The following was a finalist in the Serious Columnist category, weekly newspapers, in the 2005
Florida Press Association competition.
Ray St. Louis
11/5/05
BETWEEN THE LINES
A strange thing happened at the movie theater the other night: people applauded at the end of the
film.
The movie was Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s take on the early 1950’s showdown
between legendary TV journalist Edward R. Murrow and notorious commie hunter Sen. Joe McCarthy.
The applause when the credits came up started slowly, just a couple of people putting their hands
together, then built within a few seconds to engulf the theater. It was not an exuberant sort of display;
not like cheering a fun cinematic joyride. It was more like the principled affirmation of an idea.
“Yes,” those of us in attendance were saying. It is good when decent people stand up to fear
mongering and demagoguery. It is good when Americans who care about justice and fairness say,
“enough is enough.”
That brief display of collective political righteousness did my heart good. I didn’t know any of the
other people in the theater, but, for a moment, I felt a common bond. This isn’t just about the fifties, I
knew. This is about now.
The tide is beginning to turn in America. As glimpses of the truth concerning the dark secrets of the
current administration come to light, now on a near daily basis, one can feel the body politic shifting.
A top level White House aid is indicted in the Plamegate scandal, and the President’s approval
ratings drop a few points. An investigative reporter for the Washington Post unearths a global
network of secret CIA-run prisons for torturing suspected terrorists, and a few more points slip away.
A decorated army captain tells his tale of systematic and widespread abuse of prisoners in Iraq in the
pages of Newsweek, and the approval ratings sink to a level not seen since Watergate.
On this issue especially, the torture and abuse of detainees by our government, the snowball of
public indignation is gaining momentum.
And this one has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with common
decency, and respect for traditional American values of liberty and justice.
When ninety of a hundred US senators can vote in favor of an amendment introduced by Republican
Senator John McCain banning “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons
under custody or control of the United States government,” you know something is changing in
America.
Now it’s up to the House of Representatives to follow suit. The votes are there, but the Republican
leader, Dennis Hastert, is using delaying tactics.
Furthermore, the President has threatened to veto the legislation if it passes. If so, he and Cheney
(the Vice President wants an exemption for the CIA so it can continue running its network of gulags)
and Rumsfeld may gain a bit more time to play their torture games. But, hopefully, those dark days
are numbered.
This is the historic moment, the tipping point. Decent people of all stripes – Democrat and
Republican, liberal and conservative, religious and non-religious – must stand up to be heard.
The argument that nothing our government does to prisoners matters because the terrorists do
worse won’t fly. This isn’t about them; it’s about us. It’s about the kind of society we want to be.
America is not a country that tortures.
Enough is enough.