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<FONT FACE="Arial, Helvetica" SIZE=1><A HREF="http://www.jewishworldreview.com" target="_parent">Jewish World Review</A> April 13, 2001 / 20 Nissan, 5761</FONT>
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<B><i>Stanley Crouch</I></B>
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<FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#0689A0"><B>
Two murderers,
two<BR> twisted fantasies
</b></FONT>
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AT this point, about 250 people have asked
Attorney General John Ashcroft for
permission to see Timothy McVeigh
executed for the Oklahoma City bombing. One
mother believes that seeing him die will release
her from the sorrow that has dominated her life
since her 4-year-old girl was killed.
<P><P>
Ronald Short, our own man from Queens, confessed a few days
ago to murdering his two sons, one 7 and one 3. Short was not a
political activist given to terrorist homicide like McVeigh. He was
not trying to tell anybody anything or get revenge or let the world
know that there were those who would not sit still and let the
government "get away" with the bloody bumbling in Waco, Tex.
<P><P>
Short had other things on his mind. He was troubled because it
seemed to him that his wife would leave him and take the boys
back to her homeland, Poland. Short was not going to have that.
His kids were not going to forget about utopian Queens and grow
up as Poles. Father knew best. He did the job with a hammer and
a hatchet. Then, his boys, all life gone from them under the
pressure of the blows and the chopping, were placed on a shelf in
a room where coal was stored in one of the buildings that Short
managed in Chelsea.
<P><P>
The very blackness of the lumps of coal mirrored the darkness
providing the fire Short needed to slaughter his own children like
some demonic patriarch in a bloody fairy tale.
<P><P>
In another fairy tale, some guy who thinks that the nation needs
another hero becomes an avenging angel in his own head as he
plots to make the federal government pay for its misdeeds.
<P><P>
The complete disregard for the lives of those who would normally
be considered noncombatants in a war was an odd thing on the
part of a man who had served time in the military. That is why he
can refer to the murdered children as "collateral damage." He feels
no remorse.
<P><P>
He is only a soldier in a mighty crusade to save our rights and our
liberty.
<P><P>
Short now wants to bring everything to a close and take his
punishment. I have imagined how terrified the second child must
have been if he saw his father murder his brother in front of him. I
imagine that is a terror Short will never forget, or the weight of the
weapons, or the weight of their still, still bodies, or the trembling
that probably came over him as he left them on a shelf.
<P><P>
McVeigh may have his audience of 250, but all they will see is the
champion mass killer being injected and falling asleep, never to
wake again.
<P><P>
I don't know if that will pay for all the pain he shoved into people's
lives. No punishment could reach that.
<P><P>
Short probably is paying. He seems, unlike McVeigh, to
understand the horror of what he did. But neither fatal injections
nor the recognition of savagery brings anybody back. They only
remind the rest of us that complete safety — for men, for women,
for children — is a fantasy.
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<NOBR> talk.
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JWR contributor and cultural icon Stanley Crouch is a columnist for <A HREF="http://nydailynews.com"</A> The New York Daily News</A>. He is the author of, among others, <A HREF="javascript:void(0)"onClick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0679776605/jewishworldrevieA/','_blank');window.open('../amazon.html','_blank','resizable=yes,width=650,height=450,toolbar=no')"<I> The All-American Skin Game, Or, the Decoy
of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994,</I></A>       <FONT COLOR="#557799" FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="4"><A HREF="javascript:void(0)"onClick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0375701680/jewishworldrevieA/','_blank');window.open('../amazon.html','_blank','resizable=yes,width=650,height=450,toolbar=no')"<I>Always in Pursuit: Fresh American
Perspectives, </I></A> <FONT COLOR="#557799" FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="4"> and <A HREF="javascript:void(0)"onClick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0375409327/jewishworldrevieA/','_blank');window.open('../amazon.html','_blank','resizable=yes,width=650,height=450,toolbar=no')"<I> Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing</I></A>. <FONT COLOR="#557799" FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="4"> Send your comments by clicking <A HREF="mailto:schmooze@jewishworldreview.com?subject=Stanley Crouch"> here. </A>
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<A HREF="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/crouch030901.asp" target="_self">03/09/01</A>: Of gangsters, gangstas --- and spin
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<CENTER><FONT SIZE=1><I>© 2001, NY Daily News</I></FONT></CENTER>
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