July 20, 2006
Ann Coulter On Willie Horton, Joey Fournier—And
What Life Is Really Like
You’ve heard of
Willie Horton? I thought you had.
Joey Fournier, who you
probably haven’t heard of, was the young man he killed
in Massachusetts. There are
31 mentions of Joey Fournier on Google,
compared to
146,000 mentioning Willie Horton.
Here’s what Boston
Globe columnist
Jeff Jacoby said in 2000:
“Invariably
forgotten in talk of the Horton ‘issue’ is the boy
Horton killed. Joey Fournier was just 17 on Oct. 26,
1974. He was working alone at a Mobil station in
Lawrence when Horton and two accomplices drove up,
flashed knives, and demanded money. Joey gave them
everything he had—$276.37. Horton then stabbed him 19
times and stuffed him in a trash can. When he was found,
there were only a few ounces of blood left in his body.
His last words were, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’'’
That’s part of the
discussion of the Horton case in
Ann Coulter’s latest book
Godless: The Church of Liberalism.
Joey Fournier’s father
passed away recently at the age of 78. At his
funeral, his family suggested that donations be sent to
Joey Fournier Services, a victim advocacy group started
by Fournier's sister,
Donna F. Cuomo. (She recently received a Heroes
Among Us award from the Boston Celtics. The
publicity for that, for once, mentioned the victim's
name, and made no mention of Willie Horton.)
For Joey Fournier's
1974 murder, Horton was sentenced to Life Without
Parole. Thirteen years later, Michael Dukakis's furlough
program let him out. Then, on April 3, 1987 in Horton
assaulted a man in Maryland, and raped his fiancée, and
stole his car. The Wikipedia
article says
“On October 20,
Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life
terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge refused to
return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, ‘I'm not
prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again
be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should
never draw a breath of free air again.’ This was
reported in the October 1987 Reader's Digest.”
Coulter also has point
by point refutation of these strange claims that are
made by
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean of the University of
Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications:
“The reporting on
the Dukakis record on crime is illustrative. Here the
Republicans secured the complicity of the press in
renaming convicted murderer William Horton, in
redefining the relationship between Horton's Maryland
victims, in adopting such words as "torture" and
"terrorize" to describe his actions while on furlough,
in defining the furlough program's purpose as dispensing
"weekend passes," and in talking of the policy as a
"revolving door."
(INSINUATION
AND OTHER PITFALLS IN POLITICAL ADS AND NEWS by
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, [Send
her mail])
Jamieson thinks it's a
lie to call something a weekend pass when the criminals
had to be back Sunday night, and that calling Horton
"Willie" rather than "William J. Horton" was
"representative of the naming practices of
slavemasters."
Ben Shapiro writes on
Townhall.com that
“Willie Horton, as
all political science majors know, is trotted out
routinely by leftists in order to show that Republicans
are truly racists. (I was treated to a showing of the
famed
“Willie Horton” commercials by
Professor Lynn Vavreck, Political Science 40, UCLA,
February 26, 2002.)”
But in the end, the political issue in the Horton case
was not anger at a "black rapist" to use liberal
reporter
David Gregory's phrase—after all, Massachusetts cops
and courts had dealt with him, giving him life without
parole.
The political issue was anger at the
"Greek midget" (to use Ann Coulter's phrase) who
had
let him out.
If the issue was black crime, it certainly wouldn't have
been raised by Al Gore, who
attacked Dukakis on the issue before Lee Atwater
did.
Ann also discusses the
Pulitzer won by the
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune for exposing the Dukakis
furlough program. Apparently, one of the reporters at
the Eagle-Tribune, Susan Forrest,
recanted and said she was sorry she'd done the
story.
My point here: people aren't supposed to
mention that a criminal is black. The only way it's
allowed to come up is if the
criminal, not the victim, or the press raises it as
a defense.
The other point: the press
doesn't understand why the public is
afraid of crime. Maybe
police reporters know, but the editorial pages seem
clueless.
Academics are worse. The webpage that posted Kathleen
Hall Jamieson book extract linked above has an
annoyingly formatted pull quote, which I reproduce,
because the emphasis is hers:
"The Republicans' use of Horton shaped the
visual portrayal
of crime in
network news in ways that reinforced
the mistaken assumption
that violent
crime is disproportionately committed by blacks,
disproportionately committed by black perpetrators
against white victims,
and
disproportionately the activity of black males against
white females...."
First, it's not a “mistaken
assumptions.” But even so, the political point
remains that the Democratic Party, for
philosophical reasons, refuses to fight crime.
A
classic Simpsons episode has serial killer
Sideshow Bob, (a white guy) being taken off to prison
while shouting
“I'll be back. You
can't keep the Democrats out of the White House forever.
And when they get in, I'm back on the street! With all
of my criminal buddies! Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!! “
But apparently,
Republicans aren't allowed to point this out, if the
criminal is black, which of course, large numbers of
criminals are.
So what we have is a
conspiracy of silence on the part of the press, and
apologetic stammering from
Republican pols who try to apologize for the Horton
ad, like they want to apologize for Proposition 187.
And, as I said, you've
heard so much about Willie Horton, and so little about
the young man he killed. This is normal in cases like
this.
Have you ever heard of
The last two are
immigrants, of course. Ann Coulter's
criticism of the "Jersey Girls" has drawn so
much flak that people aren't appreciating the rest of
the book. I mean, she not only wastes lot of forensic
skill bashing
Darwinism, she spends some time defending
The Bell Curve.
The primary message of conservatism is this: "Life is
not like that."
When John Lennon sang
Imagine, conservatives said "Life is not like
that."
When
President Bush talks about "the
good-hearted people who are coming here to do jobs
that Americans won't do,” we say "Life is not like
that."
When people talk about how if the government could
ban guns, there would be
less crime, we say
"Life is not like that."
Dukakis is the poster boy for the worldview that
criminals will reform if we're nicer to them. And again,
"Life is not like that."
On various liberal ideas about crime, immigration, and
race relations, we continue to say: "Life is not
like that." It's made us at
Vdare.com somewhat unpopular, and it's the fact that
Ann Coulter taken the
same line that has driven liberals crazy.
In the
Duke rape accusation case, she
said:
“However the Duke
lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely
will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce
your chances of having a false accusation of rape
leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to
come to your house and take their clothes off for money.
“Also, you can
severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do
not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off
for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread
here?)”
Yes, I can. The
common thread is this: "Life is not like that."
Remember it. Ann
Coulter does.
