I completely agree with what I have read so far [on your blog] and find your stuff delightful and inspiring. Don't tell my..., who would be sure to say I'm going to go to Hell. I...have been a liberal Democrat for many years. So glad I have found you! [altered to try to keep my relative's...from finding out]But it's sad to think that the writer and I were both in our thirties the last time we saw each other and haven't been in touch for more years than either of us has left on this green Earth. (And sad to think there are people who believe that reading my blog is sufficient reason for someone to go to Hell. Or is it being a liberal Democrat?)
My wife and I (and Siegfried) had to go over to Chapel Hill later in the morning. I was glad that Carolina's home game wouldn't start until evening. The streets of the town were still passable. Sadly, to quote a headline in the sports section of a local newspaper this morning, "It's that time of the year again." I.e., football. Intercollegiate athletics. Caravans of flag-fluttering automobiles on weekends. In fact, we saw a car with a little dark blue flag on either side on the interstate—Duke? At least it was headed for Durham and not Chapel Hill.
On the drive over, my wife told me about Cameron Todd Willingham. We're glad to know that he was an honorable man. He said he wouldn't plead guilty to avoid the death sentence because he was innocent of the fire that burned down his house in Corsicana, Texas on December 23, 19911 and killed his three young children. So the great State of Texas executed him.
Sadly, they killed an innocent man. From an August 26 Associated Press account of the inquiry that exonerated Willingham:
Willingham's stepmother, Eugenia Willingham, called the [fire investigation] report another step in the "long, drawn-out process" of clearing his name._______________
"He lived 12 years on death row," she said. "He went through hell, I'm telling you. It was probably worse than hell."
She said her husband died in 2005, the year after his son's execution, of prostate cancer and "a broken heart."
- The fatal fire occurred five days before the murder at the CBS Lounge in Phoenix for which Ray Krone was wrongfully convicted and spent three years on death row before being wrongfully convicted a second time and sentenced to "life" in Arizona prisons.
This deceptively simple piece of writing effortlessly obeys Aristotle's principle of unity: the three glad/sad sections describe events of a single day that occurred in chronological order: the email received, the drive to Chapel Hill, the conversation in the car. And there's unity of theme: each "event" deals with a facet of fanaticism. In the first, it's religious fanaticism ("You're going to hell"). In the second, it's sports fanaticism (note that the author doesn't euphemize this by referring to "sports fans" but reminds us that we're talking about fanaticism here too). In the third, it's the fanaticism of the criminal justice system, which rushes to convict the presumed bad guy, then refuses to let the facts get in the way as it sullenly (if not gleefully) carries out the execution.
ReplyDeleteI read that article in the New Yorker and told Matt about it in the car the day before mom told you. What a tale.
ReplyDeleteJDN, that case makes the delusion, "We don't convict and execute innocent people," from Jim Rix's book Jingle Jangle: The Perfect Crime Turned Inside Out and quoted in today's post on Moristotle, seem even more reptilian and bizarre.
ReplyDeleteyeah I don't see how there can be any doubt of the fallacy of "We don't convict and execute innocent people," though of course Texas is "still looking into" willingham's case.
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