Editorials/Jesse's Place/Legal Brawley
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS JESSE'S PLACE by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. even million Democrats voted for 1.3 Jesse Jackson to be the presidential nominee of his party. He will arrive at the Democratic national...
...Still, many Democratic potentates speak the current wisdom of the primary season when they say that surely Jesse Jackson is too smart or too mature to seek a place on the Democratic ticket...
...The only problem with this last observation is that it might libel animals, thereby getting me in dutch with animal rights groups whose members can make the irrefutable point that no animal displays such pride in his ferocity as America's street psychopath...
...Getting them to bring their stories to the police has been difficult enough in the past...
...The Brawley case is a reminder of how serious Wolfe, the satirist, really is...
...They cannot go along with Jesse's claim that he has made the Democratic party unstoppable in the fall, but then say that as the Democrats' vice presidential candidate he would doom the ticket...
...New York is sliding toward the State of Nature envisaged by the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, wherein life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short...
...New York, particularly, is an urban exposition center for an extraordinary kind of animal savagery that underclass males of both races now perpetrate ever more blatantly against the defenseless...
...It may be biased as the showmen say, but it is still the only instrument for justice that the victims of criminal violence have...
...the rogues and the con men portrayed in his novel are on daily display in this city's news stories, and the Brawley case abounds with Wolfean characters...
...It looks to me, as it looked two months ago, that this man wants a place on Mr...
...And for a certitude those who ignore subpoenas and defy the courts ought to be put in the slammer too...
...New York, particularly, is an urban exposition center for an extraordinary kind of animal savagery that underclass males of both races now perpetrate ever more blatantly against the defenseless...
...They want a sense of existential well-being, good Karma, a pleasant sense of oneness with the Cosmos, the Revolution, the Movement—that sort of flapdoodle...
...He will arrive at the Democratic national convention with about 1,200 delegates, not the back-slapping, life-of-the-party type, but 1,200 delegates alive to the radical thought that they might for the first time ever place a black on the ticket of a major political party...
...There are the future victims of Miss Brawley's assailants, and there are the many victims of rape, child abuse, and racist assaults...
...He had reason to worry...
...Dukakis's ticket and any attempt to cut him out is going to make him angrier than he already is...
...The grisly acts of rape, confinement, disfigurement, and racist indignity that Tawana Brawley, a black teenager,claims were practiced against her in Wappingers Falls, New York, are not exactly commonplace...
...Moreover, the kind of deranged brutes who Miss Brawley assures us attacked her are the kind of psychopaths likely to strike again...
...a question not asked any other candidate, those who started and those who failed...
...But innocents are going to suffer when this show ends...
...There could come a point in the next few weeks when the Democrats lose a sizable portion of the black vote whether Jesse is appeased by them or not...
...Miss Brawley's entourage of lawyers, holy men, rabblerousers, and other buffoons butting on a very entertaining show th their red-hot accusations LEGAL BRAWLEY New York If this city's garish Tawana Brawley 1 case accomplishes anything of value, it ought at least to focus our minds on the heinous nature of violent crime and the delicate condition of our legal system...
...The antics of the Brawley entourage and the attendant defaming of New York's criminal justice system, plus the absurd leniency of New York's officials toward Miss Brawley and her showmen, now threaten this last line of defense against thugs...
...M onths ago, when his masterful and amusing novel about this city was with the printer, Tom Wolfe worried that critics would think that he stole his story from the city's daily newspapers...
...Is it because his politics are simply too radical...
...but they take place frequently enough to evoke growing concern among the law-abiding...
...The only problem with this last observation is that it might libel animals, thereby getting me in dutch with animal rights groups whose members can make the irrefutable point that no animal displays such pride in his ferocity as America's street psychopath...
...And what is Jesse up to...
...Well, if he has brought new strength to the Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...The whole Brawley entourage strikes me as a promising target for this salutary process...
...As long as she and the charlatans around her thwart the prosecution of these men, they are free to repeat their crimes...
...Then why is there no one in the Democratic party willing to say it...
...Jesse cannot be sidestepped...
...During the Democratic primaries and caucuses he insisted that he was bringing new voters into the Democratic mob...
...This is why Miss Brawley's refusal to cooperate with New York's criminal justice system is in itself criminal...
...Every day Jesse's strength grows, and with the zealots pushing for him, July's Democratic convention will again rival the ancient spectacle of the Roman Forum, or I am a platypus...
...Miss Brawley's entourage of lawyers, holy men, rabblerousers, and other buffoons butting on a very entertaining show th their red-hot accusations 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 that local, state, and federal officials have concocted a gigantic cover-up en-toiling such diverse phenomena as the New York governor's office, the Ku Klux Klan, the New York City mayor's office, the Irish Republican Army, and now I suppose one has to mention church sanctuary...
...Is it because he lacks any experience whatsoever and as Vice President would be but a heart-beat away from the nuclear button...
...To prevent further decline New York's law enforcement officials had best arrest, try, and punish criminals...
...It discourages Americans from facing up to this particularly brutal kind of crime...
...but they take place frequently enough to evoke growing concern among the law-abiding...
...I've rebuilt the progressive wing of the Democratic party...
...The grisly acts of rape, confinement, disfigurement, and racist indignity that Tawana Brawley, a black teenager,claims were practiced against her in Wappingers Falls, New York, are not exactly commonplace...
...Moreover, the kind of deranged brutes who Miss Brawley assures us attacked her are the kind of psychopaths likely to strike again...
...All Democratic potentates agreed...
...Moreover the groundswell in the black community suggests that Jesse's candidacy could get out of hand...
...All they want is power...
...These zealots want something other than power from politics...
...I've expanded our party...
...Hence the animal savagery of our streets will continue and perhaps get worse...
...Black voters will not allow their leaders to abandon Jesse...
...Given the lurid picture of the courts and the police that Miss Brawley's showmen are painting, these victims are going to be even less willing to make their suffering known...
...I suspect that these activists, who for the most part are white, are beginning to see Jesse's place on the ticket as a Moral Imperative...
...But Wolfe was making serious points about the dangers of the streets and about the city's criminal justice system...
...The smart money here in Washington argues that a very smooth Michael S. Dukakis is going to prevail upon the Democrats' leading black politicos to keep Jesse off the ticket...
...That is the fundamental tragedy of the Brawley farce...
...Unfortunately, now as in the 1970s they are unaware of the kinds of zealots that populate most of the interest groups of the modern Democratic coalition...
...Democratic ticket, if he is the surpassing orator, the galvanic force, why do his fellow Democrats not now agree with him that he is worthy of the number two spot on the Democratic ticket...
...He is stillon the campaign trail, and sounding irritable...
...The Congressional LEGAL BRAWLEY Black Caucus, black mayors, and the rank and file of the black community are contributing to the clamor for Jesse...
...No one denied it...
...He said he was making the party "more representative" and "progressive...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 9...
...They are driven by outrj...
...This is why Miss Brawley's refusal to cooperate with New York's criminal justice system is in itself criminal...
...The Democrats cannot have it both ways...
...Once again they are deluding themselves...
...New York If this city's garish Tawana Brawley 1 case accomplishes anything of value, it ought at least to focus our minds on the heinous nature of violent crime and the delicate condition of our legal system...
...We can only talk of winning in '88 because of what we built in '84 and did in '85, '86, and '87...
...And there is a surging groundswell of support beneath these black leaders to put Jesse on the ticket...
...Their demands are reasonable...
...It's a confused question, full of contempt and disrespect...
...The final victim of the Brawley hijinks, of course, is the legal system...
...and it is the public's best defense against America's street psychopaths...
...It discourages Americans from facing up to this particularly brutal kind of crime...
...The growing chorus of support for Jesse's place on the ticket makes what seemed so improbable months ago appear eminently plausible...
...He feared that the critics would mark down The Bonfire of the Vanities as another of Wolfe's works of journalism, rather than appraise it as his first work of fiction...
...If I were Jesse I would be developing a slow burn, and the news seeping out of his recent meetings with Governor Michael S. Dukakis suggests that he is...
...Soon other elements in the Democratic party are going to be aroused to support him...
...I'm asked over and over again," he recently remarked in Houston, "a very basic question—what does Jesse want...
...As long as she and the charlatans around her thwart the prosecution of these men, they are free to repeat their crimes...
...The Democratic potentates are usually professional pols...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
