Stop blurring the lines between maniac & martyr.

New York Daily News ^ | 8 Dec 2005 | Stanley Crouch

[.cnI redruM]

Tonight in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to have a closed meeting with those trying to get Stanley (Tookie) Williams clemency and those in law enforcement who want Williams to meet his end on Tuesday. Williams, who was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering four people in 1979, has the dubious honor of being one of the founders of the vicious street gang, the Crips.

Still, Williams is being held up as an example of redemption because he has supposedly turned his life around. He has written children's books that speak out against gang violence. But the actor and writer Joseph Phillips discovered that the highest selling children's book written by Williams has sold only 330 copies. Not exactly a universal audience. The murderer has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. But almost anyone can nominate you. That does not prove universal acknowledgment of importance.

What does all of this mean? Little. When we see the NAACP, Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover and that paragon of public morality, Snoop Dogg, calling for Williams to receive clemency, one is sure that they have bought into the big con that has as its foundation the interconnectedness of the death penalty and race. The two elements have become so interwoven that some assume that if a black man is on Death Row it has something to do with bias and an unrepresentative jury pool. One of the men crying for Williams to get clemency cites the fact that he was tried by an all-white jury, none of whom were his peers. Does that mean that Williams should have had a jury of ruthless gang leaders? Williams, like all criminals, is a lawbreaker first and has an ethnic identity second.

The hard fact is that since 1980, street gangs have killed 10,000 people in Los Angeles, which is three times the number of black people lynched throughout the United States between 1877 and 1900, the highest tide of racial murder in the history of the nation.

Our commitment to redemption is fundamental to our civilization. But since the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, we have seen the same games run on the black community by the identical kinds of political hustlers who almost never met a criminal or a murderer who was not the real victim of society and should be forgiven all crimes, which, as in the Williams case, shouldn't even be discussed. Look to the bright side. Give the brother a break.

I wouldn't touch that kind of thinking with a garbage man's glove. Yesterday was the anniversary of Colin Ferguson's rampage on the Long Island Rail Road. Maybe he should come out of his mental fog and start writing children's books. Ferguson might join Williams in a nomination for the Nobel Prize and watch the chumps line up in support of clemency for his bloody acts. Who knows? Hope springs eternal.

[.cnI redruM]

Every so often Stanley Crouch writes with almost poetic lucidity. This should be read aloud while Gov. Arnold meets with Tookie's Pander Squad.

[gondramB]

With respect to Mr. Crouch, Tookie is neither a maniac nor a martyr. He was a cold blooded killer and whatever he may have become through the grace of God he still needs to pay for his crimes here on earth.

[Guenevere]

If he were truly repentant, he would confess to the crimes, and stop lying.

....and still, Carla Fay (Texas) was still executed, even though a model prisoner and born again.

So Tookie should get a 'get out of jail free' card because......??????

I don't think so.

[Guenevere]

I should spell the woman's name right....Karla Faye Tucker

[Pylot]

The reason tookie has allegedly redeemed himself is because it took 25 years to get around to executing him.

He will always be a cold blooded killer and lets hope Arnie ignores any opportunity to let tookie live past the end of next week.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Arnold is a fool for even giving consideration to this nonsense.

[.cnI redruM]

Agreed. Tookie is a professional criminal who can only do bad things for society once he's let loose.

[River_Wrangler]

The real injustice here is that some of his victims have been dead for 25 years and he is still pumping air.

[nw_arizona_granny]

But the actor and writer
Joseph Phillips discovered that the highest selling children's book
written by Williams has sold only 330 copies. Not exactly a universal
audience. The murderer has been nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize five times. But almost anyone can nominate you. That does not
prove universal acknowledgment of importance. <<<

Ping to 330 books........