HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-05-08, Page 5y Raymond Canon
International Scene
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1996 PAGE 5.
Crooks
the dumbest
of all
Only two things are infinite: the
universe and human stupidity. And I'm
not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
Old Al sure had that right - the human
stupidity part, I mean. Anybody who thinks
that the human race is evolving onto a higher
plane hasn't spent much time perusing the
police blotter down at the local precinct.
People in general may be dumb as Einstein
said, but crooks have got to be among the
dumbest people of all.
Oh, I know there are criminal masterminds
around, who run circles around the cops and
never spend a nanosecond in the stammer.
But there aren't many like that. For every
brilliant crook there are at least a hundred
sad sack schlemiels who deserve to be in
prison if only for their own safekeeping. For
every Jesse James there's...
Well, there's a guy like the bonehead who
held up a convenience store in Nevada last
year. The store clerk asked for permission to
make one phone call. "Just one" said the
stickup artist. Amazingly enough, the clerk
The importance
of reading
One of the best things my teachers and
family ever did for me was to encourage me
to read books. I should admit right at the
beginning that such an accomplishment was
not as hard as it might appear, since
television had not yet made its appearance
during my childhood and was not, therefore,
in a position to distract me from the art of
reading.
What attracted me was the fact that I could
pick it up and put it down and, unlike radio,
did not run the risk of missing anything. To'
this day libraries all over can vouch for the
fact that I am a frequent visitor and, thanks
to the proliferation of pocket books, I can
take my reading with me whenever I travel
by plane or train.
I periodically look over the "Bestseller"
list to see what other people are reading and
in this connection I recently came across a
list of the bestsellers in both English and
French speaking Canada and a comparison
with what was being read at the same time in
another English speaking country - the
United States and another French speaking
country - France.
I think this was done just to see how
Canadian readers compared with their
counterparts in other countries.
Let's take the English books first. It soon
became apparent that we are not too
opted to Jial the number of the local
constabulary. The cops were there before the
robber got out the door.
Some guys think bigger than knocking off
the corner store. Like the hood who decided
to blow up the Percy Priest Dam outside of
Nashville, Tennessee. He figured the dam
burst would put the city of Nashville under
50 feet of water. Then all he had to do was
strap on a pair of scuba tanks and frog-kick
his way from jewellery store to jewellery
store.
Jams Bond might have pulled it off, but
not this guy. He'd never been scuba diving in
his life. Hadn't done much demolition work
either. The bomb he detonated merely blew
the door off an old wooden shack on top of
the darn.
Then here was the hapless hoodlum in
Forth Worth, Texas, who decided to rob a
branch of the First National Bank.
Exceedingly polite as bank robbers go, he
took his place in the longish line-up of
customers waiting to be served.
Who knows? He might have pulled it off.
If he hadn't been wearing a ski mask while
he stood in line. By the time he got to a
teller, she was flanked by two policemen.
And those weren't Bic Retractables they
were pointing his way.
An even dumber bank bandit would be
Kevin Thompson, who tried to hold up a
branch of the MidAtlantic Bank in
Bloomfield, New Jersey last summer. When
he was arrested hours later, Kevin had
cleverly managed to hold on to the hold up
note he'd shown the teller.
nationalistic when it comes to reading our
own authors. Over half the list of bestsellers
in Canada were written by Americans.
Included in the list was one on children by
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of the
American president. Also included was The
Road Ahead by Bill Gates, the well known
founder of Microsoft.
Gates, by the way, established something
of a record. He was on the bestseller list in
all four of the categories which I outlined
above: it seems his French translation is no
slouch either when it comes to attracting
readers. No other book on the list came close
to appearing on all four.
I was not surprised to see Peter Newman
and Richard Gwyn on the English Canadian
list; what was more surprising was Stompin'
Tom Connors book, but he is, it seems,
better known than I had imagined.
On the American list there were two by
Deepak Chopra, whose books, if you have
not already read them, would be worth a
serious look. Bill Bradley is also worth a
look, but the rest are likely to be down just
as fast as they came up.
France, it would appear, is fascinated by
its recently deceased president Francois
Mitterand. No less than half the top 10 books
on that country's list were about him. This
came as something of a surprise to me; the
last years of his life saw him play a
decreasing role. The cancer that finally
killed him seemed to mesmerize his thinking
to the detriment of all others.
Frenchmen can talk all they want about
supporting the separatists in Quebec in their
efforts to create their own country, but the
fact remains that the gap between the two
"This is a stickup" it read, "keep clam and
no won will get hammed."
Kevin's goose was cooked with or without
lousy spelling. He'd written the note on the
back of his own paycheck stub.
Ah, but how about counterfeiting? Surely
that's got to attract a higher calibre of crook?
Not necessarily. I give you the case of
Joseph T. Hill, convicted in 1990 of
counterfeiting Polish currency. To cut costs,
Joe used a Canon colour copying machine to
forge three million zlotys — worth about
$300 dollars U.S. The cop who nabbed him
said, "He could have printed a boxcar full
and not had enough to buy a decent suit."
The world's all-time dumbest crook? Alas,
the field is too crowded to call. But due
consideration must be given to David
Posman, a would-be armoured-truck heister
in Providence, Rhode Island. David had
thought of everything — including a disguise.
He held up the truck as planned, grabbed
four of the heaviest sacks of cash in the back
and proceeded to haul them to his truck
which was parked just a block away.
Would anyone recognize him? Not likely.
Posman had cleverly elected to dress as a
woman. Complete with earrings, a frilly
blouse, high heels, pantihose and...
Shoot.
That's what he forgot — a skirt. And the
pantihose was sheer and see through.
Probably just as well. The four money
bags Posman was lugging contained pennies.
About $200 worth, tops. Posman's hernia
probably showed right 'through his
pantihose.
groups of French speaking people is as wide
as it ever was. The Quebecois were not
interested in Mitterand at all. The only book
the two had in common was that of Bill
Gates of Microsoft,
Another strange entry was a translation
from the English of one of Arnold Toynbee's
books on history. While it is my belief that
Toynbee would fascinate anybody, the fact
that he would appear on a French list and not
on an English one shows some things are
beyond explanation. Unless, of course, there
is something in the books that appears to
promote separatism as a politically
acceptable phenomenon.
One thing is certain. It will be the
proverbial frosty Friday before Americans
start reading a Canadian bestseller. They are
so wrapped up in their own culture and
importance that it seems almost an insult to
them for anybody to suggest that they might
like to read anything serious from any other
English-speaking country.
I recently read an article in an American
publication about a miracle that happened
thanks to quick action on the part of a
London hospital. If you didn't look carefully
you would have thought that the miracle
took place in, where else, the United States.
Living beside the U.S. is not exactly a bed of
roses.
GOT A BEEF?
Write a letter
to the editor
The
short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
A screenplay in the works
This past weekend I became inspired.
The movie Waiting to Exhale, of four
women, fed up and tired of waiting for a
decent man to pop into their lives, received a
lot of hype before its premiere, then faded
from the big screen with hardly an applause,
as many others before it, only to reappear at
a rather low price on video store shelves
everywhere. It is being heralded here with
almost as much hype as before, with no
apparent regard to its early demise from the
box office scene.
For a few reasons I was curious about this
movie. The hype, notwithstanding, there was
a suggestion in People magazine a few
weeks back that Whitney Houston, who
plays Savannah, was, as many other blacks,
shut out of the Oscar race because of her
colour. Now, having seen Whitney's
performance in The Bodyguard, a few years
ago, I was interested to see whether she had
improved so much that such a statement
could have any credence. However, at least
as far as Whitney's concerned, I don't believe
Hollywood had any racial bias; Houston did
not get a nomination nod, because, quite
simply, and if you're honest you'll agree, she
can't act.
The movie too, though while it was fine,
was not all that terrific. I couldn't help
thinking 'that so many raves for it were
precipitated by the fact it would be
politically incorrect to slam a movie about
four black women bashing men. Now, while -
I am not above a little male-bashing on my
own, even, I admit shamefacedly, can be
quite good at it, by the end of this production
I had almost switched sides.
If I was to admire these women for their
strength in adversity, if I was to empathize
with their struggle in this male-dominated
world, if I was to sympathize with their
inability to find a man of quality I had failed
them. Or they had failed me by not
inflaming any of those perceptions.
One character, spent much of her time in
the bedroom, with a variety of men, whiCh
though fine if that's what you're into, is
generally not the place you'll discover Mr.
Sensitivity. The Houston character was a
rather self-absorbed, career dnven woman,
whose one true love was married. And the
third heroine, whose husband dumped her
for, of all things, "a white woman", we were
told time and time again (Is this worse than
being jilted for a black woman?) after 11
years of marriage I found tough to
commiserate with after awhile. Though it
was easy to accept her violent anger and
self-pity for a time, her continued drive to
keep the house and get what her kids needed
became rather pathetic, particularly when all
the bitterness dissolved into saccharine
sweetness after the judge granted her oodles
and oodles in the divorce settlement.
The fourth lead player in this film was the
antithesis of her peers, forgiving, celibate for
10 years, but emotionally needy and with no
sense of self esteem.
As a woman I had looked forward to this
movie having heard so much about the
strength and survival instincts of its four
heroines. But a niggling feeling that it got so
much attention because it was not about
white people and was about vivid, vital
women has bothered me. There should be
movies about women, which expose their
vulnerabilities, while revealing the depth,
courage and independence they can possess.
Personally, I don't believe this one did.
But it did, as I mentioned earlier inspire
me. Now that I understand what it takes to
have an acclaimed screenplay, I thought I
might give it a try. I figure a story on Sikh
dwarves can't miss.
Arthur Black