The Longbow Papers

Knowing when not to report something isn't a novel skill or even keen instinct, it's called responsible journalism. It's been taught and practiced for more decades than I know how to calculate.

Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ability to use his legs had absolutely nothing to do with his ability to lead the nation through the Great Depression and World War Two, journalists chose not to report that the President of the United States couldn't walk a step without great pain and bulky equipment. There was never a directive from the White House, or from FDR's many re-election campaigns to squelch such stories or photographs. To my non-expert knowledge only one photograph ever appeared in a daily paper or on the wire services of President Roosevelt in a wheelchair while he lived.

Bill Wasz was no FDR, let's be abundantly, unmistakably clear about that. But he had people who loved him, from a number of perspectives. These people had reason enough to want to think of him now not only as this shady guy with a bizarre connection to the O.J. Simpson murder case of 1994 in Los Angeles, U.S.A. A guy who spent too much of his adult life in maximum security prisons. But rather to think of him as this immense, fascinating, sometimes infuriating man who loved to test his "natural" wit against all takers. The man we knew who smoked only un-filtered cigarettes and would talk for hours about a piece of land in rural Virginia he dreamed of living on one day.

That man is in the two pictures here: the photo below was taken outside the dealership where he bought his bike in those months when he was back in the free world of hope; the one above is a recent "portrait" shot. Both photographs are courtesy of immediate family members who politely thanked me for not rubbing his memory into the purely personal level of grime demanded by obsessive-compulsive Internet bulletin board doodlers with nothing better to do than the "O.J. shuffle" 10 years after the rest of the world moved on with their lives.



Yes, Bill's immediate family members have read the ranting; the ranters should be proud of themselves. Those who dealt personally with coroner's protocol, those who had to look truth in the ugly face yet again after all that reason for hope, those with children and grandchildren who also live in this cyber world, children and grandchildren that have scant memories of their adult father other than from mug shots or supermarket tabloid flashes, they have read your careening speculations and flights of paranoid fantasies.

Say and write what you will of Larry Longo or me, you can't hurt us, just please stop writing the word "murdered" in reference to their father's death. Of course, I do not expect you to do my bidding. So I implore you to do what any citizen in America can do, for the "facts" of Bill's death, call the authorities and ask questions.

That is what working journalists do, rookies or old hands. If you suspect foul play, get out of your shell and call someone with a badge or a robe or a TV camera or just a tape recorder. If you can't get some one to talk to you, even after you use non-harmful deception, file a Freedom of Information Act request. Never give up on a story you believe in. I never have. That's why I can save you a lot of trouble if you think that Bill was murdered and you are also lazy: he wasn't. End of story.

Fuhrman and the other matter is, of course, a whole different story, for another day, though.

 

5:50 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments

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