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Did You Hear that? Saturday, Nov 19, 2005 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau I knew a lawyer who was not a very religious man, either before or after God spoke to him. The governor picked this lawyer to fill a prosecuting attorney vacancy many years ago. The appointee had many qualities, which included his blunt way of talking. He could see the truth better than most, and spoke it as directly as anyone I've ever met. This last quality made him unelectable. Appointment was the only way this outspoken man would ever get into public office, even an office for which he was obviously and supremely well-suited. The opportunity was not missed. The road to the prosecutor's epiphany began when police then made an arrest in a particularly severe child abuse case. The mother had wielded one of those heavy, chrome-plated car radio antennas from the 1960s in her beating of her grade-school child. Curiosity overcame the prosecutor's revulsion. He brought the mother to his office for an interview. I wasn't there, but saw him re-enact the incident after it took place. After a very brief introduction, the prosecutor asked: "Why would anyone beat a child like that?" The mother replied without hesitation: "Because God told me to punish that wicked child," The prosecutor sat silent for a moment. Then, startled, he started looking around the room. He looked up. He looked at the mother, his expression one of half-wonder, half-terror. He nervously asked, "Did you hear that?" He cupped his hand to his ear. He listened intently, then said again: "Did you hear that?" He lowered his hand, glared into the mother's eyes and said: "That was God, telling me to put your [rump] in jail." I thought of that lawyer after Attorney General Mike Beebe spoke about a week ago in Fayetteville, making opposition to domestic abuse an issue in the governor's race. Arkansas has a serious problem with abuse, Beebe said. We frequently rank in the top 10 among states in murders of women, among other domestic abuse categories, he said. State government is Arkansas' biggest employer. The governor is chief executive officer. Beebe said he'd make it a priority to look for domestic abuse of state government employees and would have state workers trained to recognize signs of such abuse. Asa Hutchinson, who is also running for governor, promptly replied that he would take action on the issue too and presented a long list of things he'd done already as a congressman and in the federal government to deal with the abuse problem. Bill Halter, who's running for governor but still being coy about announcing, jumped in too. Everything either Beebe or Hutchinson has said in this very high-stakes governor's race draws somebody's criticism. It's a sad commentary on the state of political discourse in America, but anything that can be criticized will be. There is no issue so self-evidently noncontroversial that it won't inspire attack. Even if the issue itself can't be attacked, the motives for raising it will be. Not this time. The only peep I've heard about the raising of this issue is that no decent person could think otherwise. It's sort of an apple-pie thing on Beebe's part, supposedly. It's a miracle. Beyond that, everybody who's likely to be governor after next years' election is on the record about the need to do something. Something needs doing. If stopping the violence under somebody else's roof was really an apple-pie non-issue, the statistics Beebe quoted wouldn't be so bad. ------ Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and The Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
