Salon.com > Jonathan Foreman

The Nazis, er, the Redcoats are coming!

Mon, 03 Jul 2000 19:00:00 +0000

The week before "The Patriot" opened in the United States, the British press lit up with furious headlines. "Truth is first casualty in Hollywood's War," read one in the Daily Telegraph. Another story, about the historical model for Mel Gibson's character was titled, "The Secret Shame of Mel's New Hero." The accompanying articles complained that the new Revolutionary War epic portrays British redcoats as "bloodthirsty and unprincipled stormtroopers" and "bloodthirsty child-killers."

The prizewinning historian and biographer Andrew Roberts called the film "racist" in the Daily Express, and pointed out that it was only the latest in a series of films like "Titanic," "Michael Collins" and "The Jungle Book" remake that have depicted the British as "treacherous, cowardly, evil [and] sadistic." Roberts had a theory: "With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt onto someone else."

Race and silence in Central Park

Fri, 23 Jun 2000 19:00:00 +0000

Whether it was New York Police Chief Howard Safir excusing his officers' inaction by saying they couldn't be everywhere or the pages of commentary and punditry that refused to confront the ethnic and cultural dimension of the incident, the orgy of dishonesty in the aftermath of Puerto Rican Day was almost as dismaying as the Central Park "wilding" itself.

It became savagely comical as more and more photographs and videos of the alleged perpetrators were published in the papers and on TV. Even as newsfolk waxed concerned about our society's shocking tolerance of violence against women, egged on by gleeful spokespersons from organizations like NOW, everyone pretended not to notice that nearly all the guys who soaked, stripped and molested up to 50 women in the park were Puerto Rican and black.

In its patronizing, racist way, the media pretended it had just seen the manifestation of some kind of generalized social problem -- a conclusion unfair both to the wider society and Puerto Ricans and black communities. Much of the behavior caught on video may be shocking stuff for New York Times writers and most of its readers, but it's par for the course in many Manhattan neighborhoods north of Central Park.

Why Howard Safir must go

Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

To Mayor Rudy Giuliani's most obsessive critics, the latest shooting by New York police of an unarmed black man is news almost too good to be true.

The killing of Patrick Dorismond by an undercover cop -- the third unjustified police homicide of a black man in 13 months -- is all the "proof" they need that the city's much-vaunted reduction of crime rates depended on brutally repressive, racist policing.

It's not true. But this latest police killing is indeed a tragedy, one that's been handled with stunning ineptitude by Police Commissioner Howard Safir. And that's why it's time for Safir to resign.

If he doesn't, Giuliani should replace Safir just as President Truman replaced Gen. George Patton in 1945. It's poor management, rather than a flawed policing philosophy, that's at the root of the police department's series of disasters: Crucial parts of the department have remained psychologically and tactically on a war footing even though the war is over. Both the police and their critics have a dangerous tendency to forget that New York is not the city it once was.

Rudy's right and Rosie's wrong

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

What passes for an urban policy debate in New York can look surreal after a trip north of Central Park.

At the Ready, Willing and Able shelter on 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, a former homeless crack addict I'll call Tom walked me through immaculate, pleasantly furnished dormitories where books and telephones were kept by the beds.

He took me to the computer room where men were quietly studying for the G.E.D. He showed me the room where members of the program have their urine tested twice a week. There was no violence, no drugs and none of the filth and chaos that everyone remembers from the thousand-bed armory shelters in the 1980s.

Those were the days when the Coalition for the Homeless monitored conditions in the mega-shelters, steadfastly ensuring that there was three feet between each bed and at least one shower for every 15 people -- even if no one felt safe enough to use it. Lately the advocacy group has joined with talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell and other Celebrity Friends of Hillary Rodham Clinton to excoriate Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his policies on the homeless.