At times, readers will find Faulkner and Smerconish guilty of shameless hyperbole, as when they characterize Abu-Jamal’s court protest actions as those of a “latter-day Charles Manson” (35), or summarize the graduation ceremony at Antioch College, which featured Mumia as commencement speaker by way of audio-tape, as “like one of the rallies the Nazis staged in Nuremburg” (262).
Beyond this hyperbole, there is a continual demonization of Abu-Jamal as ominous specter. He is not simply guilty of a crime of murder, he is also “heartless executioner” (57), an “evil man” (82) with a “haunting grimace” of face (262) and an “unmistakable snarl” of voice (85), who bought the gun he was carrying as a Taxi driver “fully resolved,” say the authors, “to shoot and seriously injure or kill someone,” intending “the execution of anyone who crossed his path” (87).
As is usually the case with such a demonization of others, there is also a near complete idealization of one’s own group and life. I will not here seek to list off any flaws in the character of Daniel Faulkner, his family or supporters. In fact, I can imagine and see some virtues. But as this book recounts Faulkner’s life there is not one down-side, not one complex ambiguity mentioned by the authors. In the chapter, “Danny and Me,” the dominant story-line is about how Mumia cut short the life of Daniel Faulkner, a hard-driving, adventurous, goal-setting, blue-eyed Irish achiever in army life, then as prison guard, and later as a police officer frequently-awarded for “aggressive patrol procedures” (57-8).
The reference to Mumia as “heartless executioner” occurs at the end of a paragraph in this chapter where Daniel and the Faulkner family are presented as “good people…They went to church. They loved one another and looked out for one another. They worked hard. Nothing was handed to them. They stayed out of other people’s business and kept within the law. They were ‘good people’” (56)
I am not here proposing any reverse demonization of Faulkner, just some ambiguity, some freedom from the book’s all-too-easy polarization of hero-Faulkner versus demon-Mumia. The book does not give that complexity and thus sews some suspicion about its other claims, too.
Rhetorical Strategy No. 5 – Avoid Serious Reflection on Substantial Issues
I have in mind here the way the Faulkner/Smerconish book, while being about the desire of the Faulkner family to see the execution of an African-American man, avoids serious reflection either on the merits of the death penalty, or on the problem of structural racism.
Concerning the death penalty, there is no weighing of the arguments for capital punishment, not even a concern to cite the theorists who have developed some strong arguments for the death penalty. [9] Usually, in the context of the rhetoric summarized above, and with reference to Maureen Faulkner’s grief and pain, the book makes do with statements like this one from Faulkner on the penultimate page of her book: “I firmly believe that a person who knowingly and violently takes the life of another person, especially a police officer, should forfeit their own life” (300).
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