Tag: murder

Matthew Shepard as Emmett Till

Matthew Shepard’s parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, became activists for gay rights and more vigorous prosecution of hate crimes.

Matthew ShepardRecently, Arthur wrote about Matthew Shepard’s interment, a surprising ending of a two-decades-long journey.

In case you are unfamiliar, per NPR: “Matthew Shepard, the young gay man brutally killed on a chilly night in Wyoming 20 years ago… was finally laid to rest at Washington National Cathedral… A reflective, music-filled service offered stark contrast to the anti-gay protests that marred his funeral two decades ago.”

The music included Lacrimosa from the Mozart Requiem, which always affects me greatly. His parents had been afraid to bury him in Wyoming, lest his grave be ransacked.

Somehow, that murder became a flashpoint where other crimes of that nature had not. “Shepard’s killing became the basis for a play, The Laramie Project, which brought widespread attention to the problem of homophobia.” The events were the subject of a 2002 TV movie, The Matthew Shepard Story.

“Shepard’s parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, established the Matthew Shepard Foundation and became activists for gay rights and more vigorous prosecution of hate crimes.”
emmett till

It occurred to me that, in some basic ways, his death paralleled that of Emmett Till, the Chicago-born black teenager who was murdered, purportedly for whistling at a white woman, in rural Mississippi in August 1955. The woman in the case has only recently recanted her allegation.

His brutal demise, which helped energize the efforts for black equality, has been the subject of Dreaming Emmett, the first play by the Nobel-winning African-American writer Toni Morrison, in 1986, and the Oscar-nominated short film My Nephew Emmett (2017), both of which I have seen.

The parallels are interesting. Neither victim was a publicly known person; they weren’t activists in their respective civil rights struggles. Yet because Emmett’s mother had his battered body photographed in an open casket, because we saw the fence upon which Matthew was symbolically crucified, they were remembered nationally far beyond how the average murder victim is recalled.

As I’ve mentioned here more than once, Emmett Till’s death has haunted me ever since I saw the photos in either JET or Ebony magazine in 1960. When some idiot pseudo-Christian group came to Albany to protest a production of The Laramie Project at Albany High School in 2009, I was one of the great number of counter-protesters.

It’s kismet the way some lives, and deaths, transcend to tell the larger story.

K is for Thou Shalt Not Kill

We all create our own theology.

My late mother had a fairly simple theology, which she said was to follow the Ten Commandments. Sometime in the last decade of life, I asked her what did that mean in this world. What is meant by graven images, e.g.?

Also, I asked what does Thou Shalt Not Kill mean? How does it apply to war, self-defense, defense of others, capital punishment, abortion, suicide, euthanasia, even eating meat?

It is evidently true that in biblical Hebrew… “killing (harag) and murder (ratzah) are two different words with two very different moral connotations, and the commandment uses the Hebrew word ratzah.”

The question becomes, Is the last word? I was looking at 78 biblical verses about Thou Shalt Not Kill. On a personal level, I was immediately drawn to Luke 6:31″ “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” This is generally known as the Golden Rule.

Also, from Matthew 5: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”

I was a Methodist for the majority of my life, and the message for me has almost always been, “Use your head! Make up your own mind! Don’t just swallow everything the religious leaders have taught you.” I’ve also been struck by what a Unitarian once told me, that we all create our own theology. I think this true: God/the universe/whatever you call it has given us discernment and intellect.

So, for example, capital punishment makes no sense to me. I’ve written in the past about how a father of a young woman killed the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 went on a spiritual journey to where he found the idea of vengeance against her murderer, Timothy McVeigh, utterly abhorrent.

But we all find different paths on this journey. What are some of yours?

From ABC Wednesday

Maybe I’ve taken up cursing for Lent

Iran’s Mother Teresa, Passes away at 91

It’s Ash Wednesday, the first day of the holiest period on the Christian calendar. The news is on the TV. The previous evening, he gave a speech before Congress in which he exploited the misery of a Gold Star widow. Earlier THAT DAY, he threw his generals under the bus for the death of that Navy SEAL. “They lost Ryan.”

I wasn’t yelling, but was talking aloud, “You schmuck! You’re the Commander-in-Chief! The buck stops with YOU! You’re SUPPOSED to say, ‘WE lost Ryan,’ you @$$#01e!” This was loud enough that The Wife, who had been upstairs at the time, to comment that she heard that. She also opined that I’ve cursed more in the past three or four months than I have in the 20+ years since I’ve known her. And this is almost certainly true.

It has usually happened when he lies about his lies. Or when one of his surrogates does the same. I remember giving the finger to the TV when adviser Kellyanne Conway came up with the phrase “alternative facts.”

When Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz said that rather than “getting that new iPhone that they just love,” low-income Americans should take they money they would have spent on it and “invest it in their own health care” – as though that was anywhere near equivalent cost, I gave him a silent “Chuck you, Farley.”

I have mixed feelings about swearing. I don’t buy that “everybody does it, so it’s OK.” I know PLENTY of people who forego it, at least not publicly. Moreover, he is a well-known vulgarian, and I don’t want to stoop to his level. I do keep reading that swearing is actually a sign of more intelligence – not less, but that’s obviously NOT universally true.

In other religious topics:

* My presbyter (think bishop, but it’s not, really) Shannan Vance-Ocampo wrote about going through the immigration process with her husband. Beyond the personal agony of these stories, I worry that we’ll discourage people coming into the country who have long provided economic wealth to this country, such as students and scholars, because of our xenophobia.

* Ashraf Qandehari-Bahadorzadeh, Iran’s Mother Teresa, Passes away at 91. She’s the aunt of Darius Shahinfar, the Albany city treasurer, who I first met when we were schlepping our kids to the same preschool.

* Diane Cameron, who led a writing exercise I participated in nearly three years ago, has written her third book, Never Leave Your Dead – A True Story of War Trauma, Murder, and Madness. Initially, this was about a guy who was involved in a dismal US military (in)action barely hinted at in this narrative. She writes about how “war can inflict deep and lasting psychological wounds in warriors.”

She spoke at my church on a Friday night in February. “In March of 1953, Donald Watkins, a former Marine… who served in China during the Japanese invasion of 1937, murdered his wife and mother-in-law.” Some of her points she also shared in this December 2016 TEDx talk. Not incidentally, Donald Watkins, many years later, married Diane’s mother. Riveting stuff.

* I just got a flyer for Dr. Henry G. Covert’s book Ministry to the Incarcerated, “a vital resource for prison ministry. The contents include the emotional world of inmates, institutional challenges, models for prison ministry, biblical teaching outlines, penal reform, re-entry and aftercare… Ministry to the Incarcerated is available on Amazon, eBook, and Kindle.”

* The Day Ringo Starr Got Death Threats -for Being Jewish. September 1964: I had forgotten about this.

Murder in the virtual, or actual, degree

One can see the moment when the bullets strike his body, his face writhing in pain.

Arthur retaliates for me asking HIM the question by querying:
Should VR murder be banned? VR being virtual reality

I’ve been conflicted about, not just this most recent iteration of faux violence, but even decades ago, going back to the Vietnam war. It was believed by some, including me, that the weapons of war that look like video games were making killing too easy. Now it’s the common, “clean” way we kill our military targets.

So I wondered if the reverse were true, whether video games that simulated murder, was, in some way, honing an instinct for violence, at least for some people. My gamer friends, to a person, all said no, that the venting of faux aggression on a screen was merely a way to release tension and that there was no crossover to real life. Their certitude never made sense to me.

In 2015, an American Psychological Association task force report stated that “violent video gameplay is linked to increased aggression in players but insufficient evidence exists about whether the link extends to criminal violence or delinquency.”

The liberal in me has a live-and-let-live attitude towards these things. But the moralistic side of me is uncomfortable with this.

The truth is, though, is that I’ve been more disturbed by videos of real people dying on my TV screen. Watching Eric Garner being choked to death by a NYC policeman is so disturbing, it’s difficult to believe that it’s real.

Seeing Walter Scott running away, and, depending on who was editing it, seeing him get shot in the back by a South Carolina policeman, bullets clearly penetrating his body, was horrifying. That the shooter was not convicted was even worse.

Witnessing the dying body of Laquan McDonald as it is struck several times by bullets from Chicago cops was awful. If it were lighter outside, it would remind me of the dance of death of Sonny Corleone in the 1972 movie The Godfather.

Most recently, it was the death of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, who was murdered by a Turkish security person, that was horrifying to watch. One can see the moment when the bullets strike his body, his face writhing in pain.

All of these are available to be seen repeatedly on the Internet. I can’t help but wonder if it informs the public, or merely numbs it from these acts of death.

TV review- O.J.: Made in America

O.J. Simpson – race be damned – was one of the most popular figures around.

OJ-Made-in-AmericaSeriously, I didn’t know it was going to be on, but came across it flipping through the channels. On the heels of the popular The People v. O.J. Simpson, part of the American Crime Story series on the FX network – which I did not see – comes O.J.: Made in America, a sprawling five-part documentary on the cable sports network ESPN.

Many people know about the bizarre low-speed chase of Simpson’s Ford Bronco, Most are aware of the “trial of the century,” an appellation that may very well be correct. At least in the United States, almost EVERYONE had an opinion about the former football player’s guilt or innocence in the murders of his estranged wife Nicole Brown, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

The most mild-mannered person I have ever known was incensed when Simpson was acquitted of the crimes, as was most of white America. Yet many black Americans literally cheered the verdict. This phenomenon is established fact. What the documentary explains, among many other things, is WHY there was such a disparity in response.

The first segment shows how Simpson went from Heisman-trophy-winning running back for the University of Southern California Trojans to stardom in the NFL, becoming the first player ever to rush for 2000 yards in a season. But when Simpson retired from football and returned to Los Angeles, he remained famous, as an actor (The Naked Gun movies), advertising pitchman (Hertz car rental), and broadcasting (Monday Night Football). He met and fell madly in love with a young, blonde, beautiful actress named Nicole Brown.

I loved the second part. It was about the two different versions of Los Angeles, one “wealthy, privileged, and predominantly white. A world where celebrity was power, and where O.J. – race be damned – was one of the most popular figures around… Then there was the other LA, just a few miles away from Brentwood and his Rockingham estate, a place where millions of other black people lived an entirely different reality at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department.” In fact, in describing the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots that erupted in 1992, the filmmakers spent about a half-hour not talking about O.J. at all.

Part 3 was about the murder itself, and the chase, and while I knew much of it, there were details I was unaware of. Part 4 described the trial and the re-Negrofication of Orenthal James Simpson by the defense team. Part 5 detailed all the bizarre stuff after the acquittal, including the book O.J. wrote, If I Did It.

The story was enhanced by the recollections of district attorney Gil Garcetti, lead prosecuting attorney Marcia Clark, LA police detective Mark Fuhrman, LA policeman and Simpson friend Ron Shipp, Ron Goldman’s father Fred, defense attorneys F. Lee Bailey, Carl Douglas, and Barry Schreck, and many other participants. The narrative speaks deftly about the power of celebrity and class, spousal abuse, police/community relations, and racial identity in a way that resonates to this day. I concluded that 1) O.J. likely did the murders but that 2) the prosecution did not make its case due to the tremendous efforts of the defense team and some of the rulings of Judge Lance Ito.

I’m glad I watched O.J.: Made In America, though it was quite depressing. The series is available on some streaming services, and no doubt will be available on DVD soon; perhaps it’ll be rerun someday. Ron Shipp believes O.J. Simpson will hate it.

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