[Mb-civic] Instant Revisionism - Eugene Robinson - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Instant Revisionism

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A23

The story line was a classic: Beauty and the Beast. Remember the Atlanta 
courthouse shootings a few months ago? Brian Nichols was the ogre whose 
homicidal rampage led him to the apartment of an attractive young woman 
named Ashley Smith, who soothed his savage breast by speaking gently of 
God and redemption. That he was black and she was white seemed to deepen 
the narrative and give it the status of myth.

Oh, did I say myth? I meant meth.

It turns out that Smith did more than read to Nichols from "The 
Purpose-Driven Life" about God's master plan. She also gave him some of 
her stash of the illegal drug methamphetamine, or "ice" as she has 
called it in the publicity campaign for her new book.

Now, on one level, all you can say is good for her. Smith's imperative 
was to survive, and if what that took was giving Nichols drugs, then 
that's what she had to do. In those circumstances, I would have offered 
him the whole medicine cabinet. Everyone would have done the same thing.

But not everyone would have had some crystal meth lying around. The fact 
that Smith wasn't a fairy princess but a struggling woman who'd lived a 
hard-knocks life, including a history of drug abuse, doesn't diminish 
her bravery. But it does change the narrative from Beauty and the Beast 
to something more like Two Lost Souls.

The whole episode struck me as a good illustration of the dizzying speed 
with which the story of our times gets written and rewritten in the 
digital age. It's no wonder that public opinion is so jittery over just 
about everything, no mystery that Time and Newsweek tell us every few 
weeks how desperate we are for spiritual connection and some kind of 
eternal truth. The worldly truth we know keeps changing on us.

I witnessed this warp-speed process in New Orleans following Hurricane 
Katrina. I got there five days after the deluge, when the story, as the 
whole world understood it, was one of "Mad Max" depravity and violence. 
Hoodlums were raping and pillaging, I just "knew" -- even shooting at 
rescue helicopters trying to take hospital patients to safety. So it was 
a surprise when I rolled into the center of the city, with all my 
foreign-correspondent antennae bristling, and found the place as quiet 
as a tomb.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/06/AR2005100601492.html?nav=hcmodule
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