Son(s) of Papa

INCONSIDERATION

The murderous John Muhammed has proven immensely inconsiderate. Rather than lending a helping hand and coughing up fur balls of contrition, he's shown a lack of requisite remorse and forced Virginians to demand one hundred eighty-odd pounds of flesh.

"You could see the wheels turning in his head," one juror prophesied. "Sooner or later, he's going to fabricate something or find an opportunity to hurt someone else, whether it's prison personnel or another inmate." Evidently, the burden to pre-empt such clear and present danger was great, the strain too much for those tainted by the sniper's shadow.

As from an orbiting space telescope, the colors of this emotional phenomenon were captured on front pages of leading newspapers across the country: a variegated triangulation of Muhammed's chilly, stamp-sized profile above a sweeping mural of the sunny supervisor of the Sniper Task Force consoling a pot-bellied, puffy-eyed FBI agent.

Never before have some many done to so few.

Some 50 detectives, 1,200 or so task force members, dozens of "experts," the sound and fury of the appointed leader of the Department of Justice all stoking the fire of a six-week legal theater. On garish poster and glimmering marquis funneled by cable into U.S. living rooms, blossomed the detritus of "emotionally wrenching" experience.

Get it while its hot. Blood-curdling forensic detail. Crime scene recreation . Tearful testimony of scarred , approximate witnesses. An "arrogant" accused who briefly, if not foolishly, acted as his own counsel. Fire-and-brimstone rhetoric from the prosecution. The whole shebang liberally doused with the teary wailing of victims' relatives.

"If he's allowed to live in prison, he's drawing breath, he's watching TV, he's getting three meals a day," growled the mother of one shooting victim. "The fact that he has been sentenced to death, I do feel some relief. They (the jury) came to the same conclusion I did, that the man needs to be removed completely."

For the rest of their natural lives, the hearty band of bartenders, hardware store clerks, medical technicians, intelligence officers, naval aviators and other right and honorable jury members will be revered as American heroes. From this place onward, they will bear witness to the day they sanctioned the death of an evil-doer. These model citizens did what they were chosen to do; did what they were paid to do; did their Christian duty.

"It would take a great leap of faith to think justice wasn't served today," conformed one smiling brother of Dean H. Meyers, whom Muhammed was convicted of killing. (He was sentenced to death for two counts of
capital murder, one under an untested new state antiterrorism law, another for committing multiple murders in three years. Muhammed was also sentenced to
10 years for conspiracy to commit murder and 3 years on a gun charge.)

Yet tummies rumble. And hunger rages on. In acid-racked bellies remain holes, voids and spaces that lethal injection can't fill. Muhammed's dusky flesh and woolly head are not enough. He owes catharsis.

How else to explain jurors' abundant tears when the court clerk read the sentencing decision while Muhammed "stood calmly at attention, looking straight ahead and barely blinking?" How else to explain the sound and fury over what an "arrogant," "calculating," "cunning," "manipulative" and "ruthless" killer "deserved?"

Surely, this unrequited desire doesn't stem from the prosecution's failure to prove Muhammed pulled the trigger. No matter. More easily proven was his undeserved participation in polite, i.e., living and breathing, society. Or so went the prosecution's line.

"It's never a pleasure to have to ask for the death penalty," opined commonwealth attorney Paul B. Ebert. "But there are cases that deserve the death penalty, and this certainly was one of them."

Ebert also proved deserving. With the zest of a hangman -- and a beltful of death row scalps -- he made flesh the word of Attorney General John Ashcroft who last year yanked the case from Maryland -- where 6 of 10 shootings took place -- down the river to Virginia, where Muhammad was tried by a group of peers for a gas station attack. (In god-fearing tonality, Ashcroft decreed his primary rational was the state's most excellent capital punishment credentials: since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Virginia has killed 89 prisoners to Maryland's 3.)

Clearly, our tely-tubby town deserves more, too.

Like a rampaging river that has jumped its banks, the sniper's deadly flood has wrought havoc on hearth and home. It demands nothing less than a FEMA-esque response, if not in cold, hard cash than in something equally valuable. America's full might must be brought to bear on this disaster.

Fortunately, we have in the past proven capable of righting such wrongs, of harnessing untamed forces, of channeling unnatural emotion through constructs of public works, means by which citizens of good conscience can have, and eat, their cake. I recommend a return to the practice of lynching.

Like Alaskan wilderness, its benefits are obvious and manifold. As a wholesome form of family entertainment, lynching is tried and true. Its moral and educational powers were long the subject of the leading masters of American literature. For example, in his essay, "The United States of Lyncherdom," Mark Twain pondered lynching's appeal.

"Why," Twain wrote, "has lynching, with various barbaric accompainiments [sic], become a favorite regulator in cases of 'the usual crime' in several parts of the country? Is it because men think a lurid and terrible punishment a more forcible object lesson and a more effective deterrent to a sober and colorless hanging done privately in a jail would be? Surely sane men do not think that."

History proved Twain wrong.

Thus, lynching's reinstatement meshes neatly with the neo-conservative desire to return to the Golden Age of traditional values. It also offers the opportunity to do a patriotic duty. Corporate beneficents such as loggers, hemp spinners, picnic basket makers, television manufacturers, cable operators and advertising mavens will enthusiastically contribute to our communal effort.

Equally important, such spectacle will provide requisite salutary benefit to the public at large. With televised lynchings, town square strollers, stadium attendees, law enforcement professionals, victims' families, jury members and television viewers (provided with real-time feedback devices in the arms of chairs and sofas) can -- with judicious application of iron, fire and rope -- rightfully enjoy inspired pleas for liberty and freedom.

Cherished moments (or hilarious bloopers) can be captured digitally and downloaded to the waiting computers of friends and family. Scribes at Hallmark and BlueMountain.com can compose odes of joy, sympathy or revenge. On Sunday mornings, deacons of moral deterrence can hammer tales of just society into parishioners' stony skulls.

One parable might go like this:

As it is written, so shall it be. In the book of Ralph Ellison, in the story of "A Party Down at the Square," the men, women and children of the town gathered to consecrate the punishment of a dark and rancorous evil-doer.

As the fire raged, spurred on by gasoline and the blood of Christ, one townsman asked, "What you say there, nigger?"

And it came back through the flames in his nigger voice: "Will one a you gentlemen please cut my throat?" he said. Will somebody cut my throat like a Christian?" And Jed hollered back, "Sorry, but ain't no Christians around tonight. Ain't no Jew-boys neither. We're just one hundred percent Americans."

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