Soapbox on Bathurst
Soapbox on Bathurst
Thirty-five years ago after my Navy retirement I spent some weeks in Australia conducting seminars for their Department of Defence and defense industry executives, visiting five of their major cities during my first visit. There was time for walking around and getting to know places, and one city I especially enjoyed and grew to love was Sydney. There several times over the next few years, I found three or four Anglican parish churches I liked so much that on a Sunday morning I would go to the early service at one church, then dash (I was on foot) to another church for the next service. Two churches I remember in Sydney were St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Bathurst Street, astonishingly low-church unto dour Puritanism,
and Christ Church, St. Lawrence, as they say, Anglo-Catholic higher than the Pope.
Across Bathurst Street from St. Andrew’s Cathedral was the widest sidewalk I had ever seen, and on the sidewalk about every block or two was some preacher standing on a box, proclaiming his gospel in true soapbox fashion, Bible spread open in one hand, the other hand wildly stabbing the sky. One or two people might be standing there staring at him, then move on, most hurried on by. It is a picture that comes to mind any time I suspect myself of taking on some “cause.”
Like now.
Something that disgusts me with American media is the extreme overuse of the word “alleged” for people who commit crimes and are apprehended at the scene. Major Nidal Hasan, shot down while murdering 13 soldiers at Fort Hood and described in the press as “alleged shooter," how asinine. James Holmes, self-admitted killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater, "alleged shooter." On my blog I can’t/don’t use my magnificently colorful Navy sea language to describe my view on such; and if I did my bishop would likely come collect my collar. But this morning I found a hero reporter and newspaper with the guts to tell the truth, say it like it is, with outrage. “Heinous and wanton” Joseph Stepansky wrote and his paper printed it. “Cold-blooded thugs, goons, creeps,” he writes. “Greedy attackers,” arrested. The word “alleged” does not once show its repulsive face in this article. I don’t know or care what else they may have printed or what their political tone, God prosper the NY Daily News.
Still on Bathurst Street, watching Phil Robertson being fashioned into some kind of ludicrous folk-hero. Never seen a black person mistreated, hoed cotton with them, “They’re singing and happy,” Phil says. One visualizes Little Black Sambo on the front porch of his slave shack strummin’ his banjo and tappin' his foot. Phil’s rights? Every American has the right to be staggeringly ignorant and to speak up with blind, insensitive stupidity. And not only to mouth absurd inanities to a reporter who’s going to make you out the simpleton that you are, every American has the right to act out hatred as a manifestation of free speech, as the Supreme Court found for Westboro Baptist Church. Every American has the right to show his axx. This is an American hero in whom we can see ourselves? Shame. God help us.
W