Posted on 12/17/2006 9:05:43 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Last month, someone set himself on fire in Chicago to protest the war.
There was a brief article in the Sun-Times and, thankfully, a subsequent column about it by Richard Roeper (who felt the act was a futile gesture). I missed both of these. The first time I heard about the incident was in the way that I usually hear about the less mainstream news: through the Internet.
On Nov. 3 , several morning commuters witnessed something awful.
A man named Malachi Ritscher doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire right along the Kennedy Expressway. He'd placed himself near a 25-foot-tall Loop sculpture titled "Flame of the Millennium." A homemade sign was found near his charred body. It read, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." There was also a videotape found near Ritscher's body.
One has to search hard to locate the suicide note Ritscher embedded in his Web site, Chicago Rash Audio Potential (www.savagesound.com), a compilation of announcements, postings, photographs and artwork. From Ritscher's suicide note: (www.savagesound.com/gallery99.htm): "I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians...What is one more life thrown away in this sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
I learned about Ritscher in one of those emails that people pass from person to person. You know the kind of emails that your friends forward you because they are either funny, bizarre, irritating or, as in this case, thought provoking and disturbing? Ritscher's story came in the form of an incensed essay written by a University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student of communications named Jennifer Diaz.
"Should we be concerned about the lack of coverage?" Diaz wrote. "This is serious, friends. You don't have to be a communication scholar to know that the news media go by the maxim, 'When it bleeds, it leads.'"
Of course, after reading Diaz's essay, I did a little research of my own. It turns out, that Ritscher was a musician and recording engineer known in the Chicago Jazz community. From what people said about him and what I read about him, he seemed like a pretty normal well-balanced guy.
Only a few days before reading Diaz's essay, I was sitting in my car looking at and thinking about the cover of one of my favorite rock groups, Rage Against the Machine. On the CD cover is the photo of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, going up in flames. He burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection in 1963. It was his way of protesting the Vietnam War. The photo is famous, his message heard (the photo is also absolutely eerie. The monk's face is so serene as he burns). In contrast, Ritscher's protest was practically ignored, getting only minimal media coverage by major media outlets when it happened.
Still, once again, the Internet has come through and filled in the holes. All it takes is a quick Google search to learn all about Ritscher, right down to the epithet he chose for his own grave, "I Dreamt That I Was Dreaming."
Someone has created a Wikipedia page for him that gives a summary of what happened and links you to several sources online. The Iheardyoumalach Web site (www. Iheardyoumalach.org) was set up to further disseminate the story. And since Ritscher's death, plenty of Web sites and blogs and a few independent online and physical publications have included the story and discussion about it.
The Iraq War is extremely complicated. There are harsh consequences down every possible path this country chooses to take to resolve the situation.
I wish Ritscher had found another way to express his rage and I extend my deepest sympathies to Ritscher's loved ones. Nevertheless, I agree with Diaz who said: "I implore you: agree or disagree, but do not be indifferent. This man's message was important enough to him to choose an excruciatingly painful death - so that you and I would hear it."
mailto:nnedi@netscape.com
What a deluded moron!! "War is horrible, don't kill people, etc" and he suicides.
By that "logic", he was a half-step away from being a terrorist suicide bomber.
"You know the kind of emails that your friends forward you because they are either funny, bizarre, irritating or, as in this case, thought provoking and disturbing?"
Actually, no.... I don't know "those kind of emails".
I have a fricking life, and my friends and family are not neurotic creeps who take their values from weird s--t like that.
sad thing is, he will continue to vote democrat in cook county.
I find it a little strange that he didn't set himself on fire after 9/11. I guess that terrorist attack and the murder of 3000 innocent people really didn't upset him that much. Hippies are weird.
Mr. Ritscher,
Thank you for contributing to the Social Security Trust Fund for all those years and never collecting.
With my share of your loot, I'll buy a gallon of gas in your name.
Did anybody look into his mental health? I'm supposed to be concerned because a complete stranger performed an absurd act of self-immolation terrorism. Sorry, not.
In the inimitable style of the denizens of the Greater Chicagoland area:'I don't care!'.
LOL
Buy a vowel.
btw they didnt get the url right for the site. lol
"From what people said about him and what I read about him, he seemed like a pretty normal well-balanced guy." ......... normal well bananced guys set themselves on fire all the time
OOPS!
That's "normal" as in the
Democrat/Leftist/Anarchist/
socialist/gay way...
silly me........ I was thinking "normal" as in normal
His choice, he's dead, who cares.
I believe he was protesting oppressions by the regime of the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem, as a matter of fact.
You remember correctly.
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