Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

by Michael A Smerconish

  He had a military appearance. Upon establishing eye contact, he exhibited body language and facial gestures that appeared arrogant. In fact, when I first called his name in the secondary room and matched him with papers, he had a deep staring look.

  With Governor/Secretary Tom Ridge and Jose Melendez-Perez at the Flight 93 Memorial on the 8th anniversary of 9/11 in 2009.

  As Melendez would later tell the commission, “He just gave me the creeps.” And the would-be terrorist, who claimed not to speak English, suddenly was able to say, when Melendez rejected him, “I’ll be back.” The next time we encountered Kahtani, he was fighting in Afghanistan. He’s now at Guantanamo.

  Here’s the kicker: What we now know is that at the moment that Mohamed al Kahtani was being given his walking papers by Melendez at the Orlando Airport, there to pick up the new arrival was 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta. That was one of the more interesting details to emerge from the work of the 9/11 Commission, and why Democratic 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste told Melendez that his conduct may have spared the Capitol or White House an attack. Ben-Veniste reasoned that, with the added muscle of Kahtani on Flight 93, the terrorists could have fended off the passenger revolt and continued to Washington.

  No wonder Bob Brady wanted to thank Melendez, and that City Councilman Frank Rizzo was present to extend recognition from the city, and that state representative Denny O’Brien did likewise for the Commonwealth.

  Alice Hoglan, mother of Flight 93’s Mark Bingham, sent a greeting from California. Debra Burlingame, sister of Chic Burlingame, pilot of American Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and Ellen Saracini, wife of Victor Saracini, captain of United Flight 175, which hit the South Tower, both came to extend their gratitude.

  From the moment that Lauren Hart sang the national anthem, it was one of those events that no written description will ever be able to fully describe.

  And when it was finally time for Melendez to address the crowd, he choked back tears and told the crowd, “I wish my father were here to see this.”

  Jim Murray, the former Eagles GM and founder of the Ronald McDonald House, then stood to offer a benediction. Murray paused, and said, “Jose, your father was watching today.”

  There were no dry eyes.

  AFTERWORD

  Jose retired in October 2013 after 40 years of service to his country. He spent his last 15 months on the job teaching a basic course for new Customs and Border Patrol officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. He has since shared with me that he greatly enjoyed aiding in the development of new officers, but I still wonder whether the skills he possessed aren’t innate (as opposed to something one can be taught). My hunch is that Jose was born with a gift for reading people, an “instinct,” which is the word I used when I wrote a book about him in 2009. (We donated all proceeds from the book, Instinct, to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.) Jose also said that though he was reluctant to hang up his uniform, his retirement life is great. Having successfully fought cancer, he now spends his time on home projects, some travel, and visits with family and friends. He has two sons and two daughters—one son has retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and the other is a police officer in Puerto Rico. Every time there is a terror incident anywhere in the world, his mind drifts back to the day, one month in advance of 9/11, on which he altered the course of history.

  DUKE CASE:

  REVENGE OF THE NERDS

  Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, April 13, 2006

  WHEN I WAS A COLLEGE FRESHMAN a quarter-century ago, rape charges were brought against virtually every guy who lived in the fraternity housing the football team.

  The story was huge news. I watched as about two dozen guys had their lives turned upside down by one woman who claimed they had all raped her.

  They were all exonerated a few years later, but by then it had faded to a B-section story—no Page 1 for that. I see the same thing happening at Duke. The press coverage is totally one-sided against the lacrosse players and in support of the “victim.” You have to search for anything resembling investigative journalism concerning the accuser.

  For example, this tidbit was aired Friday on WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, but given scant attention elsewhere:

  New information about the victim has been divulged. . . . According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man’s car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County.

  Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.

  Additional information notes that her blood-alcohol level registered at more than twice the legal limit.

  In spite of that incident, her lawyer at the time, Woody Vann, asserted that the incident should not cause people to question her character. He said she is “a decent and credible human being.”

  Just imagine if it came to light that one of the lacrosse players had received a lap dance and stolen a taxi and tried to run over a cop. Page 1 again, all the way from Durham to Philadelphia.

  The DNA results? Negative. No match between DNA taken from the 46 white athletes and the samples taken from the exotic dancer’s body or belongings.

  And photos from the party have come to light. In one, the “victim” is smiling at the camera, in another she’s lying down on the back porch of the house.

  Most controversial, the time-stamped photos indicate the woman was bruised on her legs and face and had cuts on her legs, knees, and feet when she came to the party, before the rape allegedly occurred.

  It was in July 2003 that Kobe Bryant was accused of rape after having what he considered a consensual encounter with an employee at a Colorado hotel. Bryant was crucified in the media, while the “victim” went unnamed and unsupported by evidence. DNA in this case showed that she had a sexual encounter with someone else shortly after she was with Bryant.

  A judge finally dismissed the case a year later, but Bryant paid heavily with loss of reputation and lucrative endorsements.

  We’ve just seen a similar case more recently right here—that of Gary Neal and Michael Cleaves.

  In June 2004, these basketball players from La Salle were charged with having sexually assaulted/raped a woman, 19, over a bathroom sink while she was heavily intoxicated and throwing up.

  The “victim” had left a party and met players attending summer classes on campus, who invited her back to their house. The unnamed woman admitted to downing eight shots of high-proof booze in an hour. She started to feel sick, and went to the bathroom. Her blood alcohol content was a whopping .23.

  The woman admitted never saying no or offering real resistance. As the case raged on, prosecutors contended that she was too drunk to consent to sex. Defenders claimed that the sex was consensual and the woman created the allegation out of embarrassment.

  In November, a jury acquitted both men of all charges.

  These cases share the characteristics of race, gender, and, perhaps most important, social standing.

  The question: What drives this hostility toward athletes? Why a rush to judgment every time a ballplayer is accused of sexual indiscretions?

  I say it’s the revenge of the nerds. Most journalists would never be chosen for a pickup game of hoops, let alone a varsity sport. So they take perverse pleasure in bringing down the BMOC, however undeserved.

  What went on in the Kobe case and at La Salle and now at Duke? The unathletic are getting their chance to vent at those who are. And they crucify these young men with gleeful speed.

  While the “victims” are allowed to remain anonymous and aren’t prosecuted for their tales, the athletes they accuse don’t get the same treatment. These young men are the real victims, no quotation marks needed.


  AFTERWORD

  I was skeptical about the Duke lacrosse case from day one and said so on radio and in print. The investigation began a day after the alleged incident, on March 14, 2006, but the story broke wide open on March 29. That morning, the New York Times put the burgeoning scandal on its front page, and I read the story aloud on my radio program, voicing my reservations about the quickly spreading narrative of a gang rape by boorish athletes. In the article, Durham County district attorney Michael B. Nifong criticized team members for their lack of cooperation: “The thing that most of us found so abhorrent, and the reason I decided to take it over myself, was the combination gang-like rape activity accompanied by the racial slurs and general racial hostility.” How could he be so sure? I wondered. I would later have similar doubts about the alleged gang rape of a woman in a University of Virginia fraternity that proved to be a hoax.

  Part of my skepticism stemmed from my distinct recollection of a separate incident that I note at the beginning of this column. In the spring of 1981, I was a second-semester freshman at Lehigh University. That April, 14 men, including 13 Lehigh University students, were charged with the rape of a 19-year-old woman from a neighboring college (Muhlenberg). They were members of a fraternity, Delta Tau Delta, a football house, which was immediately suspended for four years, during which it was converted into co-ed student housing. One of the guys, a 20-year-old, was from my hometown, and his name, like all the others, was sprayed across the local newspapers. Ultimately, they were all exonerated for rape. Nine were cleared before trial and one was admitted to an accelerated rehabilitation program for the charge of open lewdness. Four went to trial and were acquitted. But the damage was already done to their reputations. And even though the case occurred in a pre–social media world, I still had no trouble recently accessing the old newspaper accounts via Google. Don’t get me wrong. Guys can be pigs, and sexual assault is a real problem on U.S. campuses. Those who take liberties need to be severely punished. But equally inviolable must be the rule of law, which affords the accused the presumption of innocence.

  Because of his handling of the Duke lacrosse case, Nifong was ultimately disbarred. And the accuser, Crystal Mangum, while never facing legal repercussions for her false allegations in the Duke case, was arrested for attempted murder of her live-in partner in 2010 (she was later convicted of lesser crimes) and in 2013 was convicted of second-degree murder in connection with the 2011 stabbing death of her boyfriend, for which she is serving a 14- to 18-year prison sentence.

  SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

  Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, May 18, 2006

  MAY 14, 2006

  Dear Wilson:

  Congratulations on receiving your First Holy Communion today. It brought a tear to my eye to stand with you as you accepted the sacrament, and it was obvious to your mother and me that you have taken your religious education very seriously.

  I saved a copy of the church bulletin distributed at Mass today as a keepsake, and I’m writing this letter in the hope that you’ll keep it attached to the bulletin as an explanation. You see, my name appears in an insert to the bulletin distributed throughout the archdiocese on the day you received communion, and not in a favorable light.

  The situation caught me by surprise. It was unsettling to sit in a pew as we prepared for your special moment only to look at the flier and see my name under the banner of a group called Pro Life Union Inc. They mentioned my name in a story about a recent symposium at Penn.

  At the invitation of bio-ethicist Arthur Caplan, I participated and posed questions to experts on the subject of death and dying. But the assertion that I was at Penn to “celebrate” the death of a woman named Terri Schiavo was untrue. I found that characterization offensive. While I refused to let it mar your day, it warrants an explanation.

  Terri Schiavo was a woman who collapsed without warning in 1990, at 26. She never recovered. Her husband, Michael, discovered her at their home in the early morning after hearing a thud. She was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state. Two years after the event, Michael successfully asserted a malpractice action against Terri’s doctors for failing to diagnose an underlying eating and nutritional disorder that led to her cardiac arrest and caused irreversible brain damage.

  While the jury made financial awards in a number of areas (medical expenses, lost earnings, loss of consortium), they awarded nothing for Terri’s pain and suffering. In other words, after hearing the evidence just two years after the tragedy, the jury concluded that Terri was then feeling no pain and not suffering.

  Soon afterward, there came an ugly battle between Michael and Terri’s parents, the Schindlers. The judge in this dispute concluded that it was about money from the malpractice action. But it soon morphed into a battle over Terri’s end-of-life wishes, since she could no longer speak for herself. On this issue, there was a factual dispute between Michael and the Schindlers.

  A court listened to evidence for five days and determined that Terri’s wish was to disconnect her feeding tube. The appeals process upheld that view.

  Things got ugly. Many outsiders tried to affect the outcome. One of those was the pro-life community, which embraced Terri’s parents and voiced opposition to taking away her feeding tube.

  I supported the right of the individual to have her wishes fulfilled. I regarded Terri’s case as one involving the right of a person to die on her own terms. I believed that the affected person could make the decision free of any outside involvement, including the government’s.

  I never looked at Terri’s case in the conventional pro-life vs. pro-choice terms. But as the dispute continued, I began to wonder whether the pro-life agenda was to support “life” even in a situation where someone in a permanent vegetative condition would want otherwise.

  Terri Schiavo left this earth in 2005. An autopsy showed that she was in a permanent vegetative state, that she had been for many years, and that the cause of her death was brain damage due to anoxic brain injury. An inquiry by a Florida state’s attorney found an absence of any evidence that her initial collapse was caused by criminal actions.

  I wish my name had not appeared in the church bulletin on the day of your first communion.

  I love our church and the fulfillment it has provided each member of our family. But I am your father first, and I am not about to let this moment pass without providing you with a frame of reference for how your dad views the controversy, even though I recognize it will be inappropriate for you to read this for a number of years.

  Let no one tell you that your father celebrated any death. Your old man is supportive of self-determination. In the case of Terri Schiavo, I kept saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

  If that outcome should come my way, I certainly don’t want some individual or group, pro-life or pro-choice, imposing their view of end-of-life issues on me, or anyone else.

  The fact that one such group would proclaim, in a church bulletin on the day of your First Holy Communion, that I celebrated death by my support of Terri Schiavo’s right to determine her own fate tells me all I need to know about this group’s lack of respect for individual rights.

  They wanted to call this shot for Terri. Well, please don’t ever let them decide for me.

  Love,

  Dad

  AFTERWORD

  There is one aspect of the Terri Schiavo case about which all should agree—everyone needs to specify his or her own end-of-life wishes. I’ll support anyone’s individual desire, and I will oppose those interlopers who seek to overturn another’s desire. After Schiavo passed away on March 31, 2005, in lieu of a typical column, on April 7, 2005, I published a pro-forma, Pennsylvania standard living will that I’d filled out for myself. I encouraged readers to copy the format I had published or send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope in which I’d return a standard version for their usage. After 15 years and more than 1,000 columns, that remains one of my most popular. Months later people were still asking me f
or a sample living will. I’d like to think I spared someone the family squabble that was the hallmark of the Schiavo case.

  A DOG NAMED WINSTON

  Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, July 6, 2006

  IN THE LATE 1980S, I had a humiliating experience.

  I was trying to make my way as a real-estate developer when the market collapsed. I was overextended with several Center City properties. I was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy.

  My only hope was to arrange a deal with my bank, First Executive, then headed by an amiable Israeli named Zvi Muscal. In advance of our sit-down, he’d asked for an itemization of my monthly living expenses.

  In my moment of truth, there sat Zvi, with furrowed brow and oversized glasses at the end of his nose, bearing down on my list. His finger had been running over the page when it stopped on one item. What was it? I wondered. My cable bill? Amex? PECO? The Union League fees?

  “Eh, Micccchael,” he asked in his heavy accent. “What is dis dog-walking expense of $15 per day?”

  Of all the money flowing out of my pocket, my banker thought that paying a woman to come to my apartment and walk my young cocker spaniel, Winston, was my most extravagant expense.

  Little did he know that I’d have sooner gotten rid of the TV set, cut off the power, or quit the Union League than deprive my little guy of a leg stretch while I was at work. Zvi and I still joke about my refusal to budge on that expense.

  I’m thinking a lot about that, and other memories of Winston, because I had to bury him this weekend. He died suddenly on Sunday morning after living a very full 16 years. His life was amazing, considering all that he went through, not that it makes it any easier for me to grieve.

  My wife told me I’ve given myself an impossible task if my goal is to try to express to you the meaning of his life and our time together. She’s right. Too many others have done too good of a job explaining that bond between people and their pets, not the least of whom is John Grogan in Marley and Me.