Take this quick and (not so) easy CIA torture quiz!

     Here’s a simple quiz. One question. Multiple choice. Pick either A or B.
     Ready? Then let’s begin.
     1. Complete the sentence:
     America is a great nation because
     A) everything we do is, by definition, right.
     B) we try to do what’s right and when we fail we admit it and try to do better.
     A simple quiz, but not an easy one, and many people get it wrong.
     I won’t tell you the correct answer just yet so as to leave some readers in suspense.
     But I will, promise.
     First, a bit of context, namely the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the orgy of CIA torture the Bush administration unleashed after Sept. 11. Turns out,  Jack Ryan fantasies notwithstanding, that brutalizing people who had fallen into our clutches didn’t do much good in terms of keeping our country safe, didn’t help find bin Laden or uncover any big terror plots.
     Which fits in with what we know about torture; it tends not to produce intelligence.
     I can’t say my world was rocked by the news. We knew Dick Cheney and his henchmen consider themselves tough guys and, denied the traditional tools of rack and thumbscrews, were happy to make do with waterboarding and sleep deprivation.
     The details are repulsive—one prisoner froze to death chained to a concrete floor.
     But then, details of atrocities usually are.
     More surprising to me than the report were the howls of justification that came from the Right, starting with those who didn’t want to reveal the report at all because it might encourage terrorism.
     Sure it could. But is that our new standard of behavior? Are we against things that might inflame potential enemies? Because if that's our policy, it's a big list. We can start by scrapping the First Amendment and requiring women to start wearing veils.
     That's obviously not happening. The standard isn't trying to placate those who will hate us anyway.
     If releasing the report, in our role as a free society, is OK, how about torture as a way to try to protect ourselves. Is that OK?
     One wit at another local paper said, in essence, "Yes," offering up the classic "But Jimmy's doing it too!" defense so convincing to 4-year-olds. He carefully explained that the Islamic State rapes and kills, suggesting that this justifies our own loathsome tactics.
     "But it might be useful to realize that while we might feel queasy about what we did, the Islamic State is immune from hand-wringing after they cut American throats."
     Useful? In what way? He never comes out and says it — the timidity of bullies — but the implication is, we're facing these tough guys, so we better be tough guys too. They have no self-doubt; why should we?
     A few questions he never asks but we can:
     Wouldn't committing the kind of horrors they do make us just like them?
     Couldn't the ''hand-wringing" that you condemn also be referred to as "thinking?"
     Would you say that cutting off people's heads has been a success strategy for the Islamic State? Did it not end up hurting their cause, in the same way that torturing people hurt America's cause?
     Here's the bottom line, and it's sad that so few people see it. Torture doesn't work, but even if it did it would still be bad, because that isn't what America is about. The fact that something works to enhance security is not a recommendation. China has a vast system of gulags and is a far more stable society than the United States because anyone who dissents can be shipped off to prison. Their security is certainly enhanced. Should we do that too?
     When the report was first released, when some were talking about whether it should have been withheld, I thought of Turkey, where to this day it is against the law to talk about the 1915 Armenian genocide because it makes the Turks look bad. And Japan, where the right wing is trying to suppress Japan's brutal history of World War II atrocities, so as not to have their nationalistic preening undermined by the stark evidence of where such pride once led them.
     How does that make Japan look? And do we want to do that too? Are we a great nation because when we do stuff that's wrong, we don't talk about it, so we don't look bad to those who expect better of us?
     Not my country. Not America. The Economist summed it up perfectly in one simple sentence: "ALL countries fail to live up to the ethical standards they set themselves; only a few have the moral purpose to examine their lapses in the public square."
     Amen. Oh, and for those who haven't figured it out yet, the correct answer is: B.    

Just in time for Christmas...

     Maybe people do change after all.
     I would have sworn otherwise. "As I was at 5," Tolstoy said, "so am I now." 
     Ditto for me. The same kid then, 50 years ago, off in a corner by himself, on his knees, balancing one block upon another, constructing an elaborate castle the entire afternoon, the same adult now, off in a corner in a chair in front of a computer, building his little block castles, only with words.
     But maybe some people change, in more subtle ways.
     Tuesday I was strolling back from an appointment at the Pittsfield Building. I could have Divvied—I rode the Divvy bike down, parked in front of the Cultural Center. But it was lunchtime, and why not stroll to a different station? Why not cut through Macy's and see what people who don't do all their shopping at Kohl's are buying for themselves?
     My attention was caught by a blue Nautica button down Oxford shirt. "Ocean washed" Really? What could that mean? I pictured big sloshing vats of seawater, with bales of shirts being dumped into them, floating around, agitated by hatchet-faced New England salts wearing yellow Nor'easter slickers, wielding row boat oars.... 
     They can't do that. It has to be mere puffery.*
     I was almost out of the store, clutching my new shirt ("Ocean washed." It sounds so breezy) about to project through the revolving doors at the north end, when this display for fleece zippered jumpsuits caught me short. 
     Once upon a time ...
     When the boys were small, in their terry cloth zip front rompers.  I remember thinking: "That looks really comfortable. They should make those for adults. I'd buy one of those." 
     Or maybe it was even earlier. In my early 20s, when I drank martinis out of a Hello Kitty sippy cup and thought of myself as louche yet maintaining a certain childlike wonder toward the world. Remembering the feet pajamas of my youth, that last pair, before I grew out of them. I would have snapped up one of these adult versions back then, grateful. 
     Now Macy has got them. My private nostalgic yearning made real. Here's my chance. Snap up one of these puppies because, really, how often do you get the chance? Never. And on sale, half off: only 35 bucks. I wasn't crazy about the cow pattern, or the Super Man pattern—sorta strange. Okay, really strange. But the one with the skulls? Or the fish skeletons? Kinda cool. A blend of babyish and edgy. 
      That thought crumbled at a touch.  No, not even tempted. And I realized: that guy, the one who may have once wanted this outfit, had vanished. Utterly. I didn't want these at all. Not a bit. In fact, they seemed really stupid.  A uniform for morons. I had changed. 

       Or had I? Maybe because the culture had wrecked this sort of thing, by overuse. That blanket with the arms they sell on TV? The Snuggie? As repulsive an item of clothing ever created. This wasn't unusual anymore, but too similar, too familiar: couch potato fashion, fashion for people with no waists. 
      For a moment I wondered if this topic was beyond the pale; too embarrassing to address here, to admit ever having theoretically wanted something like this, even notionally, decades ago. But then I thought: Shit, they make them. They sell them. So somebody must buy the things. It can't be a line of clothing designed and manufactured based on something I mused about long ago. I can't be alone here.
      Heck, forget jump suits. Remember the convention last week in Rosemont? There are "furries," people who make a lifestyle out of dressing like low rent college football mascots, mingling, dancing, hooking up and, well, best not to follow that line of thinking any further.
      Here I'm worried about seeming strange, about admitting to fleeting thoughts about feet pajamas when I was 30; meanwhile people are dressing as Willie the Wildcat and trolling Rosemont for that special Winnie the Pooh.  I'm dogpaddling tentatively on the surface of dull conventionality, and there's six miles of deepening weird under me, plus a Mariana Trench of the truly strange under that.  
    Then again, strange is relative. My wife believes that everyone is odd, if you shine a life into their lives, and the closer you look, the odder they are. That makes sense to me.
    My colleague Dan Savage sneers at those of us living in what he calls "vanilla" lifestyles. I don't know. There is a blessing to normality, to being able to find happiness without props and special equipment. It's hard enough to find that special someone without requiring that he or she be wearing a particular costume. I don't think I'd have been happier than I am now if I had the opportunity to lounge around in a yellow terry one piece jumpsuit, with a big yellow duck embroidered over my heart, wearing a red fez and drinking a tankard of frozen lemonade and vodka.  I like to think that, even then, some part of me would look upon the scene from afar and be suitably revolted.
     That former wish, that former self, hovered for a moment around the display of this godawful line of merchandise, still in stacks, even at half price. Shoppers not exactly beating down the doors to get at them. Then that thought, that person, vanished, in a puff. I took a few photos and continued on my way, thinking, dodged that bullet.

* Mere puffery it is. To my vast surprise, Nautica replied to my email query ("I purchased a Nautica oxford shirt whose tag said it was 'Ocean washed.' What does that mean? Was it washed in the ocean? What benefits does that impart on the shirt? I was curious. Thank you") overnight: "Thanks for your question regarding the Nautica Oxford Shirt. That description reflects the color of the item and the 'look' of the item. It was not actually washed in the ocean, it is just a creative description of the coloring technique. We appreciate your purchase with Nautica and we hope this answered your question!"

Judy Baar Topinka, dead at 70

Judy Baar Topinka with Dominic DiFrisco, April 2014

     Judy Baar Topinka was your friend, almost your relation, "a kooky old aunt" in the words of one-time opponent Rod Blagojevich, nailing the sense of kinship but missing the love that Illinoisans felt for her.
      With her red-dyed hair and her thrift shop clothing, Topinka was like no other politician in the state. She played the accordion and danced the polka, once with Dick Cheney. She smoked cigarettes, she guzzled coffee, adored her dogs, and at lunch with a reporter was just as apt to pull out photographs of her beloved son as to discuss financial issues, of which she had a mastery that sometimes got overlooked because of her folksy demeanor.
     Topinka died at 2 a.m. Wednesday, according to Sun-Times reports. She had suffered discomfort, had gone to the hospital in Berwyn where she was undergoing tests when she suffered a stroke. She was 70.
     She was Illinois treasurer for 12 years—the first woman treasurer in Illinois— and newly re-elected comptroller, having defeated Sheila Simon in a tough race. She was also the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party.
    But her importance as a statewide figure came, not so much from her offices or her duties, as from the force of her personality, a brash, colorful, plain-speaking, competent, energetic product of Chicago's near western suburbs, someone who, in an era of bitter partisan divides, wore her Republicanism easily, for instance staunchly supporting both gay and reproductive rights.
    "I'm just a political mutt," she said, during the last election, noting that voters could relate to her. "They think I'm straight talking—one of them. I haven't forgotten where I came from They feel a familiar relationship. And I like that. I've come up the hard way."
      Leaders from across the spectrum mourned the passing of Topinka.
     "The state has lost a treasure," said former Gov. Jim Edgar, whose election in 1994 helped sweep Topinka to her first statewide office, as Illinois' first female treasurer and the first Republican to hold the office since 1962. "She had more spirit than all the rest of us combined in this business, she was always upbeat."
     Barack Obama entered the Illinois State Senate three years after Topinka left it, and the White House issued a statement from the president praising her.
     "Judy was an institution in Illinois politics," Obama said. "Judy was a fierce advocate for her constituents, which I got to see firsthand when she was state treasurer. . . . She was blunt, pragmatic, unfailingly cheerful and energetic, and always willing to put politics aside to find common sense solutions that made a difference for the people of Illinois. She will be greatly missed. Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathies to Judy's family, friends and constituents today."
     Governor-elect Bruce Rauner issued a statement Wednesday.
     "Illinois lost one of its all-time greats," Rauner said. "Comptroller Topinka's magnetic, one-of-a-kind personality brought a smile to everyone she met, and she had a servant's heart, always only caring about what was best for the people of our state."
     "She was a good friend," said former Gov. George Ryan, who praised her devotion as a "very good public servant . . . her main programs were 'How much is it going to cost?' and 'Where is the money coming from?' She was a great watchdog for the taxpayers."
     When she ran for governor in 2006, Topinka was the first woman to be put up for that office by the Illinois GOP. She lost to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. TV commercials showed a clip of her dancing the polka at the Illinois State Fair with ex-Gov. George Ryan, newly convicted of 18 counts of federal corruption, and tried to tie her to her old boss.
     "I dance the polka with everyone," she explained.
     "She was always a lot of fun to be with on the campaign trail," Ryan said Wednesday. "Occasionally, she'd bring her accordion along and play polka music. Occasionally, she'd grab me to do a polka dance."
     Topinka constantly sent journalists clippings of their work, which she would scribble over with compliments and observations, tucked into a rectangular paper folder. She had been a journalist herself, writing a regular column in the Riverside/Brookfield Landmark newspaper. She was also immensely quotable. How could you not love a politician who in 2006 called her Republican opponents "morons" and referred to Rod Blagojevich's "little weasel eyes"?
    She was raised in Berwyn and lived in Riverside. Her parents, William and Lillian Baar, were the children of Czechoslovakian immigrants. Topinka graduated from Ferry Hall, a private girls prep school in Lake Forest in 1962, then went to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She began her career as a reporter but, aghast at the corruption she saw, she ran for the State Legislature in 1980, spending four years in the Illinois House and 10 years in the Senate.
     In 1994, she was swept into the treasurer's office on the ticket with Edgar. She was re-elected twice and served until 2007. She was first elected comptroller in 2010, was re-elected in 2014, and was proud of her efforts to modernize the comptroller's office.
     "We have done some really remarkable things with this office," she said. "We are dealing with a 19th century office that we have to get into the 21st century."
     Topinka brought a joy to the dry fiscal aspects of her job and stressed the importance of sound management.
     "You need people who really want to be in those offices and want to deal with fiscal matters of the state, which I happen to like," she told the southern Illinoisan during the recent election. "I liked being treasurer, I love being comptroller . . . we hold the whole place together."
     She was divorced, and is survived by a son, Joseph, and a granddaughter, Alexandra Faith Baar Topinka.

Contributing: Mitch Dudek, Scott Fornek     
Listen to Judy Baar Topinka talk about her job by clicking here.

Judy Baar Topinka, front and center, watches Gov. Quinn sign the gay marriage law at the UIC Forum last November.

Ransom is un-American, but wasn't always

Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello

                                     

     When I began writing this, I was hoping to contemplate the ethical, almost philosophical, arguments against paying ransom. Then I stumbled upon the struggle our Founding Father's went through, trying to decide whether to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates, or raise an navy and fight them.  If you finish this and are just dying to learn more, historian Michael Oren delivered a captivating lecture on the topic at Columbia University in 2005 that you can read online, that was the source for the quotes used below. 

     Had the Navy SEAL team been successful Saturday in rescuing photojournalist Luke Somers from al-Qaida in Yemen, Somers would no doubt be back in the States by now, on the “Today” show, recounting his ordeal.
     But the raid turned into a firefight, and Somers was murdered by his captors, along with fellow hostage Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher who, it was later discovered, was hours from being released, thanks to a $200,000 ransom to be paid by his family and his employer, a charitable group.
     And there public interest ends, with a sad shake of the head. Such raids are enormous tactical challenges, this one didn’t succeed, and too bad that the South African fellow died, with freedom in his grasp, magnifying the tragedy for his family.
     That is the natural way to feel; it’s the way that I felt, at first. But then I thought about it a bit. The United States doesn’t pay ransom for kidnapped citizens because such payments only encourage more kidnapping, and the cash funds more terrorism. European countries do cravenly pay ransoms, to their shame, funneling tens of millions of dollars to al-Qaida and groups like it.

     South Africa, like the U.S., has a policy against paying ransoms. But families and private groups do pay, ignoring the fact that it is morally wrong. You are purchasing your loved one's freedom at the expense of the suffering of many others down the line.
     Not that such a moral calculus is ever easy. When it is your son in the video, begging for his life, focusing on what is best from an international policy perspective can seem irrelevant, even cruel.
     It might help to imagine another scenario. Let's say, instead of being kidnapped, the South African was instead delivering $200,000—the amount his family was about to pay—to al-Qaida out of zeal. The SEALs intercept and shoot him first. They would be doing their job and nobody would mourn the dead courier. You could argue that whether he is a captive or not is beside the point of a clear moral directive: Don't support terrorists; oppose them at all costs.
     If you wonder why the United States, normally bending over backward when it comes to the lives of our citizens abroad, takes this hard line, remember that our country has faced this exact problem since it began.
     Longer, in fact. Our split from Britain removed the protection of the powerful Royal Navy from our merchant fleet, which was then set on by Barbary pirates—privateers operating out of North Africa. The forging of our Constitution and the uniting of the colonies was done, in part, to better face what James Madison called "the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians."
     Then, as now, the temptation was to just pay the tribute, and for years our new country did just that, at the urgings of people like John Adams, who deemed it better to give "one Gift of two hundred Thousand Pounds" in tribute than to risk "a Million annually."
     The trouble was, once begun, payments never end, and others want in on the action. The U.S. Navy was created in March 1794 by a timid Congress (nothing changes; if you think it dithers now in the face of disaster, just look at the agonized debates Congress had while pirates were capturing American ships and parading their sailors in chains through the streets of Fez before selling them into slavery). The first U.S. naval warship was used not to fight the pirates, but to convey tribute to them. Talk about shame.
     By 1800, 20 percent of federal expenditures were payments to North African pashas, according to historian Michael Oren.
     Only Thomas Jefferson assuming the presidency in 1801 led to a change in policy. He sensed that our spirit was better suited to "raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason than money to bribe them."
     Not that doing so was ever easy. In 1803, 15 Marines from the USS Philadelphia were ambushed and slain in Tripoli—the first U.S. servicemen to die on foreign soil—and 308 crewmen were taken prisoner after the ship foundered on a reef. (The "shores of Tripoli" line in the Marine hymn immortalizes not that military fiasco but an 1805 victory.)
     Adams said something during the debate about the pirates that bears remembering.
     "We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever"—prophetic words, though Adams underestimated the mettle of his nation by adding, "this though, I fear, is too rugged for our people to bear." But bear it we did, and do. Americans turned out to be made of stronger stuff. We value each life, true, but prefer to lose a few citizens by standing for our values than to try to save them all by living on our knees.

                                                 

"Better racist police than ignorant thugs"

    In Hamlet, the melancholy Dane asks Rosencrantz if he has heard any news. 
     "None, my lord," the courtier replies, "but the world's grown honest."
     "Then is doomsday near," Hamlet quips — the idea being the if people start saying what they think, candidly without draping it in artifice and deceit, that would be such a radical departure from the usual it would mean that the world must be coming to an end.     
     I thought of that line Monday, looking over my dozens of emails responding to my column dipping a toe into the racial tempest over police roiling over the country in the wake of the Ferguson and chokehold cases. I expected a lot of poison, but was impressed by the thoughtfulness, the intelligence of the replies. As of 4 p.m. I hadn't received a single foaming hater, which is odd, even on days when I don't stick a trembling hand between the bars of the police department. 
      Two stuck out —one from a white reader, one from a black. As they are lengthy, I'll keep this intro to a minimum. I found them interesting, and thought you might find them interesting too.

Dear Neil:

     We may be a nation of laws, but we're also a nation of habits, some of them very old and very destructive.
     A few weeks ago I was driving around the Northwest Side with an old friend from my teenaged years, a retired Chicago cop.  I dared to broach the subject of local politics and he ran down a list of current politicians who were gang members back in the day.  I remarked on how much I enjoyed all my Mexican neighbors who moved to my block and all he could relate to was all the gang and drug activity related to his policing of Hispanic neighborhoods.
     Not for a moment did I think this was blind racism.  After all, he had been married to a Hispanic woman and was never one to throw around racial epithets.  But the years of having different experiences and forming different habits determined how we viewed the same city.  Eventually he had moved out to a farm in Wisconsin to save his nerves and sanity.
     Neil, you have a legitimate point about our not losing the cop's point of view amid the reaction to the Grand Jury's ruling on the death of Eric Garner.  But it is disingenuous for the Second City Cop to say that police officers are merely carrying out the duty to enforce laws that others have passed.  
     It would have been more accurate for him to say that police officers are enforcing the order that we expect them to protect, because it is a physical impossibility for the police to deal with every infraction of the law that takes place.  It always comes down to responding to situations that pose the greatest perceived threat to the public order and to reacting on the spot and by practicing the learned behaviors that are appropriate to the moment and that will be supported by officials after the fact.
     Whether the police like it or not, these behaviors often reflect a much larger context.  They reflect a justice system that has incarcerated way too many blacks, as you pointed out in your column.  They reflect a law enforcement system that has, at least in Chicago, failed to protect poor black neighborhoods from horrendous acts of gun violence.
     The most interesting question, at least to me, is whether the action of the police in the Garner case also reflects the persistence of Jim Crow.  We whites tend to forget how recent Jim Crow laws were on the books, even in the North up to the late 1960s in such forms as protective covenants on real estate.  We also tend to forget that it may take many generations to wean ourselves from the attitudes and habits that provided a basis for the enactment of Jim Crow laws and the deliberate segregation of our city.
     The outrage over Eric Garner is more than "Racial Catharsis No. 342."  What we lost through the Grand Jury decisions in the Eric Garner and the Ferguson cases was the present opportunity to bring to light any of the underlying factors that may have led to the deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands of white policemen. We badly need these opportunities.  That is because the current outrage also expresses a hidden shame in our body politic that it is 2014 and we are still fighting the Civil War.
     The wisest response I have heard to the two recent incidents came from two African American journalists, one old and one young.  They both said that they were surprised, but not shocked, by the Grand Jury verdicts.  They also said that the fight for equality is a long, long struggle and this is just another milepost.  Many miles to go.
     As for my old cop friend and me, we just shook our heads and wondered how we had such different perceptions of the city in which we both had grown up.  We went on to the next topic of conversation, as if to say, not in our generation.
                                                                   –Tom Golz

And then there was this:

     I am a Black man. I agree with you article 100%. And I believe that other Black folk will suffer the most from this latest round of highly emotional, explosively-charged mass hysteria. I see a complete ignoring of facts. I wonder, when the police powers/functions are good and nullified, who will protect me from my fellow anarchist Black brother? You see,    Blacks victimize Blacks more than any other race.
     Forget that we are extra cautious and vigilant when we walk in our own communities, often afraid when someone walks to close.
     I watched that Ferguson stuff. Now this giant of a guy strong armed a store owner. He took what he wanted. He showed no stealth when he left the store, he walked out in the open. Now, I was always taught to weigh out all the potential consequences of your behavior and choose what you could live with. I would've never challenged a cop with a gun after I robbed a store, nor would I have walked down the middle of the street once I robbed the store. I would've made my escape in the shadows. The audacity.
     Adrenaline high, I just strong armed a store and took what I want, I could take on a cop with a gun. WRONG!
     My mother said, "Boy. Some lessons cost you. And some a lot."
     I'd prefer racist police than to let some ignorant thugs who would love to run things, be in charge.
     A fine time for White American to rally for a cause. It would cause a state of anomie in my neighborhood if they are successful. It doesn't make our neighbor any less the example of what's wrong.
                                                                         —Sherman Johnson 

What about the cops' side of the story?

     

     So when does somebody speak up for the police? 

 Believe me, I have no interest in being that person. It’s a lose-lose proposition. 

 The public—in one long howl of outrage, based on two fatal encounters between young black men and police officers, in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City—won’t appreciate having the perspective of the bad guys of the moment defended, even a little. 

 The cops — a closed-rank echo chamber if ever there were—sure don’t want the support of the media, whom they universally despise, and particularly not from me. 

 And, to complete the circle—making it, then, a lose-lose-lose situation —  I don’t want to do it. Not to say the issue is unimportant — it is important, particularly if you are one of the African-Americans killed by excessive police force. But if I were to start listing the huge, festering issues facing black America: lack of capital, lack of jobs, bad schools, bad health care — it would be a while before we even got to the legal system skewed against them, incarcerating black men unfairly en masse, and we’d have to list a few more pressing judicial wrongs before we even got around to cops killing folk.

 But hey, I understand, public attention is not parceled out coolly by the Jedi Council based on objective analysis of our most pressing problems. Debate flashes and strobes, echoing off rare emotional episodes, and one video is worth a thousand studies.

 Back to the cops.
  When I set out to write today's column, I figured it was high time I joined in the clamor. You can only blather on so long about obits and Santa letters while the nation is going through Racial Catharsis No. 342 without feeling a little superfluous.
     Not that I was eager to swan dive into Ferguson, with my white-guy naivete. Pundit comments on the situation have tended toward the painfully obvious (one New York Times star began a column "We Americans are a nation divided," and ended, "There are no easy solutions. But let's talk.") Well, duh.
     But I thought I had an interesting twist. I'd begin the column, "You don't need me to tell you that cops are angry and racist; they'll tell you so themselves," then hopped onto that mighty online river of anonymous police anger and bile, Second City Cop. I figured I would pluck out a few of the more bitter blasts of thin blue line contempt, vastly familiar to anyone who has ever visited the site, probably the most public face of the Chicago Police Department, given the reactive, we'll-be-under-this-rock-if-you-can-find-us stance that the administration takes.
     I started reading Friday' post, headlined, "Protests Over What Exactly?"

     "Then there's the fact of the deceased weighing 350 pounds, his extensive heart disease, his asthma, the fact that he was able to yell not once, not twice, but TEN times that he couldn't breathe - if you can yell, you can breathe, you're just wasting the breath fighting. Oh, and he didn't die of 'choking,' he died of a heart attack an hour later. But those facts don't get reported on in the mainstream media."

  Hmm. I paused. SSC is correct, sort of. The cops sitting on Eric Garner's chest didn't help, but it isn't as if he was strangled.
     He quotes a reader:
     ". . . we actually pay them [the police] to use force when a law-breaking suspect (even one breaking a trivial law) resists arrest. That is the job we've given them."
     That also makes sense.
    "To say this guy is guilty of murder or manslaughter seems to me to be a case of scapegoating the people we've tasked with implementing a policy that we have imposed ourselves . . . If trivial laws should not provide grounds for arrest, We should change the laws to say so."
     To which Second City Cop says: "The bottom line—if you don't want cops enforcing the law, then stop passing laws and telling the police to enforce them. When arrested, you don't get to resist arrest. Period. The law says so. You resist, there are rules in place to overcome your resistance. You are not a 'jury of one' deciding what laws apply to you. Cops are authorized by the duly elected authority to overcome resistance."
     You can debate whether that is true, but it struck me as an opinion worth airing. We are a nation of laws, and we call on police to enforce those laws. They don't always do it in a pretty fashion, but to judge all police by these public incidents is to make the same mistake as those cops who treat every black person as a thug who hasn't yet reached for his weapon. So to echo my betters at The New York Times, yes, we need a dialogue about all this. But you can't have a conversation if only one side is doing all the talking.

God of the car keys

 

Rev. Otis Moss

                                        And almost every one, when age,

                                          Disease, or sorrows strike him,

                                        Inclines to think there is a God,

                                          Or something very like Him.

                                                                                      —Arthur Clough

   "So what's your connection to all this?" I said, my standard opening line at weddings of strangers and luncheons such as the one I found myself at last week. I was standing awkwardly at a large round table, waiting for the program to begin and people to sit down.
     "Well, I'm a man of faith, and I care about the environment," he said, explaining that he's highly placed at  the Department of Natural Resources. "And you?"
      "Well," I said, not really thinking. "I'm not a man of faith, and I've never cared much about the environment. But Rev. Sauder asked me to come." 
     Rev. Brian Sauder, a Mennonite minister, and executive director of something called Faith in Place. (Slogan: "Stronger Congregations for a Sustainable World.") He had invited me to their "annual celebration and fundraiser" and not having anything better to do, I shrugged and went.
     The Chicago-based group, as best I could glean by the speeches, attempts a heretofore unimagined union of religious faith and environmentalism. Usually those two forces are at odds. Christianity's basic take on the Earth and its riches is that God gave the whole ball of wax to mankind to ruin however we please and it's all going to come to a fiery end any moment anyway, which is a good thing, because then the blessed goes to heaven, where nobody worries about recycling. Judaism is fairly mum on conservation too—the environment is what you scurry through to get to synagogue—though some of the newer, touchier-feelier offshoots, such as Reconstructionism, try to correct that by occasionally holding a service outdoors.
      But this group not only promotes the idea that religious values are environmental values, but are gathering all faiths under the same tent in their efforts to heal the world physically while nurturing it spiritually. Christians. Muslims. Jews. The invocation was delivered by Dr. Manish Shah, of the Jain Society of Metropolitan Chicago—Jainism is an ancient Indian faith that stresses nonviolence toward all living things, so he fit right in. Dr. Shah brought his mother up to deliver the benediction he had known as a child. 
     The main speaker was Rev. Doc. Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on West 95th Street, who spoke of putting a green roof on the church (some old school parishioners wondered aloud at the barber shop why he was putting a putting green on top of the church) updating Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" in to "by any greens necessary," and was so forceful and entertaining that I was tempted to go up to him after and say, "Is there still time to get you to run for mayor in February? Because we need someone to scare Rahm." Maybe next time.
     The luncheon—vegetarian, natch—ended, and I never really got the chance to talk to my host, Rev. Sauder, which was too bad. He has a degree in natural resources and environmental sciences from the University of Illinois, a masters in religion from the Urbana Theological Seminary and and MBA, which makes him not quite your stereotypical Bible thumping preacher from Tazewell County, where he grew up. Some other time perhaps.
     On my way out the door, an interesting occurrence. I hurried to the coat closet, but my raincoat wasn't there. I went through each hanger carefully, Once, twice, three times. It still wasn't there. My good Burberry raincoat. Ah, but there was a second closet -- I had never been to the hall before, on the second floor of UBS Tower. Relieved, I went to that closet. The coat wasn't there either. Meanwhile, another man arrived and announced that he couldn't find his coat. "No kindness goes unpunished," he said. Having company seemed to confirm that we had been robbed. A spree. I felt a sinking feeling, an awful, is-this-happening? pit of the stomach feeling. A big sign on the closet said, in essence, "If you lose your coat, tough." I would have to go report my loss to Rev. Sauder. That seemed necessary, but really, what could he do about it? The poor man would be embarrassed. Why had I come to this at all? I looked one more time. The number coats were thinning out. Nothing on the floor. Maybe somebody had taken it by mistake...nah. That wouldn't happen to two coats. The do-gooders have been fleeced while listening to talks about bees and flowers.
    I was slowly walking back into the hall to deliver the bad news to the minister when I noticed a third closet. There my coat was. I put it on with joy.
     "Thank you God!" I exuded, out loud, quite the departure from my attitude at the beginning of lunch. I smiled at myself, recognizing how, in moments of duress, or relief, suddenly the long-scorned deity takes form before your eyes. As I once told my older son: "When you find yourself in jail—and trust me here—suddenly there's a God." I suppose I do believe, but in what George Carlin called "The God of the Car Keys." When you lose something, it's, "please God, help me find it!" Or, I suppose, when you find something you thought you had lost, He's the guy you thank, despite yourself.