The Nelson Pulpit

It is one of the most disturbing images of the year: a burly federal officer, helmeted, goggled, wearing a flak jacket, battle fatigues and shooter's gloves designed to protect the hand but permit the prehensility of the trigger finger, confronting a screaming child and the man who protects him.

And, of course, he has a gun...


You want to talk about someone who gets a bad rap, let's talk about
Richard Nixon. I've lost count of the college lectures, Hollywood
movies
and PBS documentaries where some sandal-wearing throwback, rails on at
length about the evils of our 37th president. Watergate this. Cambodia
that. Four dead in Oh-hi-o. Yeah, yeah, Moonbeam, we get the point:
Nixon bad.

But the next time Oliver Stone subjects you to another four-hour rant
wherein Nixon's kicking puppies and pushing crippled old women down
flights of stairs, spare a few thoughts for the good things the man
named Milhous gave us. Richard Nixon opened China and stared down the
Russkies eyeball to eyeball. Nixon set the table for our decisive,
straight-set victory in the Cold War. Nixon gave us Spiro Agnew. Did
Jack Kennedy ever give us Spiro Agnew? LBJ? Millard Fillmore?

Goddamned right they didn't.

Achievements like that would cement any president's legacy, but the
dour
little Quaker kept on giving. Not content to let bygones be bygones,
never satisfied just turning the other cheek, Nixon remembered each
slight, stewed over every wrong, vowed bloody revenge against every
perceived foe. And he was thoughtful enough to document every last fit
of rage. Yes, Nixon gave us The Enemies List, and with it, gave the
petty, the paranoid and the just plain vicious a new standard to
measure
up to.

Sure, plenty of rulers, leaders and captains of industry have doggedly
hunted down those that done them wrong. But none have cried havoc and
let slip the dogs of war with quite the same savoir-faire of Richard M.
Nixon. Slander, character assassination and malicious whisper campaigns
date back to ancient times. Nixon elevated them to an art form with a
gift of language that could eviscerate even the most entrenched foe.
When Nixon called you a cocksucker, then, goddammit, a cocksucker is
what you were. For some, payback's a bitch. For Nixon, it was a passion
to be pursued with zest and zeal.

So God bless you, Richard Nixon. Even if you are, you know, burning in
Hell.

Now maybe it's not exactly clear what Richard Nixon's all-consuming
lust
for revenge has to do with me. Plenty, as it turns out. Because while
the president's taste in room tapping doesn't really gibe with mine,
your close warm personal friend does have one thing in common with
Richard Nixon: a blinding desire to lay the smackdown on any and all
who
dare oppose me.

-----

And the first one on the list is Elian Gonzalez's family in Miami.
While I have nothing against the kid, in fact I wish him well, long
life
and all that, it's his family's handling of this mess that I wish to
swing the cudgel of retribution.

Frankly, the family that has been holding him deserves a beatdown.
They've held press confrences, made brash statements defing the US
goverment, and generally been a pain in the ass. And that's not even
mentioning the little fact that they wouldn't let the kid return to see
his dad. All while snubbing the INS by not complying with their
requests... I'm not the brighest guy in this side of Miami, but even I
can figure out that it's a bad idea to taunt Janet Reno. After all this
is the woman who put Waco, Texas on the map.

So, we all saw this coming, one day, Federal Agents are going to storm
the house and yank that kid out of there. Some may claim that they
agent
used too much force. Some claim that guns were uneccesary. Well, they
can bite my ass for all I care. I can presume that Janet Reno has the
same attiude as I do.

And now the family in Miami is holding press confernces and otherwise
bemoaning the fact that the big bad goverment, came with guns and
enforced the law. The whine, they moan, they carp on, Why some much
firepower? ...

"There's going to be a big Waco here. We're not going to let that child
be dragged out of that house." -- Doris Socorro (AP)

Does that sound like the calm reasoning of well adjusted people? Ask
youself, would you want to do a sort of job that requires you to head
into that sort of attiude? Would you want to do it *without* your
trusty, and reliable MP-5? (The gun in the AP photo.)

-----

Perhaps the truly enlightened man is able to forgive and forget, to
hate
the sin while loving the sinner. But Richard Nixon sure wasn't
enlightened. And on this particular day, at least, neither am I.

So in that same spirit of blinding rage that moved the Ol' Trickster to
drive his enemies into the sea and fashion crude tools from their
bones,
I comdem the Miami family of Elian and put them on my "Enemies List."
They have risen above the level of mere irritant to the exalted heights
of painful ass rash. To them I hurl enough public abuse and ad hominem
vitriol to send them running back home to Mammy.

-----

Dateline: April 22, 5:16am Miami, Florida. Elian Gonzalez,
the 6-year old Cuban castaway, was finally removed from the Little
Havana house where he has been held hostage by relatives bent on
exploiting him as an anti-Castro amulet. They were egged on, by exile
groups, and a community that seems to have lost its moral bearings.