory, he wasn't killed by lethal
injection because he started the Crips. He was convicted for specific
murders. That and that
alone is what comes into play here in a consideration of his guilt. The
other shit is neither here nor there. But on a side note, if remorse and
redemption is what Arnold got his panties in a bunch about, don't you
think devoting the last 20 years of your life to try to undo some of the ill you've
done, writing children's books against gangs, warning kids agaisnt gangs.
Arranging a truce between the Bloods and the Crips? From what I
understand this
guy had credibility with gangs. Maybe the cynical LA cops who like to run
their mouths to the papers about this case are right.
Maybe today's Crips, Snoop Dogg aside, don't know who Tookie was and
don't give a
fuck. Yeah lots of maybes. Well, so what? The real point is the guy was
obviously trying to make a difference and make amends as best he could
for what he did
do. And the murders? Well he's always maintained he didn't do those.
Maybe he's just lying. Maybe he's just a lying rat-bastard murderer
who deserved to die. Look, I'm not even suggesting that he wasn't. I'm
not even saying he was innocent of those murders. That's not what I'm
saying. Cos I don't know. I don't know who knows. I don't know the
truth. All I'm saying is that it's at least possible that he didn't do
it. All I'm suggesting is that this was not a clear cut case. That's
all. But with that comes the inescapable conclusion that there was a window of possibility that the govenor was about to
kill a wrongly convicted man. And this isn't that far-fetched. This shit does happen. Far too often. Maybe it didnt
happen here. Maybe they got their man. But It could
have. That's all.
That's all I'm saying. And I
guess the fact that it was an all white jury is irrelevent too. I would
never dare to suggest that this country might be just a little
prejudiced. Oh no. Like John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia said,
"we
are not a racist country". Of course we arn't. Countires can't be
racist. A Nation state is an abstract concept that cannot have
attidudes or attributes such as "racist". It is a void that we project
our own
attidutes and attributes onto. A canvass we spurt our Jackson Pollack
jism on to create the
final masterpiece we lovingly call our own and pretend it has always
existed and always had to look this way. Well doesn't it always look
that way after the fact? But the actual attitudes come from
individuals. Still, the
thing is, some of those individuals, do have predujdices. And a white
person is simply more likely to be prejudiced against a black man than
a black person is against another black person. For whatever reason.
And well,
there's something to be said for the concept of the jury of one's
peers. Was the all white jury, made up of Tookie's peers? I don't mean that in a moralistic
sense but in an experiential sense and in terms of class, and of
course, in terms of race.
Could any of those jururs really empathize for a minute with the kind
of life a black man
who started a violent gang has led, and the circumstances that led to
his actions? I don't know. You decide. Make up your own mind on this
and all things. I don't know the answers to these
questions. I think they're worth asking though. But in the
end...it doesn't bring anyone back to life. Not the original murder
victims that Tookie may or may not have killed. And certainly not
Tookie. I predict that much of Holywood will arbitrarily deify him of course, even more than
when he was alive, as they ignore other individual death
penalty cases and the death penalty as an issue in and of itself. The insidious idea will be pushed forth that while
Tookie should have been spared, special saintlike Tookie, Joe Blow on
Death Row deserves what he gets. And it will keep on like that as long
as we feel the need to make human sacrficies to some imagined Gods of
Eye-for-Eye Justice in this blind, blind world. And it stay that
way until America finally
decideds to join the civilzed world and outlaw the death penalty
altogether. But until that day. Life goes on, for the rest of us. Oh
well. Who cares right? Do I really care? Do I really
give a fuck? Do you, if you're still politely reading along at this
point in this overblown tirade? It's not like I actually knew this guy I'm writing about. Chances are you
didn't either. Just another black guy on death row to most of us. And
now he's
dead. It's all so banal and so pointless and so predictable.
But...nevertheless...
You know i was kinda surprised I have to admit. I didnt actually think
Arnold had
much of a heart but I thought he would look at this from a shrewd
polititian's point of view and seeing how his approval polls are about
as low as Bush's right now, maybe he'd think "hey here's a chance
to show
I'm not quite such a right-wing prick as I've made myself out to be".
(Cutting nurses benefits should be too shameless for anyone to
contemplate but Arnie has no shame aparantly). Well turns out I
was wrong. But then again maybe I'm not wrong about
my theory of Arnold's motives but just wrong about a few
background facts. I just found out
that, as well as the majority of Californians supporting the death
penalty, (real fucking liberal oasis isn't it, the sunshine state?),
aparantly the majority supported killing Tookie in particular. So
I suppose the
people have spoken. And the people crave ritual killing. Its like a
gladitorial event, in a way.
The fucking emperor looks out at the people imperiously (as emperors
are wont to do), and, benevolently (as many like to see themselves),
gazes down and
gauges accurately the reaction of the roaring crowd. The great man
gives a majestic, stately, princely, sagely...thumbs down! His penalty is death. And that penalty must be paid. Who cares if
this guy was actually doing some good in the world from his prison
cell? Who gives a fuck that we are one of the last western countries
that still uses the death penalty? Who really gives a shit that we exceute
minors for fuck's sake! Puting
us in an elite group, as has been said by others
before, with Iran and Saudi Arabia! Incidentally, the other thing those
two countries have in common with us, besides despotic rulers, is a
highly religious overall
population, along with a powerful and influential religious
fundamentalist subsection of that population. Make of that what you
will. I didn't say
shit. Just reporting the facts. Just the facts, ma'am. But I've just
gotta say, man, it sure feels good to be
living in the greatest country in the world! Wow, I sure am glad I was
lucky enough to be born white and middle class, Christian, and
American, that's
all I know. I don't
know why more people don't apperciate the wonderful "freedom"
we have to offer the rest of the world. Those Iraqis, for instance,
what
a a buncha
ungreatful assholes. Can you say sour grapes?
| | | Posted 12/13/2005 11:09 PM - 8 comments
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