06.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:53 am by Hanne Blank
After writing the post I made here last night about the hate crime murder of Aaron “Shorty” Hall in Indiana, I sent out email to the New York Times, the Associated Press, and to Dennis Ryerson, the editor of the Indianapolis daily paper, the Star. My partner joined me and sent his own emails shortly thereafter.
I can say two things for Mr. Ryerson: he reads his own e-mail, and he is responsive to people writing to him to tell him about glaring omissions in his paper’s reportage. He wrote me back at 8:23 a.m. this morning, which I imagine constitutes first-thing-in-the-morning, with this:
I don’t know the details here or why this didn’t get coverage. I’m copying to our metro editor, Blair Claflin.
I followed up with links to the Bloomington coverage and so forth, for which he has thanked me.
It made me glad I bothered. But that’s really not the point. The point is: PLEASE don’t let it stop here with me and my partner. If it matters at all to you that the public eye be brought to bear on crimes like the godawful murder of Aaron Hall, please write and send your own letters, too. Feel free to use mine as a template. Or write your own.
The more the media hear from people like me and you, the more they will realize that they cannot just let stories like this languish. The more the media write about events like this, the harder it is for cases like this one not to be brought to justice.
Squeak, wheels! Squeak!
p.s. The reason the DailyKos link in the previous post doesn’t work is because I forgot to put the “h” in the “http” — I would fix the link, but then those of you who read this in a feed would get another complete sending of the entire post because it had been edited.
p.p.s. The “hey, there’s a story you’re not covering” email address for the Associated Press is info@ap.org .
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06.20.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:25 pm by Hanne Blank
Two months ago, a man named Aaron Hall was beaten to death in Indiana. He was a white man, thirty-five years old. He weighed 100 pounds and was 5′4″.
Here is the Bloomington newspaper’s account of his death [warning: this is a very disturbing account even in the most careful journalistic prose].
Here is the DailyKos piece about it, which has done much to draw attention to the case.
This is another account and news roundup, with some personal snapshots of Mr. Hall, who was a roofer by trade.
Aaron Hall was beaten to death over the course of more than a day by a group of young white men. To say that his death was horrific is an understatement: he was tortured to death, and left in a cornfield to die. His body, later, was wrapped in a tarpaulin and hidden.
The men who killed him documented their actions, including making cellular phone calls to friends so that they could brag about it and have their friends hear their victim scream. They also sent cell phone photographs of the man they were killing.
One of the killers is the son of the local deputy coroner. It was this deputy coroner’s garage, at home, in which Aaron Hall’s body was hidden and later found when one of the three young murderers turned himself in.
The cause of Aaron Hall’s death is still officially listed as “unknown.” My cynical side predicts that it will ultimately be listed as “exposure,” since being viciously beaten repeatedly over the course of several days, being shot, and left out in a corn field to die means you died naked and exposed in a cornfield. I hope I’m wrong.
In an attempt to get sympathy for their actions, or to rationalize them, the killers have trotted out the old “he was gay, he made a sexual suggestion, we had to kill him” defense. The “gay panic defense” has been used successfully, I note, at other times and in other places to rationalize murder.
Oh, yes. Of course.
He made a sexual suggestion and I panicked.
For more than a day. Calling friends to brag about it. Taking photographs. Going back to find the body. Hiding the body.
Do I have to say that this was no panic?
Yes. Yes I do have to say that.
Indiana is one of five states in the USA that has no hate crime laws.
The fact that Aaron Hall does not seem to have been known to be gay did not save him from being horribly murdered. In point of fact, whether he was gay or not, or even made any sexual remarks to any of his assilants, is beside the point. Beating, torturing, and murdering someone is wrong.
The people who kill you can say anything they want about you. Never forget that. It’s not like you’ll be there to offer a rebuttal.
Do not delude yourself into thinking that not being gay, or black, or whatever-the-declared-target-might-be, would be enough to save you, either. What you are, or aren’t, is immaterial if someone has decided that you get to serve as the target for their inhumanity.
Sure, they’ll come up with excuses later on. But you know, you have to consider the source, don’t you? How far do you trust a man who would torture another man to death and brag about it to his friends?
The fact that it has taken two months for this story to surface is appalling and disgusting. The Indianapolis papers have refused to cover it. The Associated Press has yet to cover it, possibly because it has been so thoroughly buried and kept out of the public eye.
It’s awfully embarrassing when your golden boys, your good upstanding young white heterosexual middle-class men, sons from good families, sons of respected public servants, turn out to be brutal torturers and coldblooded murderers.
Demand coverage. Demand accountability. Demand that this trial be kept in the public eye and that this horrific hate crime not simply be swept under the rug thanks to the power of the old-boy network.
Advance Indiana’s Gary Welsh has written a very fine piece about what we are, collectively, up against here: “Why Won’t the Star Cover The Hate Crime Killing of Aaron Hall?”
Demand that they do. And that other news outlets do.
Aaron Hall deserves better than this.
We all do.
Dennis R. Ryerson, Editor and Vice President
The Indianapolis Star
The Indianapolis Star
P.O. Box 145
Indianapolis IN 46206-0145
John Affleck, Editor
National Reporting
Associated Press
Headquarters
450 W. 33rd St.
New York, NY 10001
executive-editor@nytimes.com
managing-editor@nytimes.com
Suggested text:
Dear Editor,
On April 12, 2007, in Crothersville, Indiana, the worst hate crime murder in recent American memory took place when three young men brutally beat, tormented, and ultimately killed a thirty-five-year-old man named Aaron Hall over the course of more than 24 hours.
Not unlike the justly infamous Matthew Shepard killing, Aaron Hall was beaten to death over a lengthy period and left in a field to die. Also like the Matthew Shepard case, the murderers have claimed that they acted as they did because they believed Aaron Hall to be gay. Unlike in the Shepard case, the killers returned for the body and then hid Hall’s body for ten days in the garage at the home of the father of one of the killers. Also unlike the Shepard case, the killers not only telephoned friends during their prolonged orgy of violence, but sent text messages and photographs to others.
To date, no major news outlets, including the Indianapolis newspapers, have reported on this horrific hate crime. The important story of Aaron Hall’s vicious murder has been allowed to languish in the pages of small-town papers. As Indiana remains one of the few states that does not have a hate crimes ordinance on the books, and given the depth to which this story has been (apparently intentionally) buried, it is entirely possible that the three assailants involved in this case, to say nothing of those others who knew what was taking place and chose to conceal their knowledge rather than report it, will not be held appropriately accountable for their crimes.
I hope that you will assign this story at your soonest opportunity, and help to bring it into public awareness. The public deserves to know what happened in Crothersville, Indiana, and what has happened since in terms of the lack of news coverage of the case. The public deserves to know that in Indiana, there is no law that says that murdering someone just because you hate who or what they are is wrong. The public deserves to know that a man died horribly and that not only his three murderers but a number of other people as well knew, and did nothing.
I look forward to seeing your coverage of this important story.
Sincerely,
[Your name and contact info]
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05.11.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:36 am by Hanne Blank
D’ya ever feel like it would be spiffing to run away to someplace really isolated, like some hermitage off the Basque coast or something, where there is no phone, no Internet, and the mail comes once a week by donkey?
I do. And I have to say that nothing brings these fantasies to the fore like being forced to listen to other people’s lengthy cellphone conversations. I find myself really missing the days when telephones had cords that plugged into the wall and therefore, most telephone conversations took place indoors where they could be avoided, and not in various places where the conversations (or their side effects) cannot be avoided, such as on the sidewalk, at the bus stop, in the park, in shops, at theatres, in restaurants, in museums, and let’s not forget, whilst driving cars.
I’m past weary of hearing other folks’ inane chatter. I swear that 2/3 of the people I encounter with their cellular phones surgically attached to their heads really are afraid (pace Douglas Adams) that if they stop talking, their brains will start working. Also, the next person I encounter walking down the street yelling obscenities into hir cellular phone — whether in a jovial blurt or a hostile snarl I care not — is in serious danger of having me go Full Metal Schoolteacher.
I note the irony of complaining about this via blog. I console myself with the facts that blogs are opt-in and, for the most part, silent.
Okay, maybe the isolated hermitage off the Basque coast could have Internet. For an hour or two every morning, or something. But no phones. And no cellular phone coverage. And the mail would still come once a week by donkey.
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05.07.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:37 am by Hanne Blank
The book events in Boston and New York were fantastic — standing room only in both places. I came home and promptly came down with a really gross cold, which went through several aggravating stages of which the penultimate was laryingitis. Now that I am mostly better, I am posting just to let you all know that in the words of the redoubtable Granny Weatherwax, I aten’t dead.
Stuff is percolating, and I’m doing Things here and there. Reflection’s Edge has published my story “Copenhagen or Anywhere.” I cleaned my bedroom pretty vigorously, and have big plans to make my way through the accumulata of the guest room closet sometime soon. The little thingum that goes beep beep beep hey idiot you left your lights on beep beep in my car has gone kaput, and since I am in danger of getting to be on a first-name basis with the AAA jump-start truck guy, I have to find a time to take the car in to the dealer and get whatever the little thingum is that’s broken fixed. I’m going to bake a cake today, because it seems like that would be a good thing to do. I am having a very contentious relationship with my hair lately, and therefore have been wrapping my head up in scarves and such so that I do not have to see my hair. Stuff like that.
Along the way I have been making some jewelry. This is called “The Spirit of Fatima Rules the Earth,” and it’s made mostly of Czech furnace glass, with some jade and silver.
This one is called “The Mermaid Oracle” and is made of jade, silver, peridot, pearls, glass, and a pendant that I did not make but that is made of glass, antique postcard, silver, and mirror.
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04.12.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:03 am by Hanne Blank
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night
Ad astra, Mr. Vonnegut. Thank you.
-=-=-=-
Recently there has been a huge billboard over I-95 just south of downtown Baltimore, an advertisement for bariatric surgery (gastric bypass) services at a local hospital, showing a young woman in a tank top, her arms spread as if she’s about to take flight, with the rubric “Trade pounds for possibilities.” This billboard infuriates me every single time I pass it. I have to say that even though I have a horror of heights, and this thing is on one of those incredibly tall hoardings that goes up way high above an interstate freeway, I have been fantasizing about going up there with some sort of gigantic paint sprayer thing and crossing out the word “pounds” and stencilling in the word “self-hatred” in huge red letters.
Please tell me I am not the only one whose road rage fantasies involve the political defacement of advertisements.
-=-=-=-
My mother has fallen in love. Recently she met a man about her own age through friends in her religious circles (my mom is, following a long career as a public school teacher from which she retired after thirtymumble years of service, enjoying a second career as a Spiritualist minister and medium who, among her other responsibilities, teaches at the Lily Dale Assembly in New York State every summer), and then in March, when she was spending a month in California and Arizona teaching and so on, she got the chance to spend some extended time with him… and the rest is about as adorable as a basket of kittens. The California Gentleman, as I am wont to call him when talking about him to people, is a semi-retired lawyer and judge, and while I haven’t met him yet, he sounds like a great chap and he seems to be making my mother exceedingly happy, which to me is the most important thing. Also, I have to say that getting to see my mom be so completely slackjawed loopy for someone is a treat. Her life has not been the easiest, and she’s always been one heck of a trouper. It’s great to see her getting to just bask in the fun stuff for a while. Though I must admit that it’s a little weird to suddenly have my mother — who has for most of her life displayed about as much interest in flying places as your average penguin — jetting off on a regular basis to go see her beau!
-=-=-=-
I’ve been thinking a little about this whole idiotic Don Imus flap. Beyond the obvious (why were people surprised to hear him be inflammatory, racist, and sexist in the same sentence, when he’s been inflammatory, racist, and sexist for so long he’s built a career out of it?) (and isn’t it indicative of at least some kind of cultural gangrene that we hire people as entertainers on the basis of how snarkily and nastily they can be inflammatory, racist, and sexist?), one of the things I have to admit to thinking, in the recesses of my hindbrain, is “God, thank you for not making me a heterosexual white man. I mean, it’s so easy to be a jackass anyway, I’m glad I wasn’t given that particular leg up.”
Before you start, stoppit. Yes, I know and you know that not all straight white boys are jackasses. I am not whacking them all with the same tarbrush, except insofar as I am: without exception, all the ones I’ve ever known who weren’t jackasses had to learn how to not be, whether by dint of being raised with explicitly anti-sexist/racist/etc. parenting, through some form of intensive educational intervention imposed on them later on, or simply because some kernel of uncommon decency caused them to stop and question the own top-of-the-food-chain upbringing that so frequently infuses straight white boys with a sense that they possess, as a birthright, a sort of metaCalvinist irresistible grace.
Which is not to say that the straight white boys who manage to overcome this training don’t deserve kudos, they do. That’s not easy work. Taking steps toward understanding the arbitrary and impersonal nature of your own privilege (let alone trying to renounce or redistribute some of that privilege) requires some radical readjustment of one’s sense of self. But they don’t deserve any more kudos than anyone else does for doing essentially the same work. Everyone who is not a straight white boy who likewise reaches a point of realizing that their privilege, or lack thereof, or social acceptance (a form of privilege) or lack thereof, or [fill in the blank, it's early and my tea water isn't hot yet, do your part] or lack thereof is similarly not inherent to them personally and is instead due to a complicated array of other external, systemic factors… everyone who gets there deserves the same props, in my book: Congratulations, biped, you’ve achieved social self-awareness. It’s a big scary world, and you’re naked. C’mon over by the fire. It’s warmer here, and we have caffeinated beverages. Here, have some.
All of which is a long roundabout way of saying no, I’m not going to go out of my way to cosset the straight white guys who might’ve gotten their fur rubbed the wrong way by my characterizing them as jackasses. Because frankly, straight white boys kinda do get handed the Acme Brand Super Home “Li’l Patriarch” Jackassery Kit (”Impress your friends! Oppress your enemies!”) the instant they spring forth from the womb. I’m glad some of them manage to get the hell over it. But as for the rest of ‘em, if the word “jackass” rankles, perhaps figuring out where all that guilt is coming from would be fruitful, hm?
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