Excuses, Excuses

It is never wise to write flat-out that anything is the first, or the biggest, or the worst of its kind.

To do so just begs for phone calls from people who insist that, no, it was Uncle Jake who first split the atom, in his garage in Schenectady back in 1926.

Reporters put up with that the way Cold War America put up with the Soviets bragging on how they invented baseball and toilet paper and Chanel No. 5.

(One London newspaper went so far as to forbid any “firsts”; writers had to hedge their bets with phrases like “among the first,” until the day a friend of mine dutifully wrote about “George Washington, one of the first presidents of the United States.”)

Still, I will declare that the most stunningly dopey remark of the year to date was uttered in the hallway of a Los Angeles courthouse by an attorney for a Lomita man accused of shaking down model Elle MacPherson for money by threatening to reveal an unspecified, intimate secret and put her unclothed likeness on the Internet.

This lawyer--whose client claims he visited MacPherson’s house six times, and, hey, it wasn’t to skim the pool--told reporters by way of explanation that any young man might “go crazy” after being spurned by “one of the most beautiful women in the world.”

Now, that is some kind of excuse.

It could open up a whole new class of forgivable felony. Entitlement crime: I wanted it, I didn’t get it, and someone will be sorry.

I could rob banks and say that I went crazy because I didn’t get a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. I could go berserk and ransack an Air Force recruiting office for Project Blue Book files, and explain it away because I was spurned by what’s-his-name, the hunk du jour on “The X Files.”

This is how 2-year-olds reason and, except to other 2-year-olds, it is preposterous.

Yet a kind of entitlement crime happens so often that it is hardly newsworthy, more like noisy urban wallpaper, the erratic blare of a police scanner and an underpowered signal from a radio talk show . . . “Sheriff’s deputies zzzz man armed with a semiautomatic weapon kkkkkrrrrr ex-wife hostage sssssss may be children rrrrrgggggggg says he’ll kill rrrrrkkkkk.”

Sixteen percent of big-city homicides are family matters, and about two times out of three the husband kills the wife. This does not count ex-spouses, and those who calculate such things say they would be even higher if they did. I wanted my marriage, I wanted my family; I didn’t get them. Now someone will be sorry. If I can’t have her, or them, nobody can.

And they hold onto the phantom family unit for dear life, or until death does it part and so, at times, it does, and at their hands. To haul out the old Vietnam metaphor, they destroy their families in order to save them.

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On the downtown courthouse’s second floor, the sign on the door of Room 245 admonishes all comers, “Keep your children quiet and under control.” Adults, presumably, are supposed to keep themselves quiet and under control.

This is usually done with paper. We put a lot of faith in the armor-plated power of paper, in dollar bills, constitutional rights, court orders.

But what was it Samuel Goldwyn said of oral agreements, that they’re not worth the paper they’re written on? So it can be with restraining orders intended to keep ex- away from ex-.

Eight years past, an East L.A. woman heard that her estranged husband was coming to kill her at her birthday party. With the restraining order in one hand and the 911 operator on the phone in the other, she was told to call back when he showed up. He did. He started shooting. He chased one old lady into a bathroom, and he didn’t stop shooting until his wife and two aunts and a friend were dead, and their daughter was wounded.

On Father’s Day 1995, a Simi Valley man whose death threats against his ex-wife brought a restraining order with his name on it made sure to leave the garage door open when he shot himself and their two little kids, just so she could see what he had done.

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Summer news stories can be as brief and superheated as summer love or summer lightning.

Andrew Cunanan--even dead, he makes headlines. Time magazine says Sly and Madonna may have been on his hit list, just as, a generation ago, Liz and Dick were on Charles Manson’s, another singular summer story.

When summer is over, turn to the back pages. Read about the Florida man who was so drunk the Kmart clerk had to fill out the application for him to buy the gun, which he took right out and shot his ex-girlfriend with. Read about the Livermore man who wanted to reconcile with his estranged wife so much he disguised himself in wig and women’s clothes so he could sneak up to her without scaring her off, close enough to use his gun.

I don’t have to risk those phone calls and write that they are the worst, or even among the worst. And I don’t expect that anyone can ever write that they are the last.

It could open up a whole new class of forgivable felony. Entitlement crime: I wanted it, I didn’t get it, and someone will be sorry.