"Fix that headline."
Posted on 04/09/2005 12:53:27 AM PDT by LibWhacker
You'll hear the word "closure" a lot with regard to the Eric Rudolph case, and if you have no idea who Rudolph is, you're probably living a wonderful life. He's the humanoid who bombed Centennial Park at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, bombed a lesbian night club, bombed two abortion clinics, killed two people, maimed a nurse, and injured 120 folks unlucky enough to be caught on planet Earth in the same tiny sliver of lifetime as this unbridled loser.
Now Rudolph has cut a deal with federal officials under which he will go to prison for the rest of his natural life but avoid the death penalty. He also already has led authorities to more than 250 pounds of buried dynamite. It was a good trade for the government.
But closure? Well, let's run that one past Richard Jewell.
Remember that name, Richard Jewell? You may, and there's a reason for it: He is the man who was identified, first privately by federal investigators and then publicly on the screaming front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as the No. 1 suspect in the Olympic bombing case.
It was an almost unbelievable story, incredible in its irony. On the night of the bombing, a sweltering July post-midnight party in the park that turned into a terror siege, Richard Jewell had emerged as a hero -- a security guard who had alerted fellow workers to the abandoned backpack that wound up being a bomb, moving them away from it before it detonated; a man who helped evacuate panicky Olympic visitors from the park in the hazy wake of the tragedy.
Only later did the word leak out that investigators had decided Jewell was suspicious more than heroic. Only then, a few days after the blast, when the newspaper named him as the top guy on the FBI's list, did people begin to realize that, now that they thought about it, Jewell almost perfectly fit the role of a madman bomber.
After all, Jewell, a portly type who took a bad photograph, lived a loner's existence in an apartment with his mom. And he was a wannabe cop, a security guard with designs on getting into a police academy and maybe joining the force someday. He was obviously starved for attention; otherwise, he wouldn't have been so willing to do those TV and newspaper interviews that he granted with such immediacy in the aftermath of the bombing and his "help" in Centennial Park.
It all added up. The thing got rolling. The worldwide media had a ready-made villain. Again, incredible story: The guy who pretended to be helping people that terrible night was really an American who bombed the park to begin with. It had an awfulness that just rang of some kind of truth.
And it was, of course, a complete crock.
The case against Richard Jewell was bad from the start; the FBI sent Jewell's attorney a letter within three months of beginning its investigation to tell him Jewell was not a suspect. But it didn't matter out there in the public and in the media, where Jewell already had been tried and convicted by the people who needed their vengeance sooner than the government was able to provide.
It took authorities seven years, in fact, before they were able to bring in Eric Rudolph, the man who actually appears as the kind of soulless cretin that people wanted to believe Richard Jewell to be. Rudolph, a man with reported ties to a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-abortion, had managed to evade capture for much of that time by living in survivalist style in the mountains of western North Carolina.
His ability to elude the agents searching for him was reported, along with his identification as a person quite possibly connected with the Olympic tragedy and the other bombings as well. But he wasn't caught, and he wasn't caught; and in the meantime, Richard Jewell's was really the only name out there.
When Rudolph was brought in two years ago, Jewell's lawyer, Lin Wood, didn't sound too hopeful that the arrest would bring to an end the damage done to Jewell's life. "The portrayal of Richard Jewell as the bomber was so intense," Wood said at the time. "Richard is always remembered as the person who bombed the park and is never remembered as the man who reacted heroically that night to save so many lives."
Wood commented again on Friday, saying that it wouldn't be difficult to imagine Jewell's feeling of "final and total vindication" at hearing the news of Eric Rudolph's arranged guilty plea. Imagining it will have to do; Jewell, his life wrecked beyond all reason, has long since gone underground.
He lives in an undisclosed Georgia town now, a place where, some might say fittingly, he finally realized his dream of becoming a police officer. He has moved forward in his life. But closure in the Olympic bombing case? That's a word for just about everybody but Richard Jewell, the most notorious hero of the age.
Rudolph is a loser and gets absolutely no sympathy from me.
The best thing that ever happened to Jewell -- was being wrongly identified as the "bomber" and being given the opportunity to sue the hell out of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation...
Good on him!!!
Semper Fi
Sloppy writing. Didn't he win the lawsuit against NBC ?
I was real happy to see him win that lawsuit. Too bad he couldn't also sue about 999 of the DUmmies over on DU, and take every last beat-up rust bucket they own. The things they said about him would've made the AJC look good in comparison.
The only real question is did he handle the money properly, or is it long gone?
"Jewel never fully explained what he was doing with nails in his basement."
That was sarcastic, of course, but it epitomizes the ineptitude of the Clinton/Reno FBI.
I remember Richard Jewell did become a sheriff or some sort. Besides how many people remember RJ? Is his life still tarnished especially with a unspecified settlement?
Given the fact that he was accused during the Clintion regime I can't help but doubt his guilt. Those were topsey-truvey days indeed, which I would hate to ever see repeated in this country.
Same reason why I won't explain why I have nails, screws hammers, wrenches, drills, etc, etc. in my garage.
"Fix that headline."
The AJC won the lawsuit. Here's a detailed and fair retelling of the whole sad story.
http://www.mediaethicsmagazine.com/news/2003/12/30/Analysescommentary/Crossing.The.Line-681788.shtml
Also, I'm pretty sure DU didn't actually exist until 2001 as part of the cry-baby reaction to W's first win.
Subsequent coverage of Jewell's removal from the list of suspects made up only a fraction of the frenzy that had surrounded his being named a suspect. Furthermore, though his efforts to evacuate the area likely saved more than 100 people that day, he received no recognition for his heroism. Instead, some may forever view Jewell, the "hero bomber," with suspicion.
Somewhere, someone in guv'ment must be willing to give him the recognition he deserves. Others get it for less.
Interesting how the leftist press considering anyone who disagrees with them to be sub-human animals.
This is the same leftist press that will support mass-murdering serial-killers like Unibomber, so the hypocrisy is evident.
Eric Rudolph may or may not have bomb those place, the leftist press wanted him lynched that is why he ran and hid.
But even if Eric Rudolph did commit those bombings, Eric Rudolph is still a saint compared to the likes of Castro; one the tyrants who has slaughtered tens of thousands of people, enslaved millions and a person the leftist press will defend to the death.
It's hard not to think of him as having "won" these lawsuits. But I stand corrected, AJC weasled out of it, and I'm angry about it all over again, thanks a lot! ;-)
Also, now where DID I read all those comments about him being a "fat pig" and "rightwing loser," etc? Man, I'm gettin' old! But it must've been on usenet, though give me a crack at DU's archives and I'll bet I can find plenty of defamatory things they said about him, years and years after he had been officially cleared of the crime -- which makes it even worse, imho.
But, again, thank you for setting me straight and reminding me of the facts! :-)
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