Steve Earle sees a friend killed

Subject: RE: Steve Earle sees a friend killed
From: Metchosin
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:56 AM

the word "incongruous" struck home.....From a conversation recently with a friend (older, attorney, from Arizona, staunch Republican and Bush supporter) and I quote "the death penalty only applies when you're poor, black or Hispanic. Am I in favour of the death penalty? No! No one should expect the State to do something they cannot, in good conscience, do themselves." I believe that a majority of American citizens from Texas or elsewhere could not have pulled that switch.

Subject: RE: Steve Earle sees a friend killed
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:11 AM

Scary....

Subject: RE: Steve Earle sees a friend killed
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 09:22 AM

For some reason instead of the second post coming tghrough as a correction on the same thread, it came through as a seperate thread. Wonders of the Mudcat. Anyway, ignore the other one.

Subject: Steve Earle sees a friend killed
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 09:19 AM

Only part of that post came out. I hop etghis timwe it'll work better:

Here's a piece they printed in today's Guardian (London). It's an account by Steve Earle of the execution in Texas of a man he'd got to know and see as a friend. I think some Mudcatters who might like to read it might miss it otherwise. The man can't only write great songs:

When he finishes reciting he takes a deep breath and says: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." The warden, recognising the prearranged signal he and Jon had agreed on, nods toward the unseen executioner and Jon begins to sing.

"Silent night / Holy night . . . "

He gets as far as "mother and child" and suddenly the air explodes from his lungs with a loud barking noise, deep and incongruous, like a child with whooping cough - "HUH!!!" His head pitches forward with such force that his heavy, prison-issue glasses fly off his face, bouncing from his chest and falling to the green tile floor below.

The Guardian took it from a magazine I hadn't heard of before, Tikkun, published in San Francisco, which has some fascinating and moving stuff in it. It's the kind of magazine that would stop me dead in my tracks if I was ever tempted to feel a bit anti-American. (And there are people like that as well.)