One Hand Jerking (42 page)

In 1971, Bates was transferred to Washington, D.C. According to Watergate burglar James McCord's book,
A Piece of Tape
, on June 21, 1972, White House attorney John Dean checked with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray as to who was in charge of handling the Watergate investigation. The answer: Charles Bates—the same FBI official who in 1974 would be in charge of handling the SLA investigation and the search for Patty Hearst. When she was arrested, Bates became instantly ubiquitous on radio and TV, boasting of her capture.

In the middle of Patty's trial—on a Saturday afternoon, when reporters and technicians were hoping to be off duty—Bates called a press conference. At 5 o'clock that morning, they had raided the New Dawn collective, the aboveground support group of the Berkeley underground Emiliano Zapata Unit. Was there a search warrant? No, but the FBI had a “consent to search” signed by the owner of the house, who later admitted to being a paid FBI informant. Accompanying a press release about the evidence seized at the raid were photographs still wet with developing fluid. Bates posed with the photos.

Six weeks later, I received a letter by registered mail on Department of Justice stationery, signed by Charles Bates, advising me that I was on an Emiliano Zapata Unit “hit list” seized during a search. The information “is furnished for your personal use and it is requested it be kept confidential. At your discretion, you may desire to contact the local police department responsible for the area of your residence.”

But I was more logically a target of the government than of the Emiliano Zapata Unit—unless, of course, they were the same. Was the right wing of the FBI warning me about the left wing of the FBI? Did the handwriting on the wall read
Cointelpro Lives
? Questions about the authenticity of the Zapata Unit had been raised by its first public statement, which included an unprecedented threat of violence against the left. A communique from the central command of the bomb-leaving New World Liberation Front charged that “the pigs led and organized” the Zapata Unit. “We were reasonably sure that it was a set-up from the beginning, and we
never
sent one communique to New Dawn because of our suspicions.”

Jacques Rogiers, aboveground courier for the NWLF, told me that the reason I was on their hit list was because I reported that Donald DeFreeze had been a police informer.

“But that was true,” I said. “It's a matter of record. Doesn't that make any difference?”

“If the NWLF asked me to kill you,” Rogiers replied, “I would.”

“Jacques,” I said, “I think this puts a slight damper on our relationship.”

And I found another place to live.

“The forces of chastity are amassing once again,” says sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in the film biography,
Kinsey
.

As if to prove that statement still applies, a couple of days before the movie opened, conservative groups announced plans to protest the glorification of a man they blame for the sexual revolution and, consequently, AIDS. The director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute even compared Kinsey to Nazi madman Dr. Josef Mengele.

Which is all fine with me. That's the risk of free speech. Let them picket theaters and hand out leaflets until pigs fly, the cows come home and Hell freezes over, as long as the government isn't involved. Or, for that matter, the
fear
of government interference.

How chilling the effect must be when the latest fine by the FCC against a TV network—a record $1.2 million against Fox for its “sexually suggestive”
Married By America
—resulted from letters of complaint by only three individuals.

Jack Thompson, an attorney in Coral Gables with a reputation as an obsessive crusader against indecency, has filed a dozen complaints with the FCC about the
Howard Stern Show
, most recently concerning “The Howard Stern Amputee Beauty Contest.” (I'd give my right arm to see that.) Thompson says that “this was so far over the line that the content constitutes not just ‘indecency' but also ‘profanity' as that legal term of art is used in such regulatory matters.”

And now lawyer Thompson is indulging in quasi-extortion. In a letter to Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, he states that he intends “to bring a civil action arising from the negligent supervision of the Viacom board in its failure to assure that the
Howard Stern Show
not libel people, not incite death threats against people and, most importantly, not air indecent material.” But then comes his demand:

“I have only one requirement, and it must be done quickly. Fire Howard Stern. Terminate him now, and I go away. You know you can terminate him right now for his ongoing promotion, on the air, of his upcoming Sirius program. What he did in that regard yesterday on your air is beyond belief. You can dump him right now for that alone. Everyone knows he's been warned not to do that. Pull the trigger. Fire him. That gives you a 2-for-1 deal. You get rid of Stern and you
get rid of Jack Thompson. I'll be much more of a pain than Howard Stern ever was. It's my job.”

Meanwhile,
Daily Variety
reported, “Here are some late election returns: Local stations are running scared on program content. . . . The scheduled preemptions [of
Saving Private Ryan
] come even though most, if not all, of the stations now balking at running
Ryan
have aired it in the past. Pic, which contains more than three dozen utterances of the word ‘fuck,' must air in its unedited form, as per ABC's license agreement with DreamWorks.”

In 2002, responding to a complaint from censorship advocate Donald Wildmon, the FCC ruled that
Saving Private Ryan
was
not
indecent. But that was before religious fanatics committed the worst of sins—pride—false pride in thinking that they've taken over the country.

Heathens of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your faith! Oops, never mind. . . .

Say what you will about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, you have to give him credit for signing a bill to forbid necrophilia. Under the new law, sex with a corpse is a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Claiming that the act was consensual will not be considered as a legal defense. Necrophiliacs have been getting away with it all this time, but district attorneys will no longer be stymied by the lack of an official ban.

According to Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University of Law who has studied California cases involving allegations of necrophilia, “Prosecutors didn't have anything to charge these people with other than breaking and entering. But if they worked in a mortuary in the first place, prosecutors couldn't even charge them with that.”

Of course, there is a whole spectrum of necrophiliacs, ranging from those who are promiscuous, hopping from one casket to another, to those who like to stick with one corpse.

Here, from my “Great Moments in Necrophila” file, is a dispatch from Associated Press:

“The prosecution in the insanity trial of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer rested its case. Dahmer has confessed to killing and dismembering 17 young males since 1978. A jury must decide if he will be sent to prison or a mental institution. The final prosecution witness, Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist, testified that Dahmer
wore condoms when having sex with his dead victims, showing that he could control his urge to have intercourse with corpses.”

I smell a public service announcement there: “If Jeffrey Dahmer is sane enough to have safe sex, what about
you?
”

Whether necrophilia is a victimless crime may still be open to debate, but to arrest a sick person for using medical marijuana undoubtedly transforms a victim into a criminal. States' rights—it's not just for racists anymore.

During the Supreme Court discussion of this issue, Justice Stephen Breyer sure sounded like he'd been smoking some pretty powerful stuff himself: “You know, he grows heroin, cocaine, tomatoes that are going to have genomes in them that could, at some point, lead to tomato children that will eventually affect Boston. . . .”

Chief Justice William Renquist, wasn't present. He's undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer. One of the plaintiffs, Angel Raich—who uses marijuana every few hours for a brain tumor, scoliosis and chronic nausea—said she hoped Renquist's chemotherapy “would soften his heart about the issue. I think he would find that cannabis would help him a lot.”

However, there was a definite agenda permeating the unhigh court. Justice Antonin Scalia sarcastically stated, “I understand there's whole communes in California planning on using marijuana for medical purposes.” Justice David Souter said that an estimated 10 percent of people in America use illegal drugs, and those states with medical marijuana laws might not be able to stop recreational users from taking advantage. Souter added that making an exception for patients could open the door to widespread marijuana use and to fraudulent claims of illness by recreational pot smokers in California and the ten other states that allow medical marijuana. Justice Stephen Breyer said, “Everybody will say ‘Mine is medical.'”

If you simply substitute the word “Viagra” for “medical marijuana,” then the anti-recreational-use party line echoed by the Three Stooges is clearly revealed as a double standard.

Maybe it's because you can't grow Viagra—or Prozac, or Vioxx—in your window garden.

“[S]keptics in city government circles were questioning the very existence of the nanny . . .”—
New York Times

 

Somewhere in Mexico:

 

Q. So, Maria, how does it feel to have people doubt that you exist?

A. I regret it very much. I am alive and tricking.

Q. You mean alive and kicking.

A. No, tricking. When Mr. Bernie suddenly had me flown back home, I had no money, I had to turn tricks.

Q. Didn't he pay you well?

A. Oh, he did, but I spend it all in Atlantic City on my days off.

Q. What were your duties?

A. I take care of his two girls—they are good kids, shouldn't have to hear all this shit, you know, about their father. And I do some housekeeping. That's when the trouble start.

Q. How do you mean?

A. Well, he has this apartment—we call it the ground zero place—and he wants me to clean
that
up too, and get fresh flowers, wine, weed, would you believe that, so he can fool around with not one but
two
mistresses—I even have to buy the condoms—and I'm friendly with his wife, but I have to pretend like I don't know what's going on.

Q. Did you actually meet those mistresses?

A. Just one, Miss Judith, and she tells me, “Maria, if you keep a journal of everything that goes on behind the scenes, my company will publish it, and you will make a
lot
of money.”

Q. And did you do that?

A. No, no, I have very much loyalty to Mr. Bernie. Gifts and everything. For my birthday he give me a taser gun. For Christmas his friend Mr. Rudy give me a Green Card.

Q. Did you know about Kerik's involvement with organized crime people?

A. Are you kidding? In our living room, it was just like watching
The Sopranos
without a TV set.

Q. Was there a highlight for you—something that stands out in your memory—during the time you worked in the Kerik household?

A. Yes, it was during the campaign for president. Mr. Bernie was going to be interviewed for the
New York Daily News
and he was really nervous. I mean there was sweat dripping down his face from his bald head and staying in his mustache. He says, “Maria, I gotta come up with a good sound bite.” I say, “What's a sound bite?” He says, “That's the thing I wanna say that will be quoted all over the media.” I say, “Why don't you make a warning. Like if that guy Kerry wins, then there will be another attack by the terrorists.”

Q. So you wanted the Democrats to lose?

A. They don't need me to lose. They are, you know, chickenshit. Mr. Bernie tells that sound bite to the
Daily News
, and then the Democrats still praise him for Homeland Security.

Q. Do you miss living in America?

A. Yes. I really wanted to see
Spanglish
.

As a kid, my favorite radio program was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his dummies, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Charlie was the pretentious city slicker, wearing a top hat and monocle. Mortimer was his naive, freckle-faced, buck-toothed country cousin. I realized that there was something bizarre about featuring a ventriloquist on radio, but it didn't matter—they all
sounded
like different personalities.

One time Bergen said, “Charlie, what are you doing?” He replied, “Oh, nothing.” Then Mortimer interjected in his goofy, innocent manner, “Well, then how d'ya know when yer finished?” A Zen koan from the mouth of a wooden dummy.

I ate with a Charliie McCarthy teaspoon, and I wore a Charlie McCarthy T-shirt, which I got in trouble for wearing to a public school assembly. You can understand why I'm particularly sensitive to people getting in trouble for wearing a T-shirt, and this has been a banner year for that offense.

The private Cape Cod Academy in Osterville, Massachusetts updated their student handbook, and the new guidelines forbid
all
T-shirts with writing on them. “This very strict new dress code is, quite honestly, ridiculous,” complained the student body vice president. “You can't really represent yourself the way you'd like.”

During the national Day of Silence, an annual event sponsored by gay rights groups, a high school junior in San Diego was not allowed to wear a T-shirt that read “Homosexuality Is Shameful” and “Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned.”