All in the family

As Phillipe & Jorge go to bed (literally and figuratively) before JARhead Jim Taricani’s December 9 court appearance, we pray to whoever is running around in the God suit these days that Judge Ernest Torres shows he has a brain and gives Jim about 30 seconds to "serve" in prison for his Plunder Dome video exploits.

Now that Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr. has admitted giving Mr. Taricani the tape, P&J recall a story involving Joe’s father, the former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua.

After following the usual local route of ascension, the elder Joe Bev became Little Rhody’s speaker of the House before moving on to the Supremes, becoming chief justice. But he was a baaad boy. In 1985, he had already been suspended for four months without pay and publicly censured by the Rhode Island Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline for, in essence, doing things that perhaps should not be done by the Supremes’ chief justice. This included hanging out with reputed mobsters and using a no-tell motel owned by characters with similar backgrounds for occasional dalliances. This led to a further investigation by the governor’s office and the legislature with an eye to impeaching Joe Bev. Hearings were launched in 1986, at which point the chief justice pulled the plug, saying he would leave his seat on the Supremes because of "ill health." What?!?! He didn’t want to spend more time with his family? Maybe he should have.

During this period when the skeletons were leaping out of the closet, the Urinal somehow managed to get its hands on a state police photo showing the chief justice pulling up his fly after a motel tryst. They ran it front-page center. It was also revealed — perhaps causing the most damage in Joe Bev’s beloved Providence Italian community — that the woman in question was an African-American. The disgrace was immeasurable to a man of his purported dignity. Although no one knows how the Other Paper obtained these guarded photos from the staties, many believe it was the work of someone not a million miles from the state police’s legendary martinet and Mob-hater, the late Colonel Walter Stone. Like Taricani, nobody at the Urinal was talking, and surprisingly, no one was really asking.

Now it really gets weird. On the morning of September 13, 1987, ProJo publisher Michael Metcalf was found nearly dead along the side of a back road in Westport, Massachusetts. Here’s the how the Urinal described what it called "one of the strangest and most painful chapters in Journal history" in its July 175th anniversary issue series:

"The newspaper on Sept. 13, 1987, printed a special section describing the new printing process. That morning, the Sunday papers were not in the publisher’s mailbox. [Do you think any paperboy in his right mind would miss delivering the publisher’s paper? More like, "Here, kid, gimme the paper, I’ll make sure Mr. Metcalf gets it."] Metcalf got on his 10-speed bicycle — perhaps intending to buy a paper — and pedaled away from his Westport, Mass., summer home. What happened next is still a mystery. Another cyclist discovered Metcalf lying in the road, unconscious and bleeding with a head injury. [Metcalf died a week later without gaining consciousness.] He was next to his undamaged bike, about 11/2 miles from home . . . The police said Metcalf’s death appeared to be an accident; they theorized that Metcalf had fallen off his bike and struck his head on the road — maybe after an animal had darted in front of him, or maybe after he had run over a stone."

Although ProJo execs asked for an investigation, nothing turned up, but theories abounded, and "new Journal publisher Stephen Hamblett found it hard to accept that Metcalf had died accidentally. ‘Unfortunately, we will probably never know the complete story behind Mr. Metcalf’s death,’ Hamblett said in February 1988. ‘It may have been an accident, albeit a very unusual one.’ "

Well, for many here in Vo Dilun, the open court of conspiracy theorists, cocktail party gossip, and wild-eyed rumors has suggested that the real accident was how Metcalf had run the motel pictures big and brash in Vo Dilun’s organ of record, shaming Mr. Bevilacqua without properly considering the consequences. These creative meanderings suggest — with no evidence, naturally — that those rather unseemly acquaintances whose friendship led to Joe Bev’s early retirement decided to administer some of their own brand of justice without the knowledge of Joe Senior.

Other rumors persist — none suggesting that Metcalf fell off his bike on his own — but in the interest of P&J’s own health and bank accounts, we cannot print those here. Suffice it to say that for the man in the street, many people still have some ’splainin’ to do about the affair.

Only in the Biggest Little, right?

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

While there is no more frightening image than the delusional and deadly Dubya standing behind a podium with the presidential seal, Vanity Fair is giving it a run. The cover of VF’s January 2005 issue features a shot of California Fuhrer Ahh-nuld Schwarzenegger and his ghastly wife, Maria, sitting on a motorcycle. Their toothy smiling faces look like something Madame Tussaud created with marine caulking putty and Botox. Mr. I’m No Girly Man keeps his reputation as Der Gropemeister intact by attaching his right hand to his hideous wife’s calf, always a classy touch.

Willkommen to the Anschluss State, elite readers.

THE FRONT PAGE

Well, the Robert Blake trial is beginning. Betcha you just couldn’t wait, could you?

This means the media now has to cover the Baretta circus, not to mention the Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds steroid flap, and continue massaging the red state/blue state "dynamic." This will keep off the front page and nightly news a variety of untidy and unpleasant things. We’ve got new holiday deployments of troops, not to mention more torture in far-off places without accountability by the high-ups who approved it. The number of dead and maimed young American troops increases every month, never mind our American-driven genocide of innocent Iraqis. Meanwhile, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and radical right Republicans spit in the faces of the "Jersey Girls," the wives of men killed in the 9/11 disaster, who demand that action be taken on the 9/11 Commission report.

But, hey, the American public doesn’t want to have to hear bad news every day, OK? And it’s Christmas time, after all. That’s when we should be thinking good thoughts and getting together with our families and singing carols, right? Come on, news people, don’t be a downer. Did you see that neat shirt Brian Williams had on last night?

All the news that’s shit to print. Sleep tight, America.

RIGHT-WING MORONS ON THE MARCH

Yes, America, it appears that the gloating Christian fundamentalist boneheads have won a round by helping to elect their boy and fellow traveler, G. W. Bush. But mark P&J’s words, the extremists will blow it because they just can’t help themselves.

Last week, US Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, released a staff report on what some of the Bush-encouraged "abstinence-only" sex education programs are teaching our youth. These programs received $170 million of our tax dollars from the Republican-controlled Congress last year. The fab findings indicate how certain courses teach that "touching another person’s genitals could lead to pregnancy," and that women need "financial support" and men crave "admiration" (what this has to do with sex education, we don’t know). Such courses also teach that people can contract HIV through "sweat and tears." Your superior correspondents are only surprised that they missed putting in broadsides about how masturbation causes hairy palms and blindness.

This "education" fits nicely with the beliefs of the Bush-supporting nut bag radical fringe of Christianity, but not necessarily with something that we like to call "science." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on ABC’s This Week show on Sunday that the government should review these programs. No shit, Bill.

P&J would like to see some reporter, during a presidential press conference (we do hope Bush holds one or two before his second term is up), ask what the president thinks about creationism. It’s obvious that he’s pandering to the loony beliefs of fringe believers. He strongly solicited their support to forge the unholy coalition that propelled his win in the last election. Now, will he go so far as to embrace a scientifically moronic theory? Maybe he really does believe it and is the idiot that some people think, rather than the totally cynical say-anything-to-get over creep that P&J believe him to be.

We suspect that his courting of the religious extremists will be what will finally cuts this swaggering liar down to size.

NAPALM REDUX

A number of overseas journalists, including Paul Gilfeather of the UK’s Sunday Mirror, are reporting that US troops are secretly using napalm gas (outlawed internationally since 1980) to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. They claim that President Bush has sanctioned the use of this deadly cocktail. Although these reports remain unproven, if confirmed they will further outrage the rest of the world. Tony Blair was dragged into the controversy last week when a number of angry Labour MPs demanded that he face the House of Commons. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks. Are there any US journalists looking into this?

The international ban on napalm’s use comes from the United Nations, and we know how much respect the US has for the UN. The Geneva Conventions don’t mean much to the badass USA. International laws? We don’t need your stinkin’ international laws. We’re the USA, masters of the world.

BRIEF QUESTION

Exactly what is so "controversial" about the United Church of Christ’s television commercial promoting the denomination’s non-discriminatory policy? When you look at some of the garbage that is regularly aired in network television commercials (particularly for the programming created by the networks themselves), it’s hard to keep a straight face when they refuse to air the UCC spot due to its "controversial" nature.

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