Killing Bush and Cheney as Simple Self Defence. (english) profrv@(nospam)fuckmicrosoft.com 9:04am Fri Mar 7 '03 article#242514
Now it's time to stand up and bring down the Temple.We need a few thousand more Samsons like this goodfella.There is a Saddam F/X,where is one for ALL the wardogs? Wolfowitz,Rumovitz,Chenowitz and Shrubowitless.
His message, left shortly after midnight last Friday, is marked "urgent." Listening to the first five minutes or so of his rant, I buy most of his gist, if not his wording.
"I am a retired architect who at 72 is up to his eyeballs in fighting American fascism," says the voice on the answering machine. "I've been in a state of shock and semi-coma since November 2000, when five uninvestigated crooks on the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida where I think Gore won and put the most incompetent, wrong-winged know-nothing schmuck in the White House that I have ever seen in my entire life. Even for America, this act of fascism was incredible.
"Of course," he continues, "you know as well as I do that the economy is a wreck, he is destroying the environment, he took $179 billion out of environmental legislation the first month he was in office then he proceeded to do all kinds of things like coming out against affirmative action. This guy is a dick-brained fascist moron from Texas who should be sent back down to Texas."
OK.
But then the architect takes a dark turn.
"Tell me if you know anything that I don't know about what the hell in God's name we can do to stop this son of a bitch," he says. "I have been thinking about getting a gun, going down there and killing him and saying I've done this on behalf of the American people and I am doing it in self-defense and in their defense. That's it, Bush. Pop pop, one for him, one for Cheney."
Uh-oh.
I wonder what to do.
On the one hand, this guy sounds so desperate, so lonely and so needy.
On the other hand, he is talking about killing the president.
I should probably call the Secret Service, but I cringe at the thought of diming out the poor old guy.
I call our lawyer, the Poynter Institute, the national editor at The New York Times.
They all say the same thing.
Make the call.
Which I do, holding my nose and feeling like a rat.
"Secret Service, this is Lisa Parmagiani," says the woman on the other end of the phone line.
I explain who I am and why I am calling, adding that "I don't think this guy is really a threat, but that's not my job to decide, it's yours."
"You can't threaten the president when the country is at war," Parmagiani says, adding that agents will visit the man's house within the hour.
Great.
They are going to haul this poor, lonely old man off to the hoosegow and it is all my fault. Well, not really. He's the one who left the message.
Still, I feel bad, so a few hours later, I call his apartment.
I am relieved when he answers the phone.
"Two freaks from Ashcroft's Secret Service knocked on my door," he says, somewhat peeved (and misinformed -- Secret Service works for the Treasury Department). "They said, �?Do you have any idea what you did?'"
The old architect, whose name I am withholding because I don't really believe he means to kill Bush, readily acknowledges that he erred. I tell him that I would report any message left on my machine threatening to shoot someone. He says the agents, "a very nice-looking Italian girl and a black kid," were courteous and kind and listened patiently as he explained what it was like growing up with a wealthy mother and a Democratic Socialist father.
"I asked these kids if they were not allowed to have political thoughts, left or right, and they said that is correct. I feel sorry for them."
He says the agents asked if he owned a gun.
"Of course not," he says. "I said they could search the place if they wanted to, but they said it wasn't necessary."
The old man tells me that he chatted with the Secret Service agents about how he, a white Jewish guy, was so passionate about civil rights that he joined the NAACP as a child. Then, during his questioning, he received a phone call.
"It was the Franklin Mint," says the man. "So that reminded me to show the agents my tchotchke collection of Franklin Mint Coca-Cola items and teddy bears."
Explaining that he never married because "I was so busy fucking myself I was not going to drag anyone else into this with me," the old architect, who gave all his money away to lefty political causes, says that the agents listened politely as he showed off his collections.
When their interview was over, the agents asked to take the copy of City Paper, last week's "Real Costs of War" issue, that inspired the old man to call me. Then they took his picture and left, to pay a visit to his psychologist.
As soon as the agents left, the man says he called a friend in Maine, who immediately freaked.
"He said that he was worried not so much for himself, but for his wife, who has a teaching job. He's afraid of the Secret Service, that they are going to check my phone logs and see that I talk to him from time to time. He got spooked."
Not to worry, says agent Parmagiani.
"Nothing is going to happen," she says. "We went out, we talked to him, he is a very nice man. He didn't realize it would get this far."
http://citypaper.net/articles/2003-03-06/pretzel.shtml
Bush at stiffs.com?
"I'd buy that for a dollar!"
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=242514&group=webcast
