A Start That Went Awry
She was the star of an uplifting program at the Buddhist Friendship Center last Thursday. Called in to address a largely interfaith crowd at a gathering of Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas’s Empowerment Congress, Ms. Rice began promisingly. Speaking of gangbangers, she showed she knows how to play to her audience. “The interfaith sector is central to this (gang suppression) strategy,” she said. “These children have no spiritual backdrop. They have no frame of reference. They are holding onto a gun instead of to their parents and to God. You are absolutely critical when we say in this (thousand-page)report there have to be very robust public campaigns against the killing and violence.”
Religiously Fashionable
The very public-relations conscious Ms. Rice flared from a traditional message to a more fashionable, socially conscious pitch. In this era, for one to be hip, one must acknowledge the ubiquitous presence of Islam, whether appropriate or not. “This,” she said, “is exactly where we have to have the imams, the rabbis, the pastors and the priests and other spiritual leaders of whatever ilk, coming together and giving our children that framework.” Do you know of any Muslim gangbangers in Los Angeles? I don’t. Do you know of any Jewish gangbangers in Los Angeles? I don’t. Wouldn’t you know it? In one corner of the universe where Muslims and Jews are living in approximate harmony, Ms. Rice, the P.R. gal now that Doug Dowie is on his way to prison, feels a need to show the crowd — which did not give a fig — that she was socially conscious by mentioning imams first in the clergy pecking order. Blacks and Hispanics are at war, madam. Playing to the crowd this way was unseemly for a person trying to convince a skeptical community she carried a substantive message. Mercifully, Ms. Rice’s self-aggrandizing commercial appeared to be ending.
Evaluating the Contents
As I review the tape of the program, Ms. Rice’s presentation appears to be less substantive than when I watched her live. Turning away from her opening, faith-driven words, where she apparently was not comfortable, she was not above some gimmickry. “In this report,” she began, then turned around, picked up a box, presumably containing her team’s thousand-page recommendation, hoisted it above her head and said “in this report…” Just as she had hoped, there really were gasps, ahhs and oohs when she displayed the bulging box with the treasured solution inside.
A Little(?) Showmanship
“Why are we stuck on ‘Stupid’ when it comes to ending the violence in our hot spots?” Ms. Rice asked. “This report,” she began — and my mind, puckishly, flashed back to Johnny Carson as Carnac holding up an object and mugging for his sidekick — “this report is talking about what the City Council and the County government sectors have to do.”
Postscript
In her speech, Ms. Rice said of the upcoming power-point display, “I just want to case the problem for you. I want to give you an idea of what we are talking about and what we need to push. The point is, there is a solution, and we can do it. It is not an unsolvable problem. It can become an unsolvable problem if we continue to drop the baton. Let me cast the first stone at my own glass house. Civil rights lawyers have not solved this problem. Our cases have not resolved the problem in this community. Our cases have left these children behind. I live in a glass house. I expect (to continue) to live in a glass house. Before I start casting stones at city government, at County government, I want you to know we have all failed these children. We have left them behind. All of us have shared responsibility.”
Ms. Rice’s remedy, however, would not be recommended by any religiously oriented parent I know.
(To be continued)
