God'll Cut You Down (3 page)

Richard demands the ABC drop the footage or face his legal wrath.

Chris Lilley, in various sexes and ethnicities, pulls faces at me from the walls of the Melbourne television production office.

I am sucking on a mint ball from the goldfish bowl of mint balls in the middle of the table. Through the bowl I see the distended face of producer Jonathan. He presses the red button on the speakerphone. The ABC has instructed us to seek advice from US lawyers. The network is happy to defend us against defamation. That’s a civil action and all part of the rough-and-tumble of this type of television. However, Richard is alleging fraud, and possibly therefore trespass, which are criminal offenses.

The US lawyers tell us Richard has a case. One he might well eventually lose, but a case nonetheless. They also tell me what Richard told me back in his Nationalist Movement office, something I’d chosen not to think about. Richard-the-lawyer had hauled a county in Georgia through the US Supreme Court, lawyered a black family out of their home, and snuffed out two crayon kids on a Mississippi license plate. The US lawyers also mention
Richard Barrett v. Oldsmobile Division General Motors Corporation
and
Richard Barrett v. Some Guy Who Came to Repair His Xerox Machine
.

The ABC forbids the story from airing. Not a frame of Richard Barrett or Mississippi makes it to the show.

That was that.

Johnny Cash is in my living room.

What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light,
says Johnny.

Johnny Cash isn’t the only singer here. Cries float up the staircase and push under my door: “We want Moshiach! We want Moshiach now! We want Moshiach! We want Moshiach now!”

Moshiach is the Messiah. A sect of black-hatted Jews are convinced their dead leader is the Moshiach. They sing for an hour a day, waving King Moshiach flags on the corner just outside my flat. They hope this will hasten his return to earth, at which time my fellow Jews and I will fly to Israel on clouds with wings of eagles.

I’m slumped on the couch, poking around the Internet.

I download conspiracy podcasts, spool through Scientology tweets, and search for exorcisms on YouTube. I punch in
vanguardnewsnetwork.com
, one of my white supremacist faves.
No Jews. Just Right
is their motto.

A redheaded woodpecker swoops over the Vanguard News Network masthead.

Beneath is the headline:
MISSISSIPPI: WHITE NATIONALIST
LEADER MURDERED; BLA
CKS CHARGED.

Below that:
Sad news, but
what
was Barrett thinking? White leaders usually
avoid
Blacks.

Vanguard links to a Mississippi television report. Richard Barrett has been found, stabbed to death, in his burning house. A twenty-two-year-old, Vincent McGee, has confessed to the murder. Members of the McGee family have been arrested as accessories after the fact.

“Yes sir, we interviewed him and he told us basically what happened,” Sheriff Pennington tells a reporter.

The reporter asks if he knows the motive. Sheriff Pennington will not answer.

I don’t notice I’m biting the inside of my cheek until it starts to sting.

I e-mail the
Race Relations
crew.

On Sat, April 24, at 10:06 a.m., John Safran wrote:

Jesus Christ. Richard Barrett murdered.

The replies:

Director Craig: Holy shit!

Researcher Roland: Jesus Christ.

My manager, Kevin: Cool. I’ll ring the ABC and see what this means about the footage. We can probably use it now.

People are punching in their opinions on message boards all over the Internet.

Vincent McGee is a civil rights hero!

I can only imagine the circumstances behind this, but I shake your hand, man.

The racist guy got what he deserved. All racists should die . . . I’m sure the black guy was not a racist. He just was pissed off at some evil, pompous white guy who hated him without a just reason.

It’s not all good reviews for the killer Vincent McGee.

Will the black man be charged with a HATE crime?

What if a white had killed a black activist???

Just another day in a troubled country where the truth is spoken and the victim murdered, thus proving the truth. But there can never be a black supremacist, can there? That would be racist.

It’s a hate crime, but who committed it? Richard Barrett, for being a white supremacist, or Vincent McGee, for hating someone with views other than his own?

I hit refresh, refresh, refresh.

Pretty soon more news blows out of Mississippi. Vincent’s stepfather has told a local paper Vincent did yard work for Richard. The day of the killing, Richard had paid Vincent twenty-six dollars for a whole day’s work. Vincent argued with Richard and the fight blew up.

Now the murder’s about money as well as race.

White supremacist hires black youth, pays him as if he were a slave, says who knows what when confronted . . . dispute ends badly.

I hit refresh, refresh, refresh.

Two days later a bulletproof vest is strapped on Vincent McGee. He is led from his cell to a courthouse in Rankin County, Mississippi.

An investigator from the sheriff’s department walks to a podium, facing the judge. He tells the judge what Vincent has told investigators: He had been doing yard work at Richard’s Nationalist Movement headquarters. (The tiny house! I didn’t see the yard in the dark.) But he adds another element. Richard then drove him to Richard’s house in another part of Mississippi. Inside this house, Richard made a sexual advance.

Vincent knifed Richard and lit his house on fire.

So now the murder’s about race, money, and sex.

The district attorney now speaks to Vincent. He tells Vincent he is being charged with capital murder. Capital murder is when you murder so you can commit another crime, like burglary. Does that mean the district attorney doesn’t believe Vincent’s story? Capital murder, rather than simple murder, means that Vincent could be put to death by lethal injection.

Jesus. Richard Barrett—so careful, so evasive—managed to get himself killed in a race crime. Hater of, employer of, possible lover of, a black man. Vanguard was indeed just right: What
was
Richard Barrett thinking?

Here’s what I was thinking.

I live in a flat up a stairwell. The walls of the stairwell are streaked with skid marks. I carried my bicycle up the stairs, often and badly, before it was nicked.

I moved in here when my grandfather died ten years ago and kept most of my grandparents’ furnishings. Seventies wallpaper, cream and gold, rolls along the hallway and through most of the rooms. Grandma-needled tapestries stare at me whichever way I turn. An aristocratic woman plucking a harp, a gypsy patting a rabbit, a Dutch boy blushing before a windmill, and thirteen others. A dining room table for six stretches out in the dining room. And there’s one of me.

The cupboards are squeezed full of crockery. The type of china you could whip out if the Queen dropped by; enough for the Queen to bring her family. Tucked among the china are shoehorns and wooden contraptions for stretching leather. My grandparents ran the shoe repair shop under the rail bridge on the same street as the flat. My high school rabbi, who taught me Torah, had his heels fixed there. Old Jews stop me in the street to tell me my grandparents did their shoes, too.

If I turn right out the front of my apartment block, the first shop I hit is Glick’s Cakes & Bagels. Along the one-minute walk from my flat to Glick’s, I pass three Jewish prayer houses catering to slightly different sects of Orthodox Jews. Next to Glick’s is Daneli’s, a kosher deli. Next to that is Gefen Liquor, which carries kosher wines.

The kosher certificate pasted on the window of Glick’s is signed by Rabbi Gutnick. He belongs to an Orthodox sect called Lubavitch. An even more Orthodox sect, Adass Israel, prefers something more stringent to Rabbi Gutnick’s kosher certifications. They buy their bagels across the street at Lichtenstein’s Bakehouse. Those bagels are certified by Rabbi Beck.

Near Lichtenstein’s is Hadar Judaica, for all your bar mitzvah gift
needs. Just down from that is Balaclava Jewish & Continental Deli, where the food is Jewish (gefilte fish, cholent, matzo ball soup) but not kosher. Not far is Melbourne Kosher Butchers, where all the recent Israeli arrivals buy their phone cards. Also nearby is La Cafe on Nelson, where the hottest recent Israeli arrivals are hired as waitresses.

When I haul my rubbish bags to the lane at the rear of my block of flats, I see across the way B’nai B’rith, a Jewish organization that fights anti-Semitism. If I traipse thirty seconds up the lane I hit Yeshivah College, my old Jewish high school. Next to that is the synagogue, where the rabbis wear plastic bags on their hats on rainy days. Also within a short schlep is the headquarters of a Zionist youth group and a Kabbalah center.

In summary: I live in the worst place in Australia you could live if you ever piss off the Jews.

I pissed off the Jews.

I began to get greasy looks about two weeks before
Race Relations
aired, when some of the show’s content leaked. People began to keep their distance. Any Jew would recognize the signs: Why was I making trouble?

My mother kept my scrapbook in better shape when she was alive. I still need to paste in the
Race Relations
clippings from the
Australian Jewish News
.

SAFRAN CRUCIFIED OVER NEW SHOW

Comedian John Safran’s new show has caused a public outcry, even though its debut on ABC TV is still a week away. The Australian Family Association last week hit out at the show, describing it as “filth.”

In episode one of the series, in which Safran explores interracial attraction, the former Yeshivah College student donates sperm at a Palestinian sperm bank, while looking at a picture of US President
Barack Obama. In a later episode, Safran is crucified as part of a religious ritual in the Philippines.

But the scene that will likely generate the most controversy in the Jewish community involves Safran going to his mother’s grave with a shovel and Kabbalah prayer book to discover what she would think of him if he married a non-Jew.

“Safran’s actions are to be deplored,” the Executive Council of Australian Jewry president told the
Australian Jewish News
. “They are extremely insensitive and not only bring disrepute on the Jewish people, but adversely affect interfaith relationships.”

—ADAM KAMIEN

The ABC has shamed itself with the showing of John Safran’s
Race Relations
program. He appears desperate for subject matter, having to resort to underpants stealing and sniffing (stealing is a crime—not a joke) and the degrading deceit of insulting both Jews and Palestinians by substituting each other’s sperm in sperm banks (also a crime—not a joke). The entire subject matter and execution is despicable, and no doubt more bad publicity has been showered on us Jews.

—NOAH LEVIN, MALVERN, VIC, LETTERS

Safran’s carnival approach to the Holocaust continued in last week’s episode when he mock-gassed Holocaust denier David Irving. Safran claimed he was following the lead of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Prior to “luring his prey” for the interview, Safran “rigs” the radio studio by inserting a pipe through the ventilation system so as to convert the room into a “gas chamber.” Taking pause from their chat, Safran walks out, jams the door with a broom, and opens a gas bottle while screaming at Irving through the glass: “You’re locked in a room and it’s filling with gas, and if you try and tell anyone, I’m going to deny it.” Safran not only distorts Wiesenthal’s message of
justice, instead of revenge, but given that his own grandmother lost her family in the Holocaust, he should have known better.

—DR. DVIR ABRAMOVICH

As well as all of that, the theme blaring through
Race Relations
is that the Australian Jewish community bullies their young to marry Jewish and bullies their non-Jewish partners to back off.

Not long ago, my Jewish friend Leah was preparing to marry a non-Jew named Ant. One afternoon Ant visited Leah’s family while Leah was out of town. Over an hour, one by one, Leah’s mother, father, and brother floated out of the living room. Ant sat alone, disconcerted. Finally a man Ant had never seen before strolled in.

The man sat down and looked at Ant.

“You’ll never be accepted here,” the man said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not Jewish.”

Then the man stood up and left.

As well as locking David Irving in a radio studio, in
Race Relations
I ran a yellow highlighter over little events like this. I learned people in small towns don’t like the man with the yellow highlighter pen.

The afternoon before the first episode aired, I bought hundreds of dollars of food from the supermarket so I wouldn’t have to leave the flat for a while. Good decision. Even now, I try to avoid it. Months ago I gave up walking down the street. If I need to catch up for coffee, I catch up somewhere else. I do my grocery shopping a few suburbs up.

•   •   •

O
ne night, well out of my Jewish ghetto, as my head sloshed with alcohol, a girl holding a plastic cup of wine drifted over.

“Hello,” I said.

Her face twisted to fury.

“If you’re going to take my Jewish background,” she shrieked, “and put it up on the television, you better do better than sniffing Eurasian underpants!”

All heads on the rooftop turned to us. The Jewess escaped down the stairs.

That was an hour ago. Now I’m hunched over my laptop at my dining room table for six.

I punch in the address I’ve been punching in for weeks:
tripadvisor.com.au
.

I punch the words into the box I’ve been punching in for weeks:
Jackson, Mississippi
.