Alleged Black-on-White Attack a Big Misunderstanding

By Nicholas Stix Mislabeling A great many misconceptions have been spread regarding an alleged incident that allegedly occurred in Marine Park, Brooklyn, allegedly on March 30. That was when 20-30 African-American young people allegedly attacked four white females, allegedly shouting “black power,” “white crackers,” and “Martin Luther King.” Many people across the country have used terms like “racist,” “hate crime,” and “bias attack” to describe the alleged incident. Such terms are obviously false. As progressive thinkers have long taught us, it is impossible for anyone Black to be guilty of racism. On the other hand, as progressives have explained, it is almost impossible for anyone white NOT to be guilty of racism. Hate crime legislation was enacted, in order to help people of color against caucasians. NYPD Deputy Inspector Kevin McGinn, the commanding officer of the 63rd Precinct, had the right attitude, when he said, “This is not being looked at as a bias crime.” However, Inspector McGinn was overruled by the racist city corporation counsel. New York Post reporters Angelina Cappiello and Patrick Gallahue also had the right attitude, in suggesting that only white supremacists could be angry at the African victims. Selective Enforcement Every day in New York, indeed, across Amerikkka, African-Americans of all ages must confront white racial insensitivity. For example, the alleged attackers had requested that the alleged victims (and how do we know they didn’t fake their so-called injuries?!?) let them use the basketball court. By the caucasians’ own admission, they refused to hand over the court to the Africans! How much does a young African-American have to take in this country, before she loses her mind, and just goes off?! And why should these proud, young Black women be prosecuted? Other proud African-Americans confront racist whites every day, without being prosecuted. The Need for Education Instead of being criminalized, the alleged attackers need counseling. Caring, committed, African-American professionals need to explain to these young women that they should avoid confrontations with european-american females attending Catholic school, as the latter tend to have racist relatives on the police force and in the fire department, who have not yet been neutralized. Tell the young sisters to bide their time in such cases. Eventually, the uniformed services will be cleansed of such stains. The professionals need to emphasize to the sisters that it is safest to confront racist, white males, if you’ll pardon the redundancy. African-American women virtually never go to jail for confronting racist, white males. The Real Criminals As New York Post reporter Leonard Greene, a truly righteous brother, explained, the publisher of the Brooklyn Skyline newspaper is guilty of a “hate crime.” The Skyline published a “one-sided” story that made the African sisters look guilty, and published angry letters by a bunch of racist, white crackers. As Brother Greene suggested, as with any hate crime, the authorities need to arrest the publisher of the Skyline, the newspaper’s entire staff, and the letter writers. The government needs further to shut down every Web site that has spread this defamation against the African race. The First Amendment does not exist to spread hate. The spreading of such insensitivity cannot and will not be tolerated. No tolerance for intolerance! Where are Sonny Carson and Khalid Muhammad, when you really need them?! Ultimately, one must ask how any African can be prosecuted in America. The white man’s law doesn’t apply to Africans. Peace!

Terri Schiavo, Political Prisoner

Published April 16. Updated 1:34 a.m., April 23. I know what you’re thinking. Terri Schiavo, may she rest in peace, died on March 31. But indeed, she still “lives,” and still functions in the same way she always did, for partisans on the Left and Right alike: As a symbol for their respective causes. The Right, Part I: I know, I know. You cared so much for Mrs. Schiavo that you obsessively called her “Terri,” as if she were your sister or daughter or best friend. You claimed she “taught” us so much. What did she teach you? Anyone who claimed that Mrs. Schiavo taught him something was either projecting his own fantasies onto her, or insane. I don’t see how either position shows any respect for the person that was Terri Schiavo. Folks on the Right decided that morality trumped the law, so we didn’t need to bother ourselves with legalistic fine points like Mr. Schiavo’s legal rights, because he was a bad guy. Well, you know what? I’ve got morality and God on my side, so the next time one of you disagrees with me, I think I’ll just blow your head off, because I too am above the law. I didn’t learn anything from Terri Schiavo, because I never knew her, and she hadn’t communicated anything to anyone in 15 years. But I learned plenty from the people who claimed to speak on her behalf. Heck, one conservative colleague even called another conservative colleague a “moral r--------t,” which among Republican writers is like calling someone the “n”-word, and which is used as profligately by Republicans as the “n”-word is by urban blacks. (The frequency with which a Republican scribe uses the epithet “moral r--------t” is generally in inverse relation to his understanding of the concept.) The Left, Part I: On the Left, statists who for fifty years had torn the Constitution to shreds, who called it a “living” document, who found new constitutional rights buried within penumbras within interstices, and who never saw a state court decision they opposed that didn’t require a federal nullification and usurpation of state courts, suddenly became born-again, Constitutional conservatives who were ready to die for States’ rights. Many leftists and secularists wanted to use Mrs. Schiavo to fight for euthanasia and so-called assisted suicide (translation: homicide), as part of their vision of a Netherlands-style humanitarian utopia, in which doctors who are as omniscient and all-benevolent as themselves would compassionately murder, er, end the suffering, of all considered superfluous to the state. The Right, Part II: Cong. Tom DeLay and some fellow conservative Republicans claimed that the handling of the Schiavo case typified an out-of-control, activist judiciary, and that it is time to teach those black-robed scoundrels a lesson. That’s a howler, since in the Schiavo case it was the judges who respected the law … for once. DeLay and Co. remind me of a Jackie Mason joke. Mason tells of the difference between Jews and Italians, during his New York childhood. With Jews, it was always, “If he says one more word!” Since in Mason’s neighborhood, apparently, Jews generally didn’t like to fight, somehow the Jews never heard the “word.” But with the Italians it was the opposite. Boom, out of nowhere, an Italian would slug somebody, and everyone would ask, “What’d he say? What’d he say?” In the story, “Terri and the Judges,” Tom DeLay plays the Italian role. DeLay had been aching to “slug” a judge for the longest. And so he did, slugging non-activist judges, and then using the same story he’d saved up for the judicial activists. DeLay also needs to rouse his own base and elude the Democrat-dominated posse that includes his old, liberal Republican nemesis, Connecticut Cong. Christopher Shays, which seeks to topple him as majority speaker. Most of the charges against DeLay are unsubstantiated or mere hearsay, excepting the charge that DeLay, in a legal but ethically dubious move, paid his wife and daughter hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to work for him. And I think the GOP had a very particular reason for continuing to play “Terri’s Song.” The party is heading towards schism over Pres. Bush’s attempt to ram his stealth amnesty (aka guest worker plan) for illegal immigrants down the throats of a party rank-and-file that is overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty. However, that same rank-and-file is opposed to abortion, and sees the Schiavo case as part of a seamless garment of life. If the Party leadership could keep stoking the fire over Mrs. Schiavo, they figured they could burn off all that energy from the base that would otherwise go into fighting the President’s lunatic amnesty (an amnesty that will economically destroy much of his base). And at the same time, a lot of ambivalent religious conservatives could play “Terri’s Song” as an opportunity to distract themselves from their anger over the President’s betrayal of them on immigration. The Left, Part II: Love him or hate him – and I sure don’t love him -- you have to give Jesse Jackson credit for being one smart political operator. While the DNC leadership clumsily seeks to pander to religious values (‘Hey, some of my best friends are racist, sexist, homophobic Christian nutjobs.’), and party sophist George Lakoff (and all his Democrat “mini-mes”) tries to conjure up new ways to “frame” debate, so that Democrats will look as though they respect the religious beliefs of voters whom they hold in contempt, Jackson went down to Pinellas Park, Florida. He met with Mrs. Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, stood vigil outside the hospice where Mrs. Schiavo was dying, and prayed with the Christian crowd, which was overwhelmingly conservative and white. Jackson said that “justice must be tempered with mercy,” he said he came “gladly” (boy, did he ever!), and he got out his cell phone and called black political comrades in Florida, telling each, “I’m asking you for a favor,” in seeking to get the state legislature to give a legislative solution one more shot. I was very impressed. Unlike the DNC and George Lakoff, Jackson doesn’t need an interpreter or an acting coach, in order to speak to Christians. Religious demagoguery comes so naturally to him, he can probably make himself swoon. Jackson also said, “This is a moral issue and it transcends politics and family disputes.” If you think he believes that, I have a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge. But I’m not blaming Jackson. He was triangulating, in the best tradition of Bill Clinton, who also never had trouble with “God-talk,” to save the Democrat Party, a party which to a large degree is in its current fix because of Jackson’s own success at chasing away white Christians, and to save his own political skin. The party desperately needs to bring conservative Democrats back into the fold, and maybe even win over some Republicans. If you recall, Madame Hillary has made two overtures to the Right in recent months, in softening her approach on abortion, and in taking a way-to-the-right-of-the-GOP leadership (but not to the right of the base) position on illegal immigration. Jackson’s trip to Florida may have been a calculated bit of more of the same. Note, too, that DNC apologists – no doubt following Prof. Sophist, er, Lakoff, keep telling us that Howard Dean is a “moderate Democrat.” And Jackson desperately needs to show that he is not exclusively a politically alienating force, where Southern whites are concerned. The Right, Part III. The RNC, which unlike the Democrats, will tell you that they never play wag-the-dog, poll-driven politics, saw poll results saying that “Terri’s Song” was not selling among the American people. And so, the party leadership doesn’t want to beat a dead woman anymore. Unfortunately, the party base does, and not beating Mrs. Schiavo will bring us back to that little problem centered these days around Cochise County, Arizona, in addition to making the leadership look like hypocrites who only care about expediency. And so, the RNC may face the Hobson’s choice of schism (between party elites and base) over immigration or schism over Mrs. Schiavo. The Left, Part III. Well, if the RNC has decided that you can’t beat a dead woman, the DNC is stomping her with abandon. As DNC Chairman Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and past and future presidential candidate said on April 15, "We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on." He really said that! Some people never learn. As reported by the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Finnegan, as Dean told a group of wealthy gay activists, Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality, in West Hollywood,

"This is going to be an issue in 2006, and it's going to be an issue in 2008, because we're going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, 'Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not? Or is that going to be up to your loved ones?' "… "The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?"

Finnegan wrote,

“Before Schiavo's death, the Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation giving her parents the right to take action in federal court to have her feeding tube reinserted, but no judge intervened…. “Although Democrats voted for the measure, Dean said it provided an opportunity to showcase what he called Republican intrusiveness in the lives of Americans.”

In the Gospel According to Howard, if Democrats and Republicans both vote in favor of federal intervention in a private matter, the Republicans are somehow deserving of contempt, but Democrats are not. If the confused former governor meant “higher power,” he was either using a euphemism for God, in which case one must ask why Christians’ “higher power” is not permitted (I’m sure Dean would never be so disrespectful towards Muslims); or he was using New Age jargon for the ego, in which he was saying that every individual (as long as he isn’t a Christian, I guess), is God. Apparently, Dean wants to lock up the atheist, narcissist, and confused votes early. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Dean, that any political capital he may gain from attack ads using pictures of Tom DeLay will be offset by pictures and audio of Dean addressing Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality, even going so far as to attack fellow Democrats, in espousing his ardent support for gay marriage. "What I really object to is Democrats who support the constitutional ban [on gay marriage], because I think putting in constitutional discrimination in either the United States Constitution or individual state constitutions is wrong." Meanwhile, Dean has managed to destroy all the good will Jesse Jackson had worked so hard to earn with white Evangelicals. You don’t think Dean is secretly on the take from the RNC, do you? The Right, Part IV. Stay tuned. The Left, Part IV. Ditto. As I wrote earlier, my friend Jim Bowman has convinced me that moral issues do come into play in the Terri Schiavo case, but I believe that they are a matter of private whispers, prayers, and tears. When it comes to the megaphones of public debate, however, Mrs. Schiavo remains a prisoner of power politics.

Insatiable Beducators

By Nicholas Stix I sent the following letter to the Village Voice on April 13, in response to Rachel Kramer Bussel’s sex column, “Lusty Lady. In “Teens’ Sexual Rights” (April 8), Rachel Kramer Bussel quotes her sex ed friends as insisting that they are just spreading enlightenment, not sex. And I was born yesterday. When sex ed pushers got started, it was with an avowed agenda to change society. After they succeeded, they switched, rhetorically, to Plan B: “Education only mirrors society.” Bussel’s sex pushers are dissatisfied with “abstinence” education, and desire to enlighten people. Me, too. I want “abstinence” ed out of the public schools, too, and to enlighten parents that they in fact have the right to remove their children from sex ed classes. The same people who demand that the state stay out of their bedrooms, want the state pushing other people’s children into bedrooms. When the sex ed pushers got started, the white illegitimacy rate was negligible, and the black rate was an alarming 22%. Now, the white rate is 22%, while the black rate, which a few years ago hit 70%, is 68%. But they’re still not satisfied. Sex ed, the short course: If you have sex, I’ll kill you. Adolescent sexual rights, the short course: My son has the right to have sex with any consenting girl of age of his choosing, provided that he has reached his 30th birthday, he’s paying his own rent or mortgage, and his mother has approved the girl. He is then free to do as he pleases.

Crime Myths and the New York Times

Fifteen minutes ago, I sent the following letter to the New York Times. You may notice that it weighs in at about double the paper’s 150-word limit. I usually try and stay within that limit, even though for political reasons, it is an exercise in futility. The Times hasn’t published any of my letters to the editor since 1997, its editors have no intention of publishing me in the future, and I haven’t felt like sending it letters using aliases over the past eight years. And since this letter could not be composed on the cheap, were it to make any worthwhile points, and I planned on publishing it myself from the get-go, I decided to do it right. To the Editor: In John Tierney’s April 16 column (“The Miracle That Wasn’t”), he accepts Steven D. Levitt’s theory, whereby legalized abortion caused the drop in crime in New York, as opposed to Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping-point” (“epidemic”) theory. And yet, it is not clear how much of the reduction in violent crime in New York even occurred, and if it did, whether the real cause wasn’t an elaborate con game. Mr. Gladwell’s theory begs the question: What caused the “tipping point”? He has written that it was due to police being more aggressive in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But in the crime-ridden neighborhoods I lived and worked in at the time, the police actually became more timid. Meanwhile, Mr. Levitt’s theory has repeatedly been disproved by writer Steve Sailer, who showed that the greatest crime reduction in New York was among men born before abortion was legalized there in 1970, that illegitimacy increased unabated immediately after 1970, and that teenagers born there after 1970 went on the greatest murder spree in U.S. history. And since the early-to-mid 1990s, the NYPD has been repeatedly exposed engaging in massive fraud in crime reporting by Newsday’s Leonard Levitt, myself, and several other local journalists. Following the tragic police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, local media organizations stopped reporting on crime statistics fraud for three years, as reporters and editors instead perpetrated the “racial profiling” hoax, until its target, Mayor Giuliani, left office in January, 2002. If there truly was a “tipping point,” it occurred when criminals came to believe – aided by journalists,’ politicians,’ and activists’ spreading of the racial profiling hoax – that the NYPD was being more aggressive. But the full truth regarding New York crime is unknown and perhaps unknowable.

Mets Beat Braves 6-1

In a dominating, complete game, two-hitter, Pedro Martinez got his first win as a Met.

Smoltz Knocked Out, Mets Take Big Lead

Atlanta Braves righthander John Smoltz took the hill in the top of the eight inning with observers buzzing about his chances at setting a new single-game strikeout record. But after one bad pitch, a hanging, belt-high curve-ball to the Mets new free agent centerfielder Carlos Beltran, all the talk was an ancient memory, as was Smoltz. Beltran hit a two-run dinger. The next batter, leftfielder Cliff Floyd, hit a solo shot on the new pitcher’s first pitch, first baseman Doug Mientkewicz then missed a home-run to centerfield by just a few feet, and had to settle for a double, and the next batter, third basemen David Wright, hit a two-run shot. And so, by the time the bleeding had stopped, the 0-5 Mets had turned a 1-0 deficit into a 5-1 lead. Mets starter Pedro Martinez, who has nine strikeouts through eight full innings, has yet to reach 100 pitches, and may be sent out by skipper Willie Randolph to at least start the ninth inning. With one out in the top of the ninth, Beltran hit a run scoring single, to extend the Mets’ lead to five runs.

Mets vs. Braves, in Progress

Through six innings, John Smoltz has 14 strikeouts for the Braves, who are winning 1-0, in a game that is on a pace to be completed in 2:24. Smoltz is on a pace to set a new one-game strikeout record (Roger Clemens struck out 20 men in a game twice, and Kerry Wood did it once). Pedro Martinez has eight Ks for the Mets, and if this rate continues, both teams will set a new record for the most combined Ks in a nine-inning game. The pitchers are being helped by a home plate umpire who is calling high strikes.

Marching for Wisdom with Marian Wright Edelman and Halley Suitt

When socialist David N. Dinkins was New York’s mayor (1990-1993), he often said that “Service to others is the rent we pay for our time on Earth.” I was always moved by Mayor Dinkins’ recitation of the line. He intoned the words with gravitas at every policemen’s funeral. Policemen’s funerals never fail to move me. And since more policemen were murdered during Mayor Dinkins’ one term than under any other mayor in New York’s history, I got to hear the line with disturbing frequency. I naively took for granted that the words were the Mayor’s. That proved to be a mistake. Mayor Dinkins also got fulsome praise for saying that New York is “a gorgeous mosaic,” though the phrase had been coined by Democrat New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. (The distinction “socialist/Democrat” is because Dinkins was a member of Democratic Socialists of America; to my knowledge, the liberal Cuomo wasn’t.) I later saw the line about service attributed to socialist Marian Wright Edelman, who also coined the phrase “leave no child behind.” Slightly modified, “LNCB” became the name of a well-meaning but misbegotten piece of legislation, “No Child Left Behind” (“NCLB”), which for better or worse, is one of the main domestic legacies of President Bush’s first term. (In 1996, Edelman’s husband, Peter, resigned from the Clinton Administration, to protest the President’s signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Act into law, which ended welfare as a lifetime entitlement. In other words, Peter Edelman was taking a moral stand against moral responsibility and self-reliance. But don’t worry about the Edelmans. They run in circles where no morally bankrupt gesture ever goes unrewarded. And so, poor Peter Edelman was given a law professorship at Georgetown University.) There’s nothing wrong with service to others, except that for Marian Wright Edelman, all service must be bankrolled by an all-powerful, socialist state, and ultimately serve that state. LNCB was the "American" counterpart to the allegedly African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” In certain circles, an African provenance gives a statement automatic authority. There is something about the continent where popular culture does not even pay lip-service to the notion that slavery, genocide, and kleptocracy are evil, that when tied to silly platitudes gives socialists and black supremacists alike a warm, cuddly feeling all over. Again, for those who, like Hillary Clinton, speak of a “village,” the village is a metaphor for a total, socialist state. And in both cases (LNCB/Village), the real meaning of the phrase is that everyone is responsible for raising a child, except, that is, for the child's own parents. I came across some thoughts on service to others tonight, while visiting Halley’s Comment, the blog of Halley Suitt, a quotamonger, who in March complained that white males had taken over blogging, and who called on all the popular, white, leftwing bloggers at a Harvard conference to link to ten new female/minority/foreign bloggers over the course of a month, quality be damned. (Actually, Suitt is not quite as humorless as her demands sound. She suffers from occasional moments of levity, perhaps under the influence of strong drink. One can only hope.) Apparently, Suitt’s June, 2003 talking points, according to which it was women who made Weblogs a journalistic and aesthetic force to be reckoned with, and that “Weblogs are creating a level-playing field for women,” are no longer operative. Of course, this is the same person who in said talking points argued that blogging was inherently dialogical, and thus essentially female, but who permitted none of her readers to post comments in response. At the March conference, Suitt also criticized bloggers for being too "provincial," because most of them are American. If I had a Ph.D. in cultural studies, I might be able to explain to you the dialectical logic behind the charge that if foreigners are largely indifferent to the blogosphere, Americans are thus guilty of "provincialism." Does that mean that the best way for Americans to prove their interest in the world, would be for all of them to give up their blogs? Would that include Halley Suitt? I didn't think so. Suitt's dialectics remind me of the notion of "progress" celebrated on March 30 by a couple of feminist Wall Street Journal "reporters" on the Journal's op-ed page. As Steve Sailer reported, Jeanne Whalen and Sharon Begley saw it as great progress for English girls, that English boys have by and large stopped studying math, and thereby allowed the girls to "close the gender gap." (The grading on math tests has also been rigged to give girls higher scores.) Unfortunately for Suitt, white, male, American bloggers do not seem inclined to voluntarily disadvantage themselves. Government intervention is clearly called for. * * * An early entry I found at Suitt’s blog was a reprint of Emerson’s (1803-1882) essay (originally delivered as a lecture, if memory serves) “On Self-Reliance.” While ol’ Ralph did support abolition, one seeks in vain in his lectures and essays for support for sexual and racial quotas. (Suitt's earlier posts suggest that she doesn’t care about other races and nationalities, but feels she has to express support for them, in order to get support from her comrades for mediocre female bloggers.) In any event, I came across a passage in “On Self-Reliance” that reminded me of Marian Wright Edelman.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live.

Is it possible that Marian Wright Edelman bastardized Emerson, in order to come up with a nugget of “wisdom” that was the exact opposite of what the sublime essayist said? And how, in heaven’s name, would a Halley Suitt come to see Emerson as “the God of the bloggers”? No matter. I don’t need to rely on Emerson, any more than I need to rely on Marian Wright Edelman or Halley Suitt. Modern, enlightened folk are not supposed to rely on intellectual authority, anyway, or so the “enlightened” folk always say where religion is concerned. (Of course, where politics is concerned, the “enlightened” are slaves to authority.) I was once in a bit of a pickle, where self-reliance is concerned. In 1989, I founded a magazine, A Different Drummer. I put out fliers advertising the coming inaugural issue and soliciting work, quoting as my credo the famous statement (aphorism? poem?) of Emerson’s friend, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).

If a man does not keep pace With his companions, Perhaps it is because he hears A different drummer. Let him step to the Music he hears, However measured or far away.

Before publication, I realized that leaning on Thoreau’s authority on the need to go one’s own way was self-defeating, or at least, irony-deficient, as a credo. And so, I wrote a metaphorical essay -- “A Different Drummer” -- with endless variations and puns on “drums” and “drummers,” mocking the partisans of orthodox “difference” (multiculturalism). (“I have a drum!”) I opened with the Thoreau quote, followed by a pun on Bob Merrill’s lyrics from my favorite song in Funny Girl, “Don’t Bring Around a Cloud to Rain on My Parade”:

I’ll bring my band out, I’ll beat my drum … Don’t bring around a crowd, To reign on my parade.

* * * Purveyors of cheap paradox may riposte that one cannot help but be an Emersonian or Thoreauan. If one follows either, well, one is a … follower. And if one should reject both men for a much different way of one’s own, one is still following them, for wasn’t their message, To thine own self be true? Such “paradoxes” are cheaper by the dozen, and the price goes down as the vagueness increases. The thing isn’t to identify oneself as an individualist or contrarian, but as the Nike ad exhorts, to “Just do it.” Unless, that is, one is neither. The Marian Wright Edelmans and Halley Suitts are neither. Rather, they lead columns of tone-deaf marchers who maintain perfect formations. Though reading an Emerson or a Thoreau may affirm yearnings one has long felt, they cannot put such yearnings in one’s heart. For if one is so easily influenced, one will just as easily be influenced by the next speaker to march in the opposite direction. The decision to go one’s own way is an unconscious one that is made early in life. Has the blog “revolution” given us millions of eccentrics, going each his own way, or a few large, marching columns?

Sheriff Selig Gets His Man: Major League Baseball Gets Tough on Steroids

MLB has made its first suspension of a player this year, under its new, tough, steroids ban. This will show the fans that Commissioner Bud Selig & Co. are for real. So, who got hit? Was it Barry? Sammy? No, it was Alex Sanchez. Alex who? Exactly. The guy has neither the muscles nor the stats to be of concern to anyone. The 5’10” Sanchez, a centerfielder who was just signed two weeks ago by Tampa Bay, after getting cut by Detroit, weighed in last year at 179 pounds, in a sopping wet uniform. But I know what tipped off MLB. The guy more than tripled his home run frequency from the 2003 to the 2004 season. Whereas in 2003, he only hit one home run in 557 at-bats, in 2004, he averaged one per 166! (Two home runs in 332 ABs). The budding slugger has four home-runs in 1351 lifetime at-bats. Another tip-off that Sanchez was hanging around with the wrong sort of people, may have been his deteriorating stolen base numbers. In 2003, he stole 52 bases while getting caught 24 times (.684 average), but in 2004, he only stole 19, while getting caught 13 times (.594 average). And the reports about Sanchez’ apprehension said that he weighed in at 180 pounds. That extra pound gave him away! I’m sure the folks in MLB security told him, “You can’t fool us, Sanchez!” The ten-day suspension will cost Sanchez $32,787 of his $600,000 salary. Sanchez denies he’s on the juice, and says he’ll fight the suspension, but he’s taking the fall. He’s going down. Sheriff Selig swore he’d set things aright in old Dodge, and that means you, Alex Sanchez. That sigh of relief you heard, was from Sammy Sosa. Barry Bonds didn’t sigh, because like Pete Rose before him, he thinks he’s above the law. And if the Sheriff is any indication, unlike Rose, who did go down, Bonds is right.

John Vernon (1932-2005), R.I.P.

On February 1, Canadian-born actor John Vernon died at the age of 72, of complications following heart surgery. Vernon, born Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz, was famous for playing authority figures who tended to be hypocritical, pompous asses. Such casting owed much to Vernon’s broad-shouldered, 6’2” frame, booming baritone, and lack of leading man looks. The movies most frequently mentioned by obit writers were Clint Eastwood’s serial killer cop story, Dirty Harry (1971; directed by Don Siegel), and the National Lampoon farce, Animal House (1978; directed by John Landis of The Twilight Zone: The Movie notoriety). In Dirty Harry, Vernon played the pompous, hypocritical mayor, who is worried more about impressions and criminals’ rights than about getting the bad guy; in Animal House, he played the mean college Dean Wormer, who is looking to run the fun-loving frat boys of Delta House (John Belushi, et al.) off of campus. To my knowledge, no one noted that the two roles were antipodes. “The Mayor” in Dirty Harry is a weakling who shies away from doing what is necessary, while Dean Wormer (described at imdb.com as “sinister”) is just the sort of no-nonsense tough guy that colleges have lacked for the past forty years. Despite auspicious beginnings and a busy career on stage, screen, and TV, during the last fifteen or so years of Vernon’s career, when he did work, it was often doing voice work in cartoons or in movies so obscure (and presumably so bad), such as 1988’s Dixie Lanes and Deadly Stranger, that I never so much as heard of them. A few weeks before Vernon died, however, I got to see the sort of dramatic power he possessed. For some time (until today; I don’t know whether the programming has been ended) the Hallmark Channel devoted its Saturday afternoon programming to airing TV westerns from the late 1950s through the 1960s, including Rawhide (1959-65), The Virginian (1962-71), and The High Chapparal (1967-71). In an episode of The High Chaparral that first aired on January 17, 1969, entitled “No Irish Need Apply,” Vernon gave a tour de force performance as heroic but bullheaded Irish miner Sean McLaren, who leads an increasingly violent strike against a murderous, crooked, mine owner. Vernon’s overpowering performance deserved, at the very least, an Emmy nomination. But he never had a chance. Although westerns like Gunsmoke (1955-75), Bonanza (1959-73), and The Virginian, if no longer dominant, were still popular, and The High Chaparral had graced the cover of TV Guide, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ powers that be rarely nominated performers from westerns. In a twenty-year run that, for instance, made Gunsmoke the most successful prime-time series of all time, the show was only nominated for six Emmys, winning but two. And so, in the Emmy categories for which Vernon qualified, “Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role” and “Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role,” only three and four (of a possible five) actors were nominated, respectively. The Academy left nominations vacant! In the supporting role category, no one was awarded an Emmy, and in the lead category, the award went to Paul Scofield for Male of the Species. John Vernon never won any awards or achieved immortality. And yet in his day, his face was instantly recognizable to millions of moviegoers and TV viewers, even if they couldn’t tell you his name, and he managed to handsomely support a wife (though they eventually divorced) and three children, two accomplishments which put him way ahead of 99 percent of America’s actors.

The New York Times’ Big Tease

In Saturday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof’s column is entitled, “Another Kind of Racism” and has the teaser, “If the old white regime in Zimbabwe were deliberately starving the nation the way Robert Mugabe is, the world would be in uproar.”

I couldn’t believe it. Was communist publisher Pinch Sulzberger finally going to permit a Timesman to “expose” what the rest of the world has known for several years, namely, the blood-curdling racism that butcher Mugabe’s regime inflicts on white Zimbabweans? Not a chance. They don’t call ‘em “teasers” for nothing!

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), R.I.P.

See my new column at Mens News Daily.