US Penchant for Strong-Arm Reactions

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

From Heather Mallick. Who rocks.

Action and Overreaction in America

Jan. 15, 2007

For years, whenever I needed a writing kickstart I would read columnist and actor Stephen Fry's collected bits, particularly the Trefusis radio broadcasts of the late eighties.

Fry had invented Prof. Donald Trefusis, a raving old dotard of a philologist at Cambridge, who was invited to speak of modern times, of which he was entirely ignorant, to a BBC audience. This self-described gentle and biddable ancient creature would combine the finer points of philology (his 30-year feud with a rival academic about the root of the Papuan word redatt, which "as some of you may know means ‘unlikely to take part in evening games'") with random abuse. For instance, he deplored chirpy morning television shows. "Such an obscene orgy of vulgarity, baseness and ignorance I hope never to witness again," while praising the jolly gunplay of Starsky and Hutch.

The climax of the Trefusis broadcasts was his visit to New York City to study iotal elisions. Naturally he was arrested while discussing something called "crack" with a large importunate man in Greenwich Village. Trefusis took it as a tribute to his great brain that the cops kept calling him Wise Guy. "But the compliment is wearing thin," he told his listeners, "and I long for liberty."

And then, to my utter glee and horror, it all came true. It happened this month in Atlanta at a conference of the American Historical Association. One of the world's finest minds, Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto, the famed Cambridge scholar of global environmental history, author of 19 books and the current occupant of the Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at Tufts University in Boston, decided to cross the street.

He was accosted by a young man who told him he was jaywalking. The professor thanked him and continued on his way. The man said he was a cop, the professor could see no evidence of a uniform (he later said the man was wearing a rather louche garment, a "jerkin" worn by someone affecting a raffish image; to me, it sounds like a bulletproof vest) and he asked the officer for his identification.

The officer took offence, kicked the professor's legs out from under him, smashed him to the pavement with the help of four other officers, crushed his neck, bloodied his head, yanked the slight 56-year-old man's arms behind him, handcuffed him and sent him to jail in a fetid paddywagon. The professor ("I do depend on my spectacles," he said later, which had gone in the ditch), had no identification beyond his Cambridge parking pass and was given no chance to explain himself.

Fernández-Armesto, the kind of man whose accent resembles that of the Queen in her Christmas message, whose suit has a matching vest, and who carries a watch chain, sat for eight hours in jail in the company of "sad, degraded or deranged" people, almost all of whom, as he pointed out in a YouTube interview, were kinder and more civilized than the police who had arrested him. Almost all were black, he said, which was evidence of racism. These people needed help, not locking up.

"Aging members of the bourgeoisie don't normally endure this," the professor said with a nervous, horrified giggle. "I was very much the odd man out."

As he explained, one of the aims of his life is to never give trouble.

"I am pathologically law-abiding."

One has an extra obligation to be so when one is the guest of a foreign country, he added. He hadn't known jaywalking was a crime that required bail of $1,371, which was eventually produced by a bail bondsman.

When he appeared in court the next day, he said three or four words, the court said "Huh?" and the judge realized that the arresting officer, Kevin Leonpacher of Niceville, Fla., had got the situation badly wrong.

Charges were dropped

The charges were dropped, Leonpacher is sullen (very much a "hominid," as the professor described him, "but that is an injustice to hominids"), the mayor of Atlanta has called the police chief on the carpet, Fernández-Armesto says he is not litigious, the American Historical Association is overcome with embarrassment, and I am a happy, albeit appalled, person because I have seen Prof. Trefusis spring to life after 20 years on the dry page.

What gladdened my heart was the response on YouTube.com. Young American downloaders were appalled by the Atlanta police blitzkrieg on a frail, older gentleman, and even defended Fernández-Armesto when one poster accused him of using "big words" to impress people. That noble poster even apologized (this never happens). Downloaders were gracious. They were angry that a visitor's basic rights and freedoms had been destroyed by thug cops. I swear, it is the young who will save that troubled country.

Overreaction elsewhere

As the story of this surreal police overreaction unfolded, Americans were overreacting elsewhere. The U.S. military bombed Somalia, one of the poorest nations on Earth (along with Afghanistan), and missed their claimed al-Qaeda targets. They invaded the Iranian consulate in Iraq, a grave violation of diplomatic rules in the first place, but also putting all American embassies at risk. The next day, the U.S. embassy in Athens was bombed.

I do think there's a link between banging up a historian, bombing the destitute and breaking the code of diplomacy. I call it American hysterical overreaction. I also call it contempt for the rule of law. My very clever editor differs with me on this last point. He suggests calling it "Nixonomics, a calculated risk on the cost-benefit of ignoring the law."

Most interesting. Perhaps we shall have a scholarly conference, as both Fernández-Armesto and his fictional doppelganger Trefusis would recommend. It has been said that Cambridge produces martyrs (like Fernández-Armesto) and Oxford burns them (Trefusis's undoubted preference). Leonpacher should be grateful that he attacked the first, and not the second.

Here's the first part of the

link.

[hamilton]

Heather Mallick is one of my favourite columnists ever.

[d_rawk]

Glad to see that not only has Mallick not lost it, but that she may well just be really catching her stride.

The Globe's loss.