Truth AND consequences

By Don Klein

Remember the popular radio program called "Truth or Consequences." It started in 1940 and ran for 17 years and was succeeded by a television version that continued for many more years.

It had a simple format: a contestant was asked a question and if answered incorrectly, as most were, they were require to perform a zany stunt for the benefit of the studio and at-home audience.

If that game existed in today’s combative political environment the show would be called "Truth and Consequences." The "or" would we replaced by "and" since telling the truth these days can get people fired.

I always thought that telling the truth was the best policy. That you could not get into trouble if you were honest in expressing your heartfelt thoughts. Recent events in public broadcasting have proven those sophomoric beliefs not to be valid anymore.

Thinking back to last October when Juan Williams was sacked by NPR for claiming that the sight of Muslims waiting to get on the same plane he was about to board made him queasy.

He was talking on Fox News to Bill O’Reilly when he said, "... I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Williams added he did not blame all Muslims for "extremists," saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Nevertheless NPR brass sent Williams packing claiming his remarks "were inconsistent with (its) editorial standards and practices." Many people disagreed with that decision because Williams was not a reporter but an analyst and further he was not talking on NPR but on another network. The difference is that reporters are not expected to express opinions, but analyst are.

In any case many people have the same feelings about Muslims in public transportation not because of bigotry but because the overwhelming majority of recent terror aimed at the US was by Muslim radicals. The fear may be unfair and disproportionate but it is a real and understandable component of current thought.

So Williams, exercising his analyst’s right to free speech, spoke the unvarnished truth about his feelings which I fear represented the majority thought in America and lost his job. He was immediately picked up by Fox receiving a more lucrative contract than he had at NPR.

Let us fast forward to a more recent occasion when another employee of NPR spoke the truth and ended up without a job. Ronald Schiller, a high ranking fund raiser for NPR was lured into a luncheon meeting with a group posing as representatives of the non-existent Muslim Education Action Center Trust. The bait was a phony donation of $5 million.

The set up was arranged by James O’Keefe, the Republican provocateur, who trapped Acorn last year in embarrassing comments aimed at disqualifying them from receiving federal funding. Schiller foolishly spoke openly to the people he thought were Muslim philanthropists.

He said the Republican Party had been "hijacked" by the Tea Party and that many of the Tea Party supporters were "white middle Americans...gun-toting racist people." Hidden cameras videotaped his remarks and when released it gave the GOP majority in the House of Representatives additional fire to justify cutting off federal funding to public radio and television on the grounds they are politically biased.

What the Republicans have overlooked in their zeal to paint NPR as hostile to them is that Schiller had absolutely no ability to influence editorial content of the networks. The GOP was arguing against NPR’s alleged editorial prejudice and using Schiller, a non-editorial functionary, as an example of that so-called bias.

It was as if you disputed a large corporation’s stance on truck traffic in residential neighborhoods and quoted negative remarks of the plant’s gate guards. The man at the gate had no authority or responsibility over truck routes.

In Schiller’s case he was wrong to express such personal opinions to a group of people he did not know and never met before. He was guilty of poor judgment, but he told the truth about the Republicans and the Tea Party. He has since left the employ of NPR.

The facts that enrage Republican critics is that NPR is scrupulously fair in its news coverage and that fair coverage reflects poorly on the GOP, a party that is doing everything to undermine established American policies that stand in the way of their obvious war against the middle class.

The money saved by eliminating NPR funding of $445 million for 2013 is minuscule in the face of the horrendous deficit the nation faces. The Republicans have not touched gigantic budget items like tax cuts for the rich, or subsidies for big oil and big agriculture or defense cuts, but have focused on smaller items that provide them with control over sources that work to the natural benefit of the Democrats.

In an effort to preserve its federal award which goes to 1,300 public radio and television stations throughout the country, NPR has forced those who openly speak the truth to the detriment of the Republicans and Muslims off their payroll.

It is a sad state of affairs when telling the truth has such negative consequences.

Castration for sex offenders?

By Don Klein

To most of us there is nothing more despicable than a child molester or a person who rapes. These are usually men who have an uncontrollable need to dominate those weaker than themselves – children and women. Sex is just the weapon they use.

I come to this subject not with any psychological credentials but from the perspective of a onetime police reporter who had a keener knowledge about sex crimes than ordinary members of society. It has been said many times than rape has little to do with sex and most to do with dominance.

Even if that is so, when one person brutalizes another person by destroying their will and making their body the tool of their rage, it should be considered a sex crime. It has been with humanity through the ages. A large part of ancient slavery was not only dominance but sexual bondage.

The battle cry of embattled hordes through history has been "kill the men and carry off the women." Women and children were viewed as spoils of war, booty that the Romans, for example, brought home after military campaigns to be sold at auction to toil as human property. Through World War II and continuing today in Darfur, rampaging armies on all sides have committed rape almost as a battle ritual.

But that is war and much is ignored in the name of the awful stress of combat. Not so back in civilian life and that is the problem where often the rapist and child abuser roams our streets looking for vulnerable individuals to prey upon. Their only explanation for some is the uncontrollable urge to satisfy their need to dominate and harm others of lesser physical dimensions.

There are others, however, who just like to beat other people, especially those they deem helpless. These are bullies who consider sex domination a personal conquest and proof of their superiority and even their cockeyed rights.

The sex offender is a societal abomination who is driven by ugly impulses. Laws won’t stop them. Police cannot protect everyone. The courts can lock them up, but it will not change the offender. Society can label them as sex offenders but they are like a can of gasoline near an open flame – you never know when they will explode, if at all.

For years there have be those who advocate the castration of sex offenders. This they say will serve two purposes. For one, it will end their sex drive and also will serve as a deterrent. In Prague recently, a man only identified as Pavel, volunteered to be surgically castrated to rid himself of his offensive trends.

Twenty years ago, when Pavel was 18, he lured a 12 year-old boy from his neighborhood into his home and stabbed him five times. Pavel said his sexual desires were set off after viewing a Bruce Lee martial arts film. He has spent some of the time since in prison or institutionalized. Today he works as a gardener at a Catholic charity.

"I can finally live knowing that I am no harm to anybody," he said in an interview with The New York Times, "I am living a productive life. I want to tell people that there is help."
The question is, is this the answer to the problem posed by sex offenders? Is castration better than having to live the rest of your life branded as a sex offender who must report where he lives to authorities whenever he moves and be an immediate suspect of every sex crime which occurs in his neck of the woods?

Castration as a deterrent is questionable if the act results from irrepressible instincts, not cool premeditation? And isn’t castration a draconian solution in a nation which prides itself on the Eight Amendment of the Constitution barring "cruel and unusual" punishment?

Then again when you weigh that against the cruelty suffered by the victims of sex crimes, which in many cases lasts a lifetime, where should the weight of the law fall? The only deterrent to crime seems to be when the individual responsible for the criminal act is caught, tried and locked away in prison. It doesn’t stop others from following in his path. And when you are dealing with instinctive crimes, it is not even in the quotient.

But the question of castration for convicted sex offenders is an appealing thought for many. Why should society care how severely a sex brute is treated after the commission of such heinous crimes? As Pavel said after his castration he now can live a normal life. Maybe castration is not so grievous after all.

The recent focus on violence in the home has reduced substantially those instances of wife beatings. More women call police for help and wife beaters have gotten the message that you can’t get away with brutalizing your spouse.

Perhaps if more attention was placed on sex crimes there would be a reduction in the number of men who rape not because they can’t control themselves but for the so-called pleasure of dominance. Cutting off the male sex organs could work as a threat to these. But is this the only solution we can find in a so-called civilized community?

Before answering that question I would remind everyone that the United States is one of the few industrialized nations of the west that still executes criminals convicted of capital crimes. What is as cruel as taking a person’s life? Certainly not castration.

NEXT: There will always be swindlers.