Public Nuisances
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Dear Mr. President Welcome to Washington, President Bush. Pardon the condition of the White House. Some fresh paint will work...
...There was once a time when capital punishment was illustrative of condign retribution, but that day is long gone...
...Such bizarreries are often turned up to make a brute such as Garza seem appealing...
...But in prison Garza has a chance to atone for his wrong, and by leaving him there for the right reason America has a chance to demonstrate its reverence for freedom and for life...
...Conversely, is it inimical to conservatism...
...Unfortunately, minorities commit a disproportionate number of crimes (usually against other minorities...
...In an otherwise successful presidency, George H. W. Bush raised taxes and allowed some increased govemment regulation...
...The death they have caused cannot be undone...
...En route to the White House it has been you who has made all the most important decisions...
...Perhaps he and O.J...
...an invincible deodorant...
...Garza is a cofd-blooded murderer, but it is time to suspend capitaf punishment in America...
...When Washington's "strange new respect" nominating committee met fast weekend, Dennis Hastert was immediately shortlisted for this year's award...
...Capital punishment actually adds to the increasing anger and morbidness of society...
...With a smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye you will doubtless move beyond their gruesome counsel...
...It was once thought to do both, but not in our brutal society...
...The voices of the Kultursmog will forever be ambushing you with controversies, usually false controversies such as the one they raised over your coinage "compassionate conservatism...
...The spectacle of a state execution now overshadows the heinousness of a murderer's brutality...
...I gather that the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...That is because Republications have been building their own complex of pofitical players and ideas...
...Even many television advertisements feature transmogrifications of the average Joe screeching off in some fanciful vehicle or flying through a window in pursuit of some flashy product: a new beer...
...The American Spectator 9 February 2001 13...
...Thus they do not recognize their impudence when they lecture us on how to be "good conservatives...
...Doubtless you, as the new president, understand their weird condition...
...Some fresh paint will work miracles, and if you come across anything suspicious, do not hesitate to call upon the local public health authorities...
...The crimes are disproportionately more brutal...
...They have developed their own culture from their own think tanks, from industry, and with their own growing communications community...
...Soon he will assume that rofe unique to America's legalistic society, celebrity outcast...
...What is more, it makes the cantankerous elites of Official Washington even grumpier...
...We already have too many unworthy celebrities-though not transient enough...
...Welcome to town, Mr...
...And far back in their minds, in that shadowy Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times cofumn syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...Their deaths only add to the death...
...To indict or not to indict, that is the predicament...
...Capital punishment adds to the death...
...He should have spared his life completely and let him remain in the pen for the rest of his life...
...Naturally, minorities are disproportionately convicted of capital offenses...
...Maybe Norman Mailer will find he is a gifted writer...
...Yet, for every Republication since Richard Nixon, life in Washington has been increasingly easy...
...He left the country...
...Give us a persistent, sunny, can-do chief The end of the Age of Cfinton is finally upon us, and in the fast weeks of his adofescent presidency the Boy President did something that fetched my approval...
...It neither dramatizes the horror of crime nor speaks out for life...
...place where their schemes take shape, they recognize that their advice to you will ensure your demise...
...He ordered a sixmonth delay of Garza's execution...
...An end to capital punishment would signal a respect for life and an acknowledgment of evil...
...Moreover, once executed Garza would have no chance to acknowledge his wrongs...
...Wodehouse...
...That cost him his office, and for his efforts Official Washington depicted him as a figure from the world of P.G...
...Tom Bethell and to pay Official Washington no more than a friendly wink...
...You may mangle bits of syntax but you think clearly...
...President, I expect you to remain debonair, true to your ideas, and, for the most part, successful...
...The liberal Democrats' long-standing prejudice against members of the opposition was explained thirty years ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan...
...That presents Independent Counsel Robert Ray with a pretty predicament...
...President Welcome to Washington, President Bush...
...Simpson will open a goff club and name it for fatty Arbuckle...
...Is it some frowsy notion...
...You also have another of Ronald Reagan's assets, a faculty for being underestimated by your opponents...
...Of course, it is neither...
...You have the benefit of an additional decade of economic research showing that lowering taxes and cutting regulation frees economies to grow...
...A marijuana trallicker, he was convicted of murdering one person and ordering the deaths of two others in 199o and 1991...
...He favored delaying the execution because studies, most one from the Justice Department, have found that minorities are senenced to death disproportionately...
...Ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan I have held to the conviction that disposition is important to statecraft, possibly more important than intellect...
...Actually, the Boy President did another thing of which I approve...
...In a society that exploits coarseness and viofence in its entertainments- even in its advertisements- such niceties as retribution are lost...
...That complex of crabby elites and glum ideas that compose the pofitical culture of Washington-- the Kultursmog, as we believers in fresh ideas call it-will conspire to make the 43rd president's stay in Washington unpleasant...
...When they advise you to welch on your campaign promises, they think they are saving the Republic from Herbert Hoover...
...Your aides are very loyal and very discreet, but in their private talk they unconsciously betray an important fact about the boss...
...He should remain locked away for the rest of his life and unable to kill again...
...Compassionate conservatism is precisely what the times need, a soficitude for the weak in our society that depends on a mini mum of government bureaucracy and the expansion of private groups, particularly "the faith-based organizations" that are ready and willing to serve...
...And ax grinders for special causes can continue to harangue about how America is racist and the state illegitimate...
...The most compelling reason for ending state executions is that, though the state has a right to defend its citizenry, capital punishment merely silences life...
...Once Garza is executed, society will have less chance to reflect on such a man's life of crime...
...Garza is a very bad man...
...You know that the dominant media's scriveners and such trendsetters as Daschle and Gephardt view you as an anomaly, a transient soon to be replaced by the White House s rightful claimant, a Democrat...
...Democrats and liberals do not believe, Moynihan asserted, that Republications and conservatives have any place in "the natural order of things...
...President, I doubt you will make the mistake of deferring to Official Washington...
...Yet it is time to end capital punishment...
...Then came word that our own R. Emmett Tyrrell had come out against the death penalty...
...To them every Republication president is illegitimate...
...Perhaps the conventional opponents of the death penalty will find something endearing about him...
...Killing him would merely make him a transient star in our witless celebrity culture...
...To be sure, a government has a duty to defend its citizens against danger, but that has been accomplished with Garza behind bars...
...Conflicting impulses are as common to the liberal's mind as conflicting poficies are to his pofitical agenda...
...By a unanimous show of hands, it was agreed that Tyrrell should be the honored recipient...
...That friendly wink, by the way, is very reassuring...
...He now is in a position to be celebrated as the victim of racism or elitism...
...from the legal legerdemain of the fast election - and, for that matter, the...
...executive and great things can be accomplished...
...President, but go somewhat easy on Official Washington...
...President, you are right to call them "armies of compassion...
...Unfortunately he returned...
...GWB is as tough a pofitician as one would want- and you play by the rofes...
...There is nothing appealing about them...
...Clinton also got his reasoning wrong...
...The only mistake your father made in his administration was according gentlemanly deference to this perfidious remnant of a point of view that was aging badly twenty years ago...
...That should surprise no one...
...I assume that you recognize that it is not owing to the recent election's aberrations that Official Washington and its Democratic eminences view your presidency as illgitimate...
...from your vanquished opponents one draws another conclusion...
...In Washington, President Bush will have plenty of talent and companionship...
...In its hype and its pervasive materialism, all boomed with an adofescent cynicism, America does encourage a culture not about life and ebullience but about death and the repugnant...
...though he did it for the wrong reasons, and he only went part way...
...In December he spared he life of the first person scheduled to be executed by the federal government in 37 years, Juan Raul Garza...
...Whatever the outcome, my guess is that Biff's reputation will continue to rot...
...Do not deny us the pleasure of laughing at the grumps...
...Locked away for the rest of his life, given benefit of clergy, an ample library, plus time for sofitary reflection, even a murderer such as Garza might attain contrition for his cruelty...
...They think they are merely being public-spirited when they admonish you, President Bush, against consorting with your conservative allies and friends...
...American society offers up vast areas of violence- admittedly, usually simulated - for the amusement of sports fans, film goers, popular music idiots...
...President George H. W. Bush has always been an exemplary gentleman...
...One of your most attractive demonstrations of character has been your fierce loyalty to your father...
...The shabby way he was treated by Official Washington reveals how corrupt Official Washington is...
...America in its entertainments, its public ethics, and its culture is entoiled with death...
...likewise, you benefit from years of research which make it clear that choices in education, health care, and social security are prelerable to government monopofy...
...has agreed to preside over the award ceremony, to be held on Manhattan's East Side...
...As I say, Clinton only went part way...
...You are not new to pofities and one of the secrets that you have cleverly maintained throughout Campaign 2000 is that you have an unusually keen pofitical mind...
...You have Ronald Reagan's friendly demeanor...
...corruption of the Clinton Administra, tion - you must recognize the importance of judicial appointments respectful of the Constitution and the rule of law...
...Your predecessors were unique...
...In sum, events of the past decade fend plenty of justification for you to make good on your campaign pledges 12 February 2oo1 The American S Capital Brutality Strange New Respect News flash...
Vol. 34 • February 2001 • No. 1
