Where Are You When We Need You, Lamont? 1/7

There was a time, long ago, when I would say my prayers every night and go to sleep dreaming of my lady fair, whoever it happened to be that day, whom I had just rescued from the neighborhood bully, or Fu Manchu, or Moriarty. Sometimes I would borrow Green Lantern’s ring (he was a friend of mine), or I’d use Lamont’s slouch hat, black cape, and fiery opal to weed out the bitter fruit of crime, and in the process meet and save my beloved from the hideous designs of monstrous villainy.

It was a time of belief in Truth, Justice, and Beauty. I took life at face value. And Sindbad was as real to me as Daniel Boone, General MacArthur, or John Glenn.

Then President Kennedy was murdered. Why do the media use the term assassination in these cases? It seems to depersonalize it, to minimize the deed somehow. But it doesn’t matter what polite society calls it, assassination, execution, or manslaughter, the taking of another life is murder. And murder got to be an almost nightly television event. From seeing Jack Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald over and over again for what seemed like months on the six o’clock news and again at eleven, to seeing a bullet put through the head of a prisoner by a South Vietnamese officer. That picture still lives in my mind.

(Continued)

–LE