'ABUSED' ABUSER SEEKS ASYLUM WHERE???
'Nameless here
for evermore ...'
'The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe
By sonya hammond
Starting with Adam and Eve who, on being tossed out of paradise, in desperation took up parenting [with mixed results, thus establishing a trend], even the most deservedly denigrated among us can usually unearth some self-serving excuse for continued existence.
Recently, however, with logic as obscure as that behind Bob the Dull's conviction that ripping off his tie and resigning from the Senate are the keys to acquiring presidential characteristics, those whose ratings in U.S. popularity polls have dropped to the depths Dan Quayle look to England as their rehab locale of choice. Unfortunately, British forums do exist for those on a quest for the holy grail of personal redemption.
Great Britain's salacious soap boxes run an eccentric gamut from the hallowed halls of the Oxford Union debating society, to anglicized versions of that 20th century staple for public soul-searching, the 'talk show.' Expectations that these venues will revitalize self-destructed careers were unfortunately given credence when Tricky Dick, undeterred by an American public opinion rating of -0%, fled to Oxford where, for reasons only the British can justify, he received a reception that did not involve undeleted expletives or the throwing of rotten vegetables.
There may be some remote excuse for the Oxford Union to provide a platform for a man who once led a country by lying, cheating and creative tape editing. The question that must be thrown on their floor for debate, however, is on what basis they can defend their invitation to hear the sniveling rationalizations of a man who seems to believe that a plea of 'no contest' to charges of wife beating is the equivalent of innocence.
It is irrelevant, for the purposes of engaging in the sort of rational discussion that obviously did not precede this decision, that this person was pronounced innocent of two murders by a jury of his peers. It is equally irrelevant that he is black. What is irrevocably relevant is that one of the world's great institutions of learning, stooping to levels previously achieved only by American TV, found this woman batterer worthy of any interest whatsoever.
Did Oxford rationalize that they were in some way performing a public service? Apparently not, since the 'debate' was not made public. Did they really think they would hear this person say anything that had not already been drooled over by every voyeur capable of giving up real life for a solid year of prurient TV viewing? Does Oxford's curricula include any courses verging on reality?
Let's assume for one unlikely moment that an entire university temporarily lost its integrity and simply had the hots to play down and dirty with a tarnished celebrity. Fine. Go interview Pee-Wee Herman. There are numerous available choices on which students could hone their debating skills without insulting every woman on the planet by hosting a man apparently incapable of maintaining a relationship without physical abuse, and desperate to re-polish a public image that is no longer lucrative.
Perhaps the word hasn't reached the hallowed halls of Oxford that according to the FBI, ten women a day, nearly a third of all the women killed in the United States each year, are murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends. Six million women are battered in this country, and acts of violence injure more women than any other cause. And yet Oxford Union members invited one of the men represented in those statistics to dine with them before adjourning to seek absolution in their hall.
Perhaps domestic abuse is not a big issue in Britain? If so, we applaud the fact. But the question remains why a known American spouse abuser should receive, for any reason other than an announcement of his incarceration, one more moment in the limelight.
Given a new forum, this self-proclaimed victim now depicts his infamous flight from imminent prosecution as a reaction to being 'attacked for the first time in my life'. He wasn't, he whined to the British press, 'used to criticism'. He was 'suffering from despair', poor incredibly rich, deprived fallen star who managed to dig up a few million to stash in a British bank. He was no longer welcome, he wept as he huddled over the 4th tee at Surrey, to play golf in his homeland where the media had 'convicted' him.
All of this in spite of the fact that he had, he proclaimed piously as choirs of female angels broke into uncontrollable fits of coughing, found religion. Belatedly recalling the brutally murdered mother of his children, this man rationalized that her reason for hiding the police photos of her battered face in a safe deposit box was that 'she didn't want the kids to see em', a high point in denial exceeded only by his accusation that his wife once committed battery herself by hitting a housekeeper.
Benedict Arnold may have been the first American to adopt Britain as a haven for the misunderstood, but those who have since emulated his flight seem to have forgotten that he did not remain high on anyone's guest list for tea, possibly because in spite of his treachery we beat the crumpets off of his hosts.
And while there may be those in England willing to extend a beacon proclaiming, 'Give us your tiresome, your impeached, your abused rich, your domestic violence perpetrators yearning to flee a growing intolerance that has been known to lead to selective trimming of over-valued body parts', those who accept the invitation should remember ...
It is a woman whose lamp is raised beside the golden door of the native land to which they must eventually return.
© sonya hammond 1996