Hi, it's Eric Glass, recording this in 2006. And the show that you're about to listen to, the fifth episode of our show, we actually cannot find a master copy of it. And so what you're going to hear is a copy of somebody's old cassette of this show. And we apologize for the sound quality.
We all know what liberalism looked like back in its heyday, back during the Kennedy administration of the great society. We all can see it. There's, there's president Kennedy on the White House lawn in the sweatshirt, playing touch football, or taking a pause while playing touch football. He's turning toward the camera, this little film of sweat on his forehead, and he's smiling, and...
looking, just radiating sexual charisma. The heyday of liberalism meant a nation increasingly open about sexuality. You know, there's a ton of rising sex on ads and television and increasing sexual frankness in society in general. Now, in our current moment of the Republican Revolution, we're a nation that is increasingly getting in touch with our anger.
Anger sells. Anger motivates voters. Anger's the engine behind a thousand talk radio programs. Two thousand.
Five thousand. But not this one. Because of W.B.E.C. in Chicago.
It's your radio playhouse. I'm Ira Glass. Wasn't every Saturday night I got so excited when I did it, I just, I barely understand the call letters I bet. Just in case you were from W.B.E.C.
That's, you know, so management doesn't call me up. It's important to them. Anyway, tonight on our radio show, Civilization and its Discontense. And the people who are at Discontense with the Discontense.
And it doesn't make any sense. Just stay with us. Okay, just stay with us. Coming up in our program, stories from Larry Stiger, Iris Moore, Cheryl Trick.
And more and more and more and more and more and more. So anger. Anger is an inherent part of the current conservative revolution. It is built into it from the start.
It is front loaded. It's in the hard drive, hard wire mechanism of the thing. In the 1980s, when Newt Gingrich was making videotapes and audiotapes for Republican candidates who were trying to win office and Newt was trying to convince them to win office in the way that he had. And it was very successful in building the Republican majority, as you know, this way.
One of the things that he told them was to consciously use words and phrases that would polarize the political debate and that would get people angry. There was recently this past October, there was a huge profile of his political strategy in the New Yorker. And as I pointed out, the recommended words on these tapes, the recommended words that candidates were supposed to use as often as possible in referring to Democrats included these words, sick, traitors, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, seal, devour, self-serving, and criminal rights. See what's not worth it?
What do you mean? Sick traitors, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, steal, devour, self-serving, and criminal rights. What do you guys possible use others in one sentence? I'm just looking at the words here.
Sick traitors, I guess I get a Democrat. Sick Democratic traitors with their corrupt and bizarre ways, not only cheating and stealing devour. It's not very interesting sentence. All right, I'll tell you what, we are a radio program.
And we have the power to do the following thing. I'm just going to stop and use it. Yeah, there we go. Because this is such a dramatic moment here.
All right, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to just get a piece of paper and a pencil. I'm going to read you these words. And we'll give you the address of the radio show at the end of the program.
And whoever can come up with an interesting, grammatically correct sentence using these words. When a valuable prize. I hear the words. Sick traitors, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, people over the city are just cursing me out.
Now go slower, steal, devour, self-serving, and criminal rights. And the winner will get them, I don't know, coffee mug, or I don't know. I've seen in some congressional district yet to be named. I'm going to just be fair here for a second.
Just a moment of fairness. Cultivating anger amongst the voters is not just a tactic used by conservatives. I would say pretty much the last, oh, you know, hundred years. That's called an even hundred.
That's been a pretty much a main strategy of the life, too. You know, to cultivate outrage. Except when the life does it is to cultivate outrage at the rich, the business. Which, as we know, is very different from our current political moment.
That, um, the same New Yorker profile. Basically, outlines this whole political strategy. To cultivate anger of middle-class people against the poor. Not against the rich, but against the poor.
And against social programs to the poor. At one point in this article, one of the consultants who holds seminars for House Republicans at the invitation of Speaker Gingrich, who tells a reporter, turn on the reading article, um, spitting his words and gesturing angrily at his chin. The middle class is headed up to here with the arrogance of the poor and the disenfranchised. And one thing that is particular about the current moment in our political life as a nation is that people are angry, but they're not angry at things that are happening today.
You know, whether getting paid, conditions, work conditions, down at the factory. The garbage pickup on the street. This isn't what this particular political revolution is trying to instill. This particular revolution is trying to instill anger at welfare mobs.
You know, people are angry at the Ojayburg. They're angry at people they never met. Which brings us to the Susan Smith trial. I know that's kinda non-secker.
Just ride with me here for a minute. I know a lot of you are working on your words, so this should be a time to really pay attention. The Susan Smith trial is this grisly, grisly, grisly case. And, uh, to review briefly, in the small town of Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith, um, locked her two children, very, very young children, into her car, and then sank the car in a lake, supposedly to help her keep this rich boy, Fred, who supposedly didn't want any children, didn't want her to have kids.
And really horrifying story. And one of the contributing editors to this radio show, Jack Hit, is, he's from South Carolina, and he's a journalist, he's an editor, he's been an editor anyway at Harper's Magazine, a frequent contributor to New York Times and Esquire and other places. And over the course of the Susan Smith trial, he traveled home to South Carolina a number of times. And, um, launching the coverage on South Carolina television, he said that what struck him was the pure rage that people had towards Susan Smith.
Very nice talking about it. What this town wanted to do was rip our part. Baby killing bitch, I remember hearing a woman on TV shouting this at the top of her lungs. Um, people were sending in their milk money to help defray the cost of, uh, electrocuting her.
Perhaps the most horrific image was to see these, this town of, you know, good Christian sort of gathering at the, uh, police station door when she was first brought out for a hearing. And the crowd actually rushed the deputies to try to get to her. The deputies had to lock arms to stop the crowd from ripping her apart. And he said that this, he said that this reaction is understandable at the beginning.
So that when he heard first heard about this, this case, I mean his blood ran cold. But he said the thing about this anger was that he'd never let up. He said that weeks went by week after week and he just stayed at the per pitch. And Jackie said that when he realized that this is typical of a certain kind of conservative today, this is a political style for good or bad.
That we're seeing a lot of in our country right now. Every time you tune them in, whether it's, you know, the McLaughlin group on Sunday morning or whatever, they're still furious. They're just angry, angry, angry, angry. And once the Susan Smith trial drops off the radar, they go pick up something else that'll inflame their anger so they can move on and hate something else and be angry, angry at somebody else.
So Jackie wrote an article for The Washington Post. This was not bad piece. And in this piece he argued for a different kind of response to the Susan Smith trial. What he said was, he said short, she should be punished.
He said we all can agree that she should be punished and severely punished. But he said even in this case, even in the case so horrible, that no one could possibly sympathize with the criminal. You know what could be worse than a mother killing her two young children. He said even in this case, we have to have empathy.
The anger has to turn to an attempt to understand why she did what she did. And to forgive her. He wrote in this piece, if there's one aspect of the old liberalism that should be preserved during its excommunication, it's the willingness to contemplate even the most horrific and to seek to understand why things happen. What we understand as we come to know Susan Smith more and more and more is that rather than it being the story of a sort of libertine promiscuous woman who wanted to have her way and wanted to have her rich husband and therefore killed her children so she could have this husband who didn't want to have any children, it became a much more complicated story, less of a cartoon story, more of a sort of human story.
And let me just give you that very briefly. Her mother Linda was married to a fireman and eventually divorced him and married a sort of rich man, Beverly Russell. And after a few years when Susan's 13th she tries to kill herself. That happens, it passes.
When she's 16 she goes to a high school guidance counselor to say that her stepfather, Mr. Russell, a member of the Christian Coalition and a Republican County Chairman, is abusing her. Russell comes in, he basically admits to this. Mom says, I'll handle this, we don't need to go public, we don't need to bring any charges, I'll handle this at home.
Nothing happened and everybody went back home and went back to what they were doing. We now know that Mr. Russell went back to abusing his stepdaughter. A year after that Susan tried to kill herself again, was institutionalized.
After that she graduated from high school, she gets pregnant by this young man, has the first of the two boys. And finally at age 23 she commits this unspeakable act. So the South Ed piece is published in which Jack Ed urges that we try to understand and forgive Susan Smith. And you know a writer wants to have an effect on the public.
And after the South Ed piece came out, Jack Ed did notice one significant change in the general mood of public anger. What he noticed was that somebody was directed at him. His op ed piece generated this huge response, he got lots of furious letters, who used as a punching bag on talk radio, all just ripping into them. Now people who write letters to the editor about a piece like Jack Ed's, they usually do not get much satisfaction.
You know you're lucky if you get published at all when you write a letter to the editor. And if you are published, you usually edit it and who knows what will happen to your words. But because so many people disagreed with Jack Ed, we thought that we would give one of them a chance here to discuss it with them, directly. And so we invited one of the letter writers to come on the show with him.
We think this is a radio first. At least we're going to say that. We have never heard of anybody doing it. And so from now on, we're just going to repeat that for the rest of the show.
This is a radio first that we're doing this. Okay, good. I'm glad we have it settled. The person that we chose, the letter writer that we chose, is named Gregory Baruch.
And he's an attorney in Washington DC. And what he said in his letter, he said basically the Jack hit overstated the need for forgiveness in this case. And understated the need for punishment. First of all, it may be that forgiveness is a pretty low priority here.
That what we have is a situation where somebody, some degree has placed themselves beyond the realm in which we really should be worrying too much about that. Of course, it's a horrible story since it's life. But there's got to be a limit to where you forgive. I mean, what if her stepfather came in and said, well, I was abused as a kid too.
And that's why I had to pass on the cycle of abuse to Susan. Would we then have to hold out forgiveness to him as well? Can I say something, Aaron? Yes, sure, Jack Ed.
Yes, Mr. Verugai, I would say you should. In fact, you know, there's an entire religion founded on this concept called Christianity. And yes, Mr.
Verugai would say that, you know, one way perhaps to break the cycle is to speak of forgiveness. Now, I say that all in the context of this is not the equivalent of clemency. Forgiveness and clemency are two different concepts. Forgiveness does not mean we let Susan Smith go or that we eliminate the need for punishment.
It goes without saying that she deserves at very least a lifetime in prison, at the very least. And I say that as a liberal. People who do bad things need punishment, and we need to punish them. Great, great, good.
I think what a lot of people are reacting to here is that the liberal view that was most popular in the sense of the society is the most popular. People view that was most popular in the 60s. It's not inherently necessary for a liberal to take. It's sort of a denial that there's evil in the world.
With Beverly Russell, I think what people see is they see that that evil, and also with Susan Smith. Now, one thing to keep in mind with Susan Smith is the country saw her over several days on television, tearfully talking about her babies and how they had been taken away by a black man. And I think that that stuck with people, that what they realized was, this wasn't somebody who not only was able to do it, but who was able to do it and then try to get away with it. And that just not really is deserving of a lot of sympathy.
Check it. Really, my article is not about Susan Smith. It's about you and me. The punishment issue, you're right.
It's about Susan Smith. She deserves to be punished. My point is that the whole idea of forgiveness is about us getting beyond this crime. Otherwise, we all are forced, as I think, many conservatives would like us to be, stoking our anger for the rest of all time so we can hate this woman forever.
And really, my piece is finally a kind of secular statement of what, you know, Christianity is. That's why I was sort of alarmed that most of the people who reacted with such fury that my piece were themselves, you know, alleged Christians. Let me ask Mr. Brewer.
Do you find persuasive anything in what Jack Hit says about this notion that, yes, of course, this woman should be punished, but in the case of her and the case of her stepfather, the point of Christianity is that there needs to be empathy and forgiveness. Well, I don't want to be in a theological dispute, but at the same time, there's nothing necessarily bad about people's outrage. That, Jesus also said, you know, what you do to the least of my creatures you do to me. And that's not true that everybody who has a bad home life or who comes from a situation where they were abused has to turn around and do the same thing.
And in fact, what a lot of people I think recognize is that the forgiveness culture does not encourage people to choose the right path. It doesn't encourage people to act well that we may be better off in a culture that asks more of people. Part of what you're saying in your letter, if I understand it right, is you're impatient with the notion that we should try to understand people like Susan Smith, and we should try to be empathetic with them. I get the sense that you've had enough of that.
Well, there is something like that because the thing is that there is a history here. There's a history in which, seriously, as it should have been for many years by a lot of people, you know, who place themselves on the left of the political spectrum. And that really I think is what people were reacting to so strongly when Michael Dukakis had that famous line when he would ask what would happen if his wife were raped and murdered. And he essentially responded that he would increase drug education in the school.
That people realize that that may well be where this lead. Check it. Gregory Brooke is arguing essentially that too much forgiveness, a notion of too much forgiveness is dangerous for a society. That is that people cease to take responsibility for their own actions in a way that even you would want them to.
I would agree with him on that. I mean, I agree that I don't want the idea of forgiveness to mean that we let people go. My argument is that we've sort of the pendulum is swung so far in the direction of punishment that that's all we care about. Jails, jails, jails, that's the only solution to everything because a local statute was just passed.
You know, anybody under 18 to get some trouble, the parents now go to jail. It's the remedy for everything. But it seems to me that, you know, for us to be able to contemplate the bad things that people do and the horrible things that happen in our culture and then to be able to move beyond that requires that we find some way to comprehend and understand these terrible things that happen. And I think that the idea of forgiveness is the right way to go.
Let me turn to Gregory Brooke. Well, Mr. Glass, I mean, what Mr. Hetzer said is he said, well, we shouldn't keep being angry at this, but I don't know that it's a bad thing.
When something terrible has been done, two stay angry at it, not to let it fade in our mind. And I don't think it's felt to do that when it's a bad thing that has been done to somebody else. I like to think that I wouldn't be jaded, that I wouldn't know. When I hear something terrible, that I will continue thinking it's terrible.
And that frankly, I'll continue being angry about it. I can't disagree with you more. I mean, the people who are angry at that courthouse and who are still angry, and that's my point, they sort of dig themselves into this rut of anger and never get out of it. They just stay there in a constant rage.
There is no other choice. Like I say, Susan Smith drops off the radar this week. Don't worry. Jack Hetzer, writer now living in Connecticut, Gregory Brooke is an attorney in Washington, D.C.
As for another model, I had to consider this question of punishment and forgiveness. You can also consider the testimony of Susan Smith's stepfather, Beverly Russell. And in this culture of forgiveness, you know, where people go into talk shows all the time and say, well, sure, I did whatever that bad, whatever that I did. Sure, I did that.
I had a reason, though. People are constantly saying I had a reason. It was my parents. It was my upbringing.
Beverly Russell said, no, no, no. The buck stops here. You know, he said that by sexually abusing his stepdaughter for all those years, by doing that, he said he was guilty not just for what he did to her, but for what she did to her two sons. In his testimony, he said, read from this.
You don't have all the guilt in this tragedy. And that point he cried apparently on the stand. He said, had I been true to you and my responsibilities, you would have been stronger in yourself, not needing to be constantly supported and reassured emotionally. My heart breaks for what I've done to you, for your pain and loss.
Had I known at the time the result of my sin, I could have mustered enough strength to assume my responsibilities. Polls show that in the little town of Union, South Carolina, where Susan Smith and Beverly Russell were there before she was put in prison, in that town 75% of the residents have agreed, and agreed with the jury's decision against the death penalty in her case. They decided for the more lenient penalty of life in prison. In the country as a whole, further away from the human reality of these people's lives, 75% of the population believes that she should get the death penalty.
I'm sorry for what I've done. I realize that it is premature and also at a very late stage in the game for me to be coming forth, but to come forth is an action which should take place. I apologize for being taller than the person sitting behind me. I apologize for being smaller than the person sitting in front of me.
I relinquish nothing and everything in order to stand here before you, than this I apologize for. I do not believe that this will allow me to enter into any new situation without the remembrance of what I've done. I only wish for you to hear me. I apologize for this also.
I'm sorry. I've brought shame on my family. I've caused anguish, hurt, pain, and suffering in other families. I've done things which should not have been done.
Without naming names, I have provoked, qualified, justified, revoked, interred, summoned, questioned, realized, created, allowed, returned, configured, situated, and muted things I should not have. I will allow for a return of the things that I have taken. They are not mine. They have never belonged to me.
And if they could all be restored with no knowledge of me ever possessing or adjusting them, I could regain footing in a holding in this world that I do not or should not belong to. If I am misunderstood, you have only need a blame. I do not warrant this voice. I give this back.
I do not hold this ground. It is not mine to stand on. Your hearing is the only thing I have left, and I apologize for this. It is not mine to possess.
Every time you say my name, my body's resistance breaks in a column from the surface of my skin to the bone. But I forgive you. I forgive myself. I forgive my past.
I forgive my name. I forgive my family. I forgive my anatomy. I forgive everything until I am totally blank.
I have no memory at all. All my questions have been answered. The missing link has been found. All is forgiven.
Come home. Former artist, Iris Morin, Larry Stieger. Larry's piece was based on the testimony of serial murder of Jeffrey Dahmer. She already replaced him with WBSE Chicago.
Now this artifact of the forgiveness culture. Hey, I don't blame you for leaving me, especially since I drove you to it. But can you really blame me for my part? I was just born too stupid to know my own heart.
To tell the truth, can't blame Willy B. Laid with the creator. Who made this world without end? It's his original sin.
This world in which you and I are living apart. I blame God. He's the only one original enough to make a mess like this and even he can't come to death. I blame God.
I didn't do this by myself. I had to bind assistance. I blame God. Yeah, I know you were too revolos.
Thanks Jesus Christ. I don't blame you for blaming me. You always blame. But the things that I did do to me up to.
I know we were meant to be together eternally. And we would be for him. He's a little bit more without him. He's original sin.
Not mine. His world in which you and I are living apart. No. He's still living apart.
I blame God. He's the only one original enough to make a mess like this and even he can't clean it up. I blame God. I didn't do this by myself.
I had to bind assistance. I died. I blame God. Well, the views expressed in the music on this program are not those of WBE's management or the pro responders.
So whatever you think of this notion that our society needs to be less forgiving, we need to be harsher with people. So they do what's right and not what's wrong. But if you think about this philosophically, you have to acknowledge that it has practical consequences as social policy. These kinds of ideas have basically led to a dramatic toughening of many criminal statutes in many states across the country.
We've seen a space over the last few years of increases in mandatory sentences, accountability laws, lots of laws, trying juveniles as adults when they commit certain crimes. And in a certain sense, these laws are working. The murder rate is down in many big cities, including Chicago and New York. The prison population is skyrocketed.
People are being taken off the street. More men are being locked up for more years. But to give a sense of some of the human consequences of this, here's Darren, Darren Bowden, a supervising attorney with the public defender's office in Cook County. Young man, I was saying for the record, his name is JB, 13 year old who was awarded the court because his mother was a substance abuser.
His father was nowhere to be found. The only one who embraced this young man was the gang, the dopant. 13 years old began selling narcotics. Hi, I'm a glass here talking to you again.
Remember about 30 minutes ago I said that this is an old cassette copy of one of our programs? Well, this is actually the point in the program where the person needed to flip over the cassette. And what's about to happen is that in going to the other side, apparently a word or two got cut off and we think the word that got cut off is the word someone. So I'm just going to say for you now, someone stole his narcotics.
His life was on the line and he was threatening it if you do not even get the money, the drugs, or get the individual who stole the drugs, not only will your life be in jeopardy, but your sister's life for being jeopardy. And basically surviving JB pulls the trigger, takes a human life. And yes, he should be held responsible for that. But where we are, we were not concerned and compassionate enough to understand why it took place.
In doing that, we sent a 13 year old boy to the adult system where he was sentenced by a judge who was an elected official to 55 years. Treated as an adult and being treated as an adult, receiving adult time, JB is now 15 years of age, JB will be in his late 30s and early 40s, I believe when he's released, with no hope of receiving a job because he's a convicted felon, convicted of murder. That record will follow him forever. And if we had moved in the true spirit of the juvenile court act, we would have decided that, hey, this is a young man who never had an opportunity.
Let's provide him with an opportunity. The opportunity might have been, yes, we're going to send him to the juvenile department of corrections, but unlike the adult department of corrections, they're services, schools, counselors, the ratio between students and teachers. And try to help this individual upon his release at the age of 21, 19 years of age, provide that individual with opportunity to make something of himself, to reintroduce him into society, to understand that he is a child. And that's all it was.
He's a child. You may say that he performed an adult act, but when you're a child, you speak and act as a child. Darren Bowden from the Public Defenders Office here in Cook County. This next song is from Johnny Cash's album, recorded at Folsom Prison in St.
Clinton. There's a lot of strange men and cell-blocked him, but the strangest of them all was a friend of mine who spent his time staring at the wall, staring at the wall. As they looked at the walls, the strong and tall, you've got to hear him softly curse. Nobody at all ever climbed that wall, but I'm going to be the first.
Well, the Warden Walk by and said, Son, don't try. I'd hate to see you fall. Well, there is no doubt they'll carry you out. If you ever touch that wall, if you ever touch that wall, well, a year went by and since then.
That's the truth. Well, the years gone, the main bastards ain't to be. The years gone by and since they made us try. But I can still recall how hard he tried and the way he died.
But he never made that wall, never made that wall. Well, there's never been a man ever shipped this can, but I know a man who tried and used papers called at a jailbreak plan. But I know it was suicide. I know it was suicide.
Johnny Cash, your radio playhouse. Glenn Fitzgerald sees all this from another angle. By the way, if you are trying to think about doing those words that we said earlier in the show, that is create one sentence, our very first radio contest here. Create one sentence, grammatical sentence, an interesting sentence we hope using these words.
The words are sick, you got a pencil? You got a pencil? Sick, traitors, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, steal, devour, self-serving, and criminal rights, and get the word Democrat in there too, just for good measure. Okay, and if you didn't hear the beginning of the show, we're not even going to explain it.
It's too complicated. So Glenn Fitzgerald sees all this from a different angle. These questions are for forgiveness. He's a missionary with Youth for Christ, Chicago Mentor Youth for Christ.
And he works with gang members. And for all of his job, actually, he tries to bring gang members over to the Lord and spends a lot of time in the prisons and the jails and a lot of time on the streets. But as part of his job, he goes out to suburban churches and does public speaking, partly to tell people about what the ministry is able to do in terms of turning boys around. And partly to raise money sometimes.
And occasionally he takes some boys with him. But he says that when he goes out and talks to these suburbanites, these mostly white suburbanites, about what goes on in the city, he says the reaction is usually the same. You have people being comfortable saying, even in a church setting, these kids really do need to be locked up. These kids, we need to throw away the key on this.
We need to, something bad should happen. We need to punish all this wrongdoing. And yet they never feel that way about the kids that we bring to them. And I'm talking about guys who are really, not these aren't one of these.
These are the real thing. No dealing, gang violence between the two, what they would call missions. So those are the guys I bring into the meetings. And they will say to the kid, this is great what you're doing.
The same people who five minutes ago were lining up and shooting them. I don't carry them, lock them up, throw away the key. The same people can instantaneously turn themselves around when they actually can see this kid. You know, this is great.
This we like. Him we like. This is good. We can do this.
But these other kids on the street, that's different. What I was just saying now, forget that. With them, that goes back to what I was saying before about lining them up and shooting them. I think we have to look at what's going on there.
We have one consideration for these people who are on the evening news and another one for the people who are in our lives and that inner circle of our lives. And for whatever reason, it's easy to take those people on the evening news and pronounce something ugly should happen to them. But that should never happen to these people in our inner circle. Well, and I'm there to explain, wait a second, it's really the same thing.
I think there's an unfortunate syndrome that many Christians fall prey to. And I'm speaking about my own brothers and sisters. One way or another, I'm still on their side. I still love them.
But I got to be honest about what I'm seeing out there. And I think there's an unfortunate tendency to see ourselves since we've been forgiven and since we've made some improvements that we have then therefore ascended to some lofty position from where we can look down on the rest of humanity and society. But of all the people who shouldn't be thinking that way, it's got to be us. What I'm saying is, Grace is the substance of my relationship with God.
It's not a cute idea that's thrown in there. It's not just a really nice aspect. It's the stuff of which it's all about. Glimp, it's Gerald, missionary with Youth for Christ here in Chicago.
A conservative will tell you, if this guy did a crime, he's lousy and something she'd imagine happened to him. A liberal will tell you, this person did a really bad thing because their parents mistreated them and something really bad she'd have to do with their parents. Well, you know, aren't eventually, don't you get tired of being mad. I'm not gonna sing.
I couldn't think that God had a place here at Holson. But he saved the soul of many lost men. Now there's Grace on chapel here at Holson. And the hundred years old made of granite rocks.
It takes a ring of keys to move here at Holson. But the door to the house of God is never locked. Inside the wall of prison, my body may be, but the Lord has set my soul. There are men here that don't ever worship.
There are men here who scoff at the ones who pray. But I've got down on my knees and I pre-stone-shappled. And I thank the Lord for helping me stay. Now this Grace stone-shappled here at Holson.
It has a touch of God's hand on every stone. It's a flower of light and a field of darkness. And this given me the strength to carry on. Inside the wall of prison, my body may be, but the Lord has set my soul free.
So you're in your playhouse, I look back here. One sign, half the best sign, is how widespread it is. It's this idea that the arts is the time. When Colin Powell, General Colin Powell, dropped out of the presidential race.
On that day, in that press conference, he was asked by a reporter, what would you have done if you had become president? And recall, this is a candidate who even was criticized for having views that were so mainstream, so middle of the road, that he alienated no one. So let's listen to what he said. Show leadership, be a conciliator, move the country forward toward lower government, lesser to less government.
Okay, so far we're in pretty standard territory for politicians in this country. Put us on a more fiscally responsible platform basis. Okay, so far, absolutely everything is just things you've heard before, very common things in our political culture. And try to inspire people, try to restore a sense of family, restore a sense of shame in our society.
That's the one that when I read in the paper, restore a sense of shame. Clearly this is at a point, where now everyone, you know, this is widespread enough that the human being is so much more than a human being. This is widespread enough that he would just say that in an offhand way and he didn't even have to explain it or bother. Here's what he said next.
Help bring more civility into our society. That's it. Well, at this point in our program, in the interest of equal time, we thought that we would have a story of people who do not have much of a sense of shame in their society, and in fact, are not looking for forgiveness. In fact, I do not believe we would meet the approval of pretty much everybody who we've heard of and heard from so far in the show.
We're talking about sinners, basically. We've had the good people up until this part, and now we have the part of the show in the interest of equal time where we're going to hear about sinners. And you know, one of the things about sin, besides the fact that many sinners are not seeking forgiveness, one of the things that is often underestimated is that sin is not easy. You know, sin is not just all fun and games.
And this next little story from Cheryl Treg is pretty much a vivid illustration of what that means and what it means when you don't seek any kind of forgiveness. Sally Colton says, Pat has just come home with a big bag of POT, and that maybe I should come over for dinner. Yes, I say. Maybe I should.
We're friendly gesture, I think to myself as I dash across the park on my way over. I just met Sally in Pat's two nights before at an amiable little tavern up the street on Damon. What a night that was. Laughing and joking.
Crazy photo booth sessions. 50 cent shots of Yager Meister and a very generous barkeep. Sally seemed to know rather well. I don't recall much of any conversation that took place that night, just that well Sally kept taking off her top and that everyone was having lots of fun.
I crossed Damon and turned up Evergreen where a group of boys wearing Laker jackets man the corner. One of them spits and calls me a yuppy. I'm sure he means this as a joke so I take no offense. Oh no, I'm quite flattered.
He thinks I have insurance and credit cards and that I make more than $4,000 a year. Still, I wonder if we don't attach different meanings to the word yuppy. Clearly, he means one thing, I mean another. The way bitch to some does not mean nasty slut, but rather, hello woman.
I'd like to illustrate to the young man that he's made a mistake that I'm not what he thinks I am and as a matter of fact I'm on my way to get high and quite possibly we should be able to make it. I mean quite possibly we share something of a bond. I turn to him and say, all bugs are not cockroaches. Stunned by the relative ease my quick wit shows itself I continue walking and in the background behind me here's someone hawking a lugee.
Sally is glad to see me. Very glad. For dinner she's made her favorite. Noodles with pepper and garlic.
Lots of pepper. Lots of garlic. Pat is glad to see me also but it's much less physical about it. No juicy lip kisses from Pat.
Just a bare chest with two self piercing nipple rings a shaved head and a downward glance that says, hello woman. This sets the dinner table while Pat puts on some music. A deep trans techno acid house hot mix of apocalyptic wonder with 185 beats per minute. Perfect with dinner.
Pat seems like he's glad to see me but I wonder if his selection of music is an thinly veiled attack manifesting his resentment might coming over to smoke his dope. Still I present myself as a perfect guest. Pat I say at the dinner this is a stunning tune. Who is this?
Oh do you like it he says and turns it up as if it could go any louder. It's idiot bliss. Oh, it's not me who aren't they? No Pat says.
Well I've got to stop living with my head no haven't I? Sally eats her dinner like a little cat rabbit nibbling and licking away. I watch her lick her fingers. She licks her knife and after that she licks the serving spoon.
I watch her eat and talk at the same time. I got a letter in the mail today from my friend now in Seattle she says. She drinks her wine with little laps of the tongue. And how is meow I ask?
Not meow Pat says meow like chow meow. I beg your pardon Pat. From the looks of the apartment I wouldn't have guessed Pat with such a stickler for detail. Sally says meow says that if a spaceship comes down for us we should get on it because it will be God come to save us.
She says everyone in Seattle is talking about it. Pat's face will not let up that I've offended his sense of aesthetic mistaking meow from meow. How could I been so careless? I use the notion of God's holy spaceship to lure Pat back into the confines of deference and civility.
Pat I say will you get on God's holy spaceship when it comes? Get on it he says no. I might get in it but I'm not writing on top. Sally asks if I will get on God's holy spaceship.
I tell her it depends on who else is getting on. What do you mean she asks? Well I'm not going to board really nearly I say. What if my upstairs neighbor gets on?
That man raises pit bulls. I'm not getting on with that. I tell her if I see say Oprah Winfrey getting on I might have a change of heart. Pat says he would rather get on the super highway and meet God there on his own rather than get on the spaceship which like the bus will only be a breeding ground for TV.
He says the spaceship will be for people who don't have computers and that he will have his by the time God comes. He says definitely he will not get on God's holy spaceship if Rush Limbaugh is on. On the spaceship or on TV I ask Pat looks at me as though there are horrible smell coming from my direction. Sally says she will not get on God's holy spaceship if there is anything on TV because that would mean that someone would still be left on earth and that she, Sally, we want to be the very last last person to board God's holy spaceship.
She asks what if I can't see that Oprah already has her seat? This little game of what if is starting to depress me and I announce to the table that I will not be boarding God's holy spaceship at all. Pat passes from behind me on his way into the kitchen and detectably mutters as if anyone cares. What do you mean you won't be getting on God's spaceship Sally asks?
There's an element of fear and her concern for my salvation. I tell her I mean that if Wicker Park gets on God's holy spaceship I won't be. But nobody else would be here Sally deduces. You'd have to get high all by yourself.
Yes. But if nobody were left in Wicker Park you'd have to go all the way to Humble Park to get your dough. I tell her if there were no one in Wicker Park then I'd be high on life and I wouldn't need a bag of dough. Sally's offended by this somehow and I spend after dinner time in the kitchen helping with dishes as a gesture of goodwill and gratitude for the future bowl of who to share in the living room after I persuaded Pat to change the future.
I ask Sally probing questions about her childhood and family. I think interest in her affairs are many many affairs. One right after another and then the stream of half night romances with this bartender that bartender this cab driver that cab driver this paramedic that paramedic. I imagine Sally's service is readily available to any adventurous commuter on God's holy spaceship would offer her a smile.
You're crazy about God's spaceship, Cheryl. She says you better get on with God. I imagine Sally getting on with God. I follow her into the living room where Pat hangs like a bat from a bar on the rack off the ceiling.
I wonder why he's doing this just after eating. Sally and I sit on the couch. She picks up the classified section of the reader and scans the personals leisurely but with intent. I wonder why she's invited me over.
Where was this alleged bag of POT? I liked cigarettes to drop the hint that something needed to get burning. I dropped the hint that I have very bad bad cramps. Sally asked Pat to get me some Advil from the bathroom.
You get it he says I'm hanging. You get it Pat. Sally says I'm hanging. You get it Pat.
Sally says I'm reading. Pat crunches himself up quickly 50 times before disengaging himself in the rack. He executes a midair flip to get down and tells me I wouldn't have such bad cramps if I got more exercise. I follow him to the bathroom which has no door on it.
A beach towel drapes the entrance. He pops the top off the Advil container and asks how many? One or two? Twelve.
In the living room Pat changes the music to something a little more subtle. And be an industry noise. Cheryl Darling. Will you get me Pat's jacket from the cochry in the hall?
Yes Pat, of course. A shift is taking place. We are rounding the bend. I pretend I don't know or care that Sally must be sending me to retrieve something very special from Pat's jacket.
I pretend it's the farthest thing from my mind that I am about to get very, very high. Pat's jacket in the hall? I don't see it. Oh this jacket?
Sally takes the jacket and pulls out what I have been waiting for. Oh yes. She tells me it's hydroponic and that a little goes a long way. I understand.
She pinches off a bit of it for the bomb. A four foot water pipe. The landlord tells me left over during one of his last project days a month ago. Cheryl Darling.
She says again as if he was a little boy. She says again as if the use of darling could make any more attractive what she was about to offer me. Yes Pat, did you know a dog? Will it for hours?
Anything spread with peanut butter? Her pretty little pixie face stuns me. Really? Peanut butter?
Fascinating. Oh yes she says. Bundy. She calls and from the other room jobs in a black dog the mix of Doberman and Rottweiler.
I watch Sally light and suck up the bomb. She holds it in and blows it out all over Bundy's face. Hello boy. She says and lets him wash her face with dog kisses.
Cheryl Darling. She says again. Yes Pat. I'm not going to get you high until you promise to go on with me and God in a spaceship.
I should have seen it coming. Oh Pat, are we still on that tired routine? Pat sits in an armchair reading with focus and vigor the pages of an interview magazine with his fixed gaze. He strikes an uncanny resemblance to Captain Picard deep in thought.
I try not to look at him or the beautiful bud Sally has placed in a ricolich and on the coffee table. I try not to think of myself on God's holy spaceship with Sally as my bunk mate. The endless nights up, talking, giggling, Sally recounting the many stewards she had screwed that day. How could it get any worse?
I wonder if sometimes I am too much of a snob. Well I wouldn't Sally make a wonderful bunk mate. All bugs are not cockroaches. All bugs are not cockroaches I think to myself.
Oh Pat really well. If it'll make you happy. Good Sally says. Pat, will you bring the drive skippy from the kitchen?
I'm going to show Cheryl something. Cheryl Trik. Want me to get the hot house back in the day. Means I miss you.
Means I want to kiss you. I'm open that. Means I love you. Means she's coming down to hers again.
My babies are in the stratosphere. I'm so low cause I'm down here. My love for her is going to keep. She comes back in the whispers.
I'm going to show you. Means I want to kiss you. Means I love you. Means she's coming down to hers again.
My babies fooling around with a satellite. Now you know that that ain't right. My love for her is going to keep. She comes back in the whispers.
She's fooling around with some space cap. That chick don't know where she's at. She better come on down here to raise the groove. I ain't going to move.
I ain't going to move. I'll let it sound on me. Well funding for this program has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T.
McBartner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and the members of WBEZ Chicago. Our show is produced by Peter Clowney, Dolores Wilber, Nancy Updank, Elise Spiegel and myself. And contributing editors are Jack Hit, Margie Rockland and Paul Toff. We broadcast from WBEZ in Chicago.
Let's get some music up here. Let's hear you little music. There we go. We broadcast from WBEZ Chicago.
Now to review our little contest that we announced at the beginning of the show. You're to use all of the words that are seen as desirable words and referring to Democrats. You're to use them all in one sentence. Those words, if you have pencil and paper, they are sick, traitors, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, steal, devour, self-serving, and criminal rights and also get the word Democrat in there.
Will you please? And the address to send that to your radio playhouse, WBEZ, 848 East Grand Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. Our email address for this very contest or anything else you want to say, radio at well.com. Special thanks to Night to Reg Gibbons, Jonathan Shamitz, Cheryl Borman, Wesley Weisberg, Rick Hars, Steve Cushing, Gordon McLean, James Fitzgerald and Glenn Fitzgerald, of Youth for Christ.
To Cheryl Trick, get well soon, honey.