I hate Tookie
Tookie Williams is going to be executed by the State of California on December 13th if the governor turns down his petition for clemency. I had no idea just who Tookie was until I got a copy of the Bay View Reporter, one of the most unintentionally funny free rags published in San Francisco. They recently published an article (articles are indistinguishable from editorials in this paper) decrying the insensitivity of the San Francisco Police Department for arresting several pallbearers at a gang member's funeral. Doesn't SFPD have any respect? This is a funeral fercrissake.
Somehow, I don't think the pallbearers were busted for overdue parking tickets. But I digress.
Tookie was a founder of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles. He was convicted of committing four murders in eleven days. The San Francisco Chronicle published a picture of Tookie way back when. Picture a humongous afro atop some the most humongous arms (they look like legs, really) you've ever seen.
Ah but that was then, this is now. Today, Tookie is a changed man. He has written several age appropriate children's books, admonishing young readers to steer clear of gang life. Why, he has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, if he won it, would put him in such illustrious company as Yassir Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Henry Kissinger, and Anwar Sadat.
Snoop Dogg and Jamie Fox (who starred in a made for TV movie about Tookie's life titled "Redemption") are among the many people who have flocked to Tookie's cause. In fact, Tookie even has his own website at www.Tookie.com.
Now why am I ragging on Tookie? I mean, even I don't believe in capital punishment. You're supposed to show people that killing is wrong by killing them? C'mon, give me a break.
What makes me rag on Tookie is the same thing that makes me rag on Mumia. Just because someone has a terrific line of bullshit, doesn't make a murderer into a rock star. If, as the defense contends, Tookie didn't actually kill the people that he's accused of killing (a debatable point) nobody can tell me that the co founder of the Crips gang didn't kill SOMEBODY. And so what if someone finds God, Allah, the Buddha, Jehovah, Scientology, after they've been sentenced. Their victims are just as dead, regardless of what the victims' perpetrators have discovered about the meaning of life.
I'm very happy if Tookie has indeed changed his life (which can be easy to do when you've been on death row since 1981). I would also like to see capital punishment ended. But I do not consider this guy as any sort of example to underprivileged youth. There is a peculiar (and to me, hideously repulsive) story in this weeks' East Bay Express about a Tookie advocate trying to brainwash a High School class in Oakland. You can find it at www.eastbayexpress.com . The article is called Teachin Tookie. After the 29th of November, it should be archived there. Read it and vomit.
Somehow, I don't think the pallbearers were busted for overdue parking tickets. But I digress.
Tookie was a founder of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles. He was convicted of committing four murders in eleven days. The San Francisco Chronicle published a picture of Tookie way back when. Picture a humongous afro atop some the most humongous arms (they look like legs, really) you've ever seen.
Ah but that was then, this is now. Today, Tookie is a changed man. He has written several age appropriate children's books, admonishing young readers to steer clear of gang life. Why, he has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, if he won it, would put him in such illustrious company as Yassir Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Henry Kissinger, and Anwar Sadat.
Snoop Dogg and Jamie Fox (who starred in a made for TV movie about Tookie's life titled "Redemption") are among the many people who have flocked to Tookie's cause. In fact, Tookie even has his own website at www.Tookie.com.
Now why am I ragging on Tookie? I mean, even I don't believe in capital punishment. You're supposed to show people that killing is wrong by killing them? C'mon, give me a break.
What makes me rag on Tookie is the same thing that makes me rag on Mumia. Just because someone has a terrific line of bullshit, doesn't make a murderer into a rock star. If, as the defense contends, Tookie didn't actually kill the people that he's accused of killing (a debatable point) nobody can tell me that the co founder of the Crips gang didn't kill SOMEBODY. And so what if someone finds God, Allah, the Buddha, Jehovah, Scientology, after they've been sentenced. Their victims are just as dead, regardless of what the victims' perpetrators have discovered about the meaning of life.
I'm very happy if Tookie has indeed changed his life (which can be easy to do when you've been on death row since 1981). I would also like to see capital punishment ended. But I do not consider this guy as any sort of example to underprivileged youth. There is a peculiar (and to me, hideously repulsive) story in this weeks' East Bay Express about a Tookie advocate trying to brainwash a High School class in Oakland. You can find it at www.eastbayexpress.com . The article is called Teachin Tookie. After the 29th of November, it should be archived there. Read it and vomit.
posted by hans at 11:00 PM
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