RSS
Home
Madness in Richmond California
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A horrible thing happened in Richmond California a few days ago. A young girl, a child to most of us, was raped and raped repeatedly at her Prom. As she was assaulted over and over, by assailants she knew,, other students watched. Watched and did nothing.
This news has sent chills up the spine of everyone I know. As the father of a daughter, and one who is away at college and relishing and growing in her independenceThoughts creep in. The kind of thoughts you mash down deep in your mind and try not to think about. But you do, yes you do.
Newspapers, radio talkers, and television commentators have blathered on and on about this poor girls life changing drama. Of course, there is now the question of reasons. Reasons why. How could this have happened? Was it the parents, TV, video games? The supposed crumbling values in our society? There must be a reason! There is. There is a reason.
Before I get to that I will tell you that I have never bought into the right or the lefts decrying of our so called crumbling society. There were no video games in Rwanda when millions were butchered in a few short days in the early 90's. No Internet porn when 500,000 died during the Civil War. There was no TV to desensitize human beings to the feeling of other human beings in the 1860's.
In the 1860s, a few short blocks from where I was born a very few decades after, men sold men, women, and children on the Court House steps in the city of St. Louis Missouri. Today you can walk by that place on your way to a major league baseball game. They had no TV. No movie violence to guide them. Germans were a church going people in the 1930s. Yet they wittingly elected a monster and quietly followed his march of madness in destruction.
I'm not saying that media and morality play no role in how a society treats its citizens, or how it's citizens treat each other. But none of these are the reasons. The great linguist Noam Chomsky once said that fiction, great fiction, can tell us more about the nature of human beings than non fiction. That a great story tell us more about ourselves and others than any documentation ever will.On hearing about the evil in a suburban town, one I have been to, one that is no different than hundreds of others, three lines that have stayed with me like glue since the moment I heard them, popped into my head.
One comes from a John Mellencamp song. Its important to note that the song is inspired from the classic movie HUD, and HUD is in part from a book by one of our best American authors, Larry McMurtry. The song is Crumblin Down and the line is "Some people ain't no damn good."
The second is from an old Boom Town Rats song. The BoomTown Rats were headed by Sir Bob Geldoff, the man who created later in life the Live Aid concerts. The song is based on an equally chilling true story of a girl of, as I remember, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. One day she brought a rifle to school and commenced to shooting and killing a large number of her classmates. Somehow, as he was holed up in a classroom bodies about her, they were able to call her on a phone and ask her why she was doing this. Her answer was, "I dunno, guess I just don't like Mondays." The song, Tell me why I don't like Mondays, has a line that goes "There can be no reason, for there are no reasons..."
The third comes from ironically enough the movie Chinatown. ChinaTown was directed by a man whose mother perished in the Holocaust. Who never grew to full physical height because of the privations of war. Who later in life had to identify the body of his beautiful pregnant bride. She had been butchered in the most sadistic fashion possible by followers of Charles Manson. The director, instead of going insane went on to direct Chinatown. A movie that some consider one of the ten best ever made. Oddly he succumbed to his own demons a few years later and raped a thirteen year old girl. Now thirty years later he will be brought to justice for it. That all adds to the irony of the line. The line that, to me, explains what happened to a young girl who had the whole wide wonderful world waiting for her and now will have a horrible touchstone in her heart. One she can overcome, but never forget.
In the movie Noah Cross, a character based on a compilation of the rapacious men who turned Los Angeles from a sleepy town to one of the worlds major cities, explains to Jack Nicholson's character why he raped his own daughter. The line, and I want you to think about this line when you have an important decision to make. When you, if you ever are, confronted by the demons that rest in all of our souls, is this. "You see Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact, that at the right time, and the right place, they are capable of ANYTHING.
There can be no reason, for there are no reasons, most people are capable of anything, and some people ain't no damn good.
Related Articles:
Comments
