Pennies From Heaven - Dyspeptic Edition
I was worried about Nick Coleman.
Once the Bus Strike ended, he had no more excuses to wander the streets of the Twin Cities, looking for "victims" of the Cities' "big cheeses", stringing quotes together into out-of-context attacks on the people who brought multi-party politics to Minnesota. I worried he might go into shock.
The torture scandal has given Nick a new lease on life.
Today's column starts:
When you visit the St. Paul Healing Center on Dayton Avenue, the first thing you see is a picture of Rudy Perpich. It was the late Minnesota governor and visionary who championed the idea of a place where broken people from other countries -- torture victims -- could come for help and healing. A worthy idea, it sometimes seemed just a little bit otherworldly.
Until now.
Not even Rudy (he died in 1995) could have imagined a time when the Center for Victims of Torture might have to deal with torture committed by soldiers wearing American uniforms.
Which is, of course, bollocks. The
Torture Center is a worthy project - but they and their supporters (look at the news releases) have a long tendency to harp endlessly on victims of US-supported regimes (go back to the eighties and look at the press they got), rather than those who survived places like...
...well, Iraq.
I'm trying to remember if Nick Coleman has ever written about the victims of Hussein's immense, comprehensive, systematic torture system.
Coleman's priorities, of course, are crystal-clear. He knows who the real enemy is:
None dare call it torture. But it is. The pictures you have been seeing are not pictures from a frat party, as some radio blowhards -- some of the same ones who have been in the forefront of those who have called for American interrogators to take off the gloves -- want to believe.
Aaaah. It's talk radio's fault.
In the world of Nick Coleman, all problems lead back to talk radio.
However, this is the part that I wonder about the most: The pictures document torture. If you aren't sure, picture this.
Imagine we make this offer to Donald Rumsfeld: You won't have to quit as secretary of defense if you agree to a little fun. We will strip off your clothes, put you in a pile of naked prisoners, molest your genitals and have pictures of happy Muslim women holding you on a leash be printed around the world.I'm not sure, but does it seem to you that Coleman takes and excessive amount of pleasure at this description.
I'm sure the Fraters will be interested in analyzing that section as well.
Coleman, per usual, issues a call to action:
The Center for Victims of Torture is asking citizens to do three things: 1) Call it torture. 2) Denounce it. 3) Demand an investigation by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture (for more, visit the center's Web page at www.cvt.org).
Ah, yeah. The UN Special Rapporteur.
They did such a wonderful job investigating Abu Ghraib's previous management, didn't they?
Posted by Mitch at
May 12, 2004 07:31 AM
"I'm trying to remember if Nick Coleman has ever written about the victims of Hussein's immense, comprehensive, systematic torture system."
For some reason, that sounded like a challenge to me... From a quick search of the PiPress and Strib archives via the U of M (being a part-time grad student has its perks, I guess): outside of the first Gulf war, he mentioned Saddam pretty much only as a rhetorical boogeyman. And adding "torture" and "iraq" to the search led nowhere as well ("tortured" is more of an adjective to Nick than a past-tense verb, I guess; I wish that was true of everyone). Before Gulf War I, he didn't mention Iraq until Saddam was already in Kuwait, and then to attack Ted Koppel and to tell us how immoral we were to be preparing for war against Iraq ("oooooooooiiiiiiiilllllllll," natch).
At the Strib he's only mentioned Saddam twice (again, as a rhetorical tool) and Iraq 4 times, once to tell us that Iraq isn't worth the deaths of our soldiers (my interpretation) and that all of our reasons to go there were bogus (no WMDs [uncertain], no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda [LIE], no democracy "on the horizon" [defeatist at best], etc.
Long story short: it doesn't look like it.
[Side note: looking at Coleman's past work, he's a hell of a lot more interesting when he's not writing about any sort of politics. Which is, of course, almost never. I'd say he needs a job where he profiles interesting (non-famous) people without any political subtext; then maybe he'd be tolerable.]
Posted by: Steve Gigl at May 12, 2004 08:48 AMGreat Post! The American Spectator also has a great article that touches on several of your points, in my opinion.
Posted by: the markman at May 12, 2004 12:55 PMhttp://emersonsview.blogspot.com/2004/05/american-spectator-nails-it.html