The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Monday, November 26, 2007

He's Got Personality, And Then Some...

11:07 PM

It was a quiet Thanksgiving for us in China. Back home in New Orleans, however, it was another matter--it was Baby Joseph Allen Bosco's first Thanksgiving, and the family had a splendid beginning of the Holiday Season. The picture proof is below.

Mr. Personality

Mom Michelle and Baby Joseph.

Dad Joseph and Baby Joseph.

Baby Joseph's first Thanksgiving dinner, with Aunt 'Princess' almost center frame.

Grandpa Allen and Baby Joseph.

Grandma Pat with Baby Joseph, right after she's given him his first taste of grownup food.

Grandma Linda with Baby Joseph.

Uncle Richard and family with Baby Joseph.

The really big one got away!

Opening day of duck season.

For me, another Christmas season far away from family; it will be Baby Joseph's first Christmas.

Mr. Personality

11:07 PM / Editor / permalink 3 comments

Thursday, November 15, 2007

O. J. Simpson is Bound Over For Trial...!

8:35 PM

Get outta town! It's really going to happen. O. J. Simpson will face another criminal jury and take his chances with extralegal, mass-market manufactured perceptions, perceptions a jury is never supposed to consider during any trial and its deliberations. Except that petit juries have been doing some version of it since well before Lady Liberty was even a gleam, and they do it somewhere every day in the United States; they do it in cases no one cares or knows about unless the crime happens in their town, neighborhood or extended family.

In truth, though, the overwhelming majority of juries in the United States get it right because few questions are truly in material dispute--or the defense attorney was 'calling it in.' That's not what is happening here. Unbelievable.

This piece of surreal history repeating itself presents me with more than a few professional and personal problems--and challenges. Regular readers will know of them so I will not repeat myself here, particularly when a new reader only has to scroll down a bit and get the gist of this too public mill.

I can only speak from the gizzard at the moment: It is screaming that I must finish what I started. It then quickly whispers the question -- how often does such a thing happen in anyone's life? Rarer still to an author and journalist: another pass at getting the story right, a story that will follow him into the grave no matter what.

Holy smokes! What to do? Said the rabbit. Leave China, my home now by emotional, metaphysical inertia and the surprising solidity of the several parts of me that now approach a whole that is decidedly better than what came before? Golly goddamn, I do not know! Only stupid criminals return to the scene of the crime. Only a relatively few folks think I am a criminal (but, thanks to the Internet, they are vocal); me being stupid, on the other hand, is a very open and legitimate question.

Oh, the story of the judge's ruling that I link-to below is from the Associated Press and not my customary tip of the keyboard to The New York Times.

The reason is that the AP story is written by Linda Deutsch. She is the best trial reporter living, period. Seeing Linda, being with her, working with her again, is just about reason enough to go back to the States to cover this story. Linda was mentored by the legendary crime reporter Theo Wilson, who passed from this life the very day her long-awaited memoir was published, a year or so after the Simpson criminal trial ended (the too few hours spent listening to Theo explain how she did it in trials immemorial were invaluable to this reporter).

But, gracious, Linda is good! Many readers may not know that because her byline may not appear in their hometown newspapers that carry her file stories. But from Manson to Sirhan to Rodney King to O. J. (1 & 2) to Kimes, Petersen, Blake, Pellicano, etc., and O. J. 3, she knows, but never tells; Linda, as only great storytellers come to understand, shows, she doesn't tell.

LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson must face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from a suspected sports memorabilia heist, a justice of the peace ruled Wednesday, despite fierce defense attacks that characterized prosecution witnesses as con artists and crooks out for a buck.

Please continue reading here;

or if you prefer here.

Pool photo (above ) by Jae C. Hong/Getty Images

8:35 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

This, I Never Would Have Believed...(redux, a bit)

10:00 PM

No way. There wasn't even a chance of me believing that O. J. Simpson would one day go to trial on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room, apparently captured on audio tape. Of the many ways I imagined Act 3 of Mr. Simpson's turn-of-the-century Passion play to conclude, this one ain't even close!

Jeezemtally. Do I go home to cover the damn thing? Some time ago I reconciled with the god awfully ugly notion that shortly after my son calls the undertaker, my obituary, large or small, will have O. J. Simpson and/or 'Trial of the Century' somewhere in the first 3 sentences no matter what I do in the meantime.

With that given in mind, how do I not leave China, my mostly happy home for more than 5 years, and go back to my natural home to finish my alotted part in perhaps the 20th Century's most perfect murder case, in the sense that it is has every element any storyteller of any kind could ever want?

What's there to lose?

The changes in my life would be significant and many. Why jump back into that fire when I more or less escaped the conflagration alive and relatively sane the first time around? Why get in the skillet while also turning up the flame with information and research I never stopped gathering and doing through a bunch of years? That question is particularly problematical considering the fact that more than a few folks know something about its scope but very little about its produce.

Yet, no way can I come out of it any the better if I do. After Tom Lange's and Phil Vannater's book, Evidence Dismissed, written with Dan E. Moldea (Pocket Books 1997), came out with only one footnote in its entirety, one concerning William Benson Wasz, I worked a story I sensed was central to the case and worked it to the bone--thousands of hours and hundreds of 4-hour drives through California deserts. And all it got me was infamy and the loss of respect from many of my mainstream press colleagues. Who can blame them? I do not. Not after recently learning that I was wrong about a crucial, fundamental element of Bill's story.

Also, beginning with my turn upon the witness stand in the criminal trial and my unknown role in the back rooms of the civil trial--which I could not cover inside the Santa Monica Courthouse because I was on both side's witness list from the start and stayed there even though neither side planned to call me to the stand and knew it from the beginning of pre-trial discovery--I became a participant in the story I was reporting.

This became even more complex ethically and personally after I entered into a secret, ad hoc investigatory role with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and the Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, on the Bill Wasz phenomenon. I worked with two of the less than a handful of truly informed folks on the Bundy murders who weren't too publicly attached to and tarnished by Marcia's pre-ordained crash and burn prosecution, two people of integrity, two people I respected each in their own fashion, one of whom would become a life-long best-friend no matter who's doing the shooting: Bert Luper and Bill Hodgman.

And later, after Time Magazine, with whom I had just shortly before worked splendidly on a major scoop in the Ennis Cosby murder, commissioned the story for the long-haul, I had the budget to bring aboard all of the investigative skills and resources of Lynda Larsen, of the Larsen AVR Group. Lynda and her associates took the work I and a small group of specialized researchers working with me had gathered over months and years and they then dug deeper in all directions into the hidden world of 'O. J. Simpson/Robert Kardashian & Company.'

To be more specific, whole trees-worth of paper were ground into the shaft where I had finally hit critical mass ('Follow the Money,' duh!): R & R + a multitude of brazenly bogus fictitious DBAs--at a time when such records were only available on paper via index cards and their all-important numbers in file boxes, which would eventually lead to the parsimonious release of individual sheaves of documents for on-premises review in the archival basements of courthouses throughout Southern California.

The activity uncovered had nothing to do with the Bill Wasz 'story' as such--albeit, a significant amount of it was discovered as eye-popping product of research generated from our need to check out Bill's claims about the activities of the people in his story.

What to do? Have a scotch, think about a down-right cross by the actress playing Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, and save the decision for another day? Yep, I think so.

O.J. Due in Vegas Court on 12 Charges

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 8, 2007

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- When O.J. Simpson returns to a courtroom to face armed robbery charges, the former football star will also be facing years of doubts and questions about his acquittal on murder charges more than a decade ago.

A Las Vegas justice of the peace will be asked to determine after a two-day hearing starting Thursday if there is enough evidence to take Simpson and two co-defendants to trial on charges that they robbed two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room.

In Simpson's mind, according to a close friend, the charges are rooted in Simpson being found not guilty in the 1994 slayings of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. "He believes he's being tried for that now," said Tom Scotto, 45, a North Miami Beach, Fla., auto body shop owner.

The men arrested in the Sept. 13 incident were brought together by Scotto's wedding.

Simpson and co-defendants Clarence "C.J." Stewart and Charles Ehrlich face 12 charges, including kidnapping, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and coercion. A kidnapping conviction could result in a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. An armed robbery conviction could mean mandatory prison time.

"He's taking this serious," Scotto said. "It is serious."

No one disputes that Stewart, Ehrlich and former co-defendants Michael McClinton, Walter Alexander and Charles Cashmore went with Simpson and California collectibles broker Tom Riccio to meet memorabilia dealers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong in a casino hotel room.

Simpson has maintained that he wanted to retrieve items he claimed had been stolen from him by a former agent, including the suit he wore the day he was acquitted in Los Angeles.

The case is likely to pivot on Simpson's contention that he didn't ask anyone to bring guns, that he didn't know anyone had guns and that no guns were displayed.
Three of Simpson's co-defendants have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so and are expected to testify against him.

Cashmore, 40, a journeyman laborer, said McClinton displayed a gun.

Please continue reading at The New York Times

10:00 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Now There Are No Giants at All...

11:04 PM

Norman Mailer died today. There is nothing I can write at the moment other than to link you to an obituary in The New York Times.

Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: November 10, 2007

Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any writer of his generation, died today at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He was 84.

Please continue reading at The New York Times.

11:04 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

A Worried Mind...continues

1:46 AM

Frankly, folks, I'm working hard at working some personal things out; but it doesn't look good at present. I appreciate the continued traffic and e-mails; and when this worried mind pulls its pitiful ass out of the sucking marsh-mud of regret--a most futile endeavor, to be sure, but we are flesh--I will get around to replying to e-mails, and posting in these pages stories still relevant to the old, yet forever new baggage that is eternally strapped to my back. Stories that have never been told, but now need to be. Or so I am told; and I'm starting to listen. In the case of the Simpson murders, I did not follow those voices in the past and am poorer for it commercially; but more importantly, I am concerned about what is on and what is not on the public record.

Also, much has changed recently in my extended circle of work and life. A number of folks have died; some folks are now public property; some obligations of confidentiality are no longer binding; and some folks and some truths just need to be exposed. I have no projected schedule of when these stories may appear; I'm in no hurry to tell them, some of them are dear to me and some of them are not particularly flattering.

For some reason, fate, destiny--bad advice!--my publishing career took a movie-like automobile u-turn, and then a y-turn or two, and I ended up writing about murder almost exclusively, most of the time high profile murder cases. (Although far more often I worked cases I knew I would never sell anywhere, book, magazine, alternative press, nothing, cases most people would never hear about; but cases where my work with a few gifted defense attorneys and my recognizable presence in otherwise empty courtrooms sometimes served justice for the better. Not often, mind you; Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, veterans and esteemed fellow colleagues of Camp O. J. and The Trial of the Century, are my heroes in that category; and should be yours. )

But, unlike many other writers, with an emotionally worried mind, I'm stymied. Under pressure, stress, instant obligations and responsibilities--deadlines!-- that are real and imposing, I produce like a trained-seal. But I can do little with a worried mind. Most assuredly that kind. That's just me.

But maybe it's starting to get a little better, there is a pinhole of light in the far darkness. We will see what happens.

1:46 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments