THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 7, 1995 TAG: 9501070030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
The jailhouse statement issued by alleged abortion-clinic assassin John Salvi reveals a pathetically troubled mind. Most of its rambling particulars are evidence only of personal paranoia. But a few scraps ought to be a warning to the rest of us.
Salvi appears to have the usual delusions of persecution and grandeur. He believes people are trying to poison him. There's a plot by Freemasons against Catholics. If acquitted of murder, he wants to become a priest. No doubt in order to help create the Catholic theocracy he yearns for in which the church will print its own money and care for the poor and unemployed.
This is mental instability talking, and pro-life advocates, Catholics, Masons, welfare reformers and food-service workers catering to the Norfolk jail shouldn't attach much importance to such gibbering.
However, Salvi allegedly turned his private delusions into public action by picking up a gun and firing. That should worry us all. Because it is not just the lunatics in our society who seem to feel violence is the way to solve problems.
We are fed a constant diet of killing on TV and at the movies. And it's not just the bad guys who blaze away but Dirty Harry cops and Death Wish vigilantes who take the law into their own hands. This is a culture where it is fashionable to mock the rule of law and glorify the violent man of action.
That's a mistake and an incitement to the unstable and ill-educated. There can be no private justice. There is no glory in blood on the pavement. It's time to insist on living within the law until laws we don't like can be changed by legal means. It is time to put the spotlight on those who live by accomplishment and discipline and intellect, not those who seek their 15 minutes of fame by deviance and bloodshed.
Which brings us to Salvi's ``wish to have an interview with Barbara Walters within the year.'' Just like Heather Locklear and Jerry Seinfeld. And no doubt he'll get it. Jeffrey Dahmer got his TV interview, as a reward for sexual exploitation, murder and cannibalism. It's the standard honor now accorded any killer or madman.
A scientist, healer, statesman or scholar can labor a lifetime and never get on the tube with Barbara or Diane, Connie or Jane. But any obscure nobody can get his face on TV if he just pulls the trigger.
The news and entertainment industries need to search their consciences. Slavering pursuit of the sickest among us degrades the pursuers and incites the sick to greater atrocities.
But the tabloids and TV shows wouldn't do it if there weren't big ratings to be earned. And sponsors underwrite these programs because an avid audience makes crime pay. The public has the power to avert its eyes from the crazy and to pull the plug on the perverse. When it does, the vicious circle of violence in pursuit of notoriety will be broken. by CNB