Michel's Commentary

by Michel Dresser

12/14/2001  888WebToday
 
According to the public prosecutor, who will represent the people of the State of California, in her up coming trial, Sara Jane Olson tried to kill some Los Angeles police officers.

That was long ago, when Sara Jane Olson was Kathleen Soliah, Seventies Radical.  Back in those days, blowing up police cars with pipe bombs was considered rather romantic by some people, and being a Radical was chic.

That was back before Sara Jane Olson changed her name, married a wealthy doctor, moved to St. Paul, Minnesota and raised three daughters in that prosaic Middle West environment - far away from the weird ideological melodramas of Berkeley in the 1970's.

Life was going along just fine for Sara Jane, until a tipster recognized her face on an "America's Most Wanted" episode -- and the next thing you know, she was being brought up on an attempted murder charge in the great State of California.

The same indignation against the injustice of our legal system that led Sara Jane to try to blow up a couple of cop cars, 26 years ago, still burns brightly today within her soul.

Back then, she allegedly tried to kill some cops in protest over the repression of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), if you can remember who they were - 70's radicals who went around robbing banks with Pattie Hearst.  Now Sara Jane is protesting that she herself cannot get a fair trial in this benighted country because of what happened on the 11th of September.

Yes, that's right!  Osama bin Laden and his band have given a bad name to our own domestic terrorists!

Folks like Sara Jane have spent their lives identifying for us the downtrodden victims of prejudice and discrimination - first blacks, then women, then gays and now terrorists.  So Sara Jane felt she had no choice but to plead guilty in the courtroom - even though, as she later explained to the press, she is really innocent.  But, you see, since Osama, terrorists in America can't get a fair trial -- and that's a lowdown dirty shame.

How do we make sense of any of this?  Sara Jane Olson a/k/a Kathleen Soliah, either did or did not commit the acts as charged.  If she did, she should plead guilty.  If she didn't, she should plead innocent.  To say that nobody in America can get a fair trial if accused of an act of terrorism after Osma bin Laden is like saying nobody can get a fair trial if accused of bank robbery after the infamous Willie Sutton.  It is just not so.

What's more, if Sara Jane had not successfully postponed her own trial on six occasions, it would have taken place before the September 11 attacks - and she would not have been able to claim that she could not get a fair trial because of our nasty prejudice against terrorists.  As the old joke goes:  kill both of your parents, then throw yourself on the mercy of the court, because you are an orphan.

And those are my thoughts..........
 

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