Terry, this had me gasping at your brilliant wittiness and your writing skills:
She tapped him on the shoulder and in her best Vivian Leigh ‘Gone With The Wind’ accent drawled, “Pardon me, suh, but is this heah seat taken?”
Ron’s head floated around and focused on her face. She got a glimpse of how he might look if Halle Berry or Sandra Bullock ever initiated a casual conversation with him. Then his expression fell as if dropping off the Atlantic Ocean’s continental shelf.
The way I read this, Ron doesn't instantly recognize Lois. He hears a sensual female voice and sees a beautiful woman, and he is overjoyed that an amazingly perfect specimen of the female sex seems to be flirting with him. The next instant he recognizes his boss, who is definitely off sexual limits for him. I love how these two paragraphs bring home Lois's beauty and sense of humour and Ron's not always reciprocated interest in beautiful women and his occasionally grudging but always warm and unshakable loyalty with his boss. And the imagery you use - Ron's expression fell as if dropping off the Atlantic Ocean's continental shelf - is absolutely, totally priceless! Terry, I'm in awe of your writing skills, your humour, your intelligence and your Renaissance Man all-round general knowledge of so many aspects of the world.
I'm not going to quote anything else, but I totally enjoyed Connie's cross-examination of the sleazy Jay. That was brilliantly done, beautifully written, and so entertaining.
However, there is something about America's approach to a person's right to kill in self-defence that keeps troubling me. It's troubling me deeply, in fact.
Reisman turned and slowly paced in front of the jury box. “What about a private citizen who kills someone by accident or in self-defense? Is that person always put in jail for this act? No. If one of you were threatened by someone with a weapon, or if your family were threatened, you would be within your legal rights to defend yourself and your family. And if, in your legitimate defense of yourself or your loved one, the person threatening you died, you would not be held legally liable for that act.”
As I was reading this, I recalled a case from - probably - the 1980s. It took place in Florida during Halloween. A Japanese exchange student, who might quite possibly have been somewhat drunk and disorderly (and horribly dressed up, no doubt) couldn't find the way to the party he was looking for, and so he walked up to the front door of a house in the neighbourhood and rang the bell to ask for directions. The owner of the house was frightened out of his wits by the sight of the Japanese student, so he went and got his gun. And as the happy-go-lucky kid outside was getting tired of waiting for anyone to open the door, so that he turned around and started to leave, the homeowner shot him in the back and killed him. Now, the kid was demonstrably shot in the back. He was demonstrably unarmed. He had not tried to break into the house. For all of that, the courts of Florida found the homeowner innocent of any wrongdoing. He had killed in self-defence, defending himself and his property from someone who had knocked on his door, and who, therefore, just
might have been a prospective murderer. The homeowner's right to panic and to regard a lone retreating kid as a deadly threat and to kill that kid because of his own panic outweighed the kid's right to his own life. You know, that exchange student could almost have been me. Not exactly, because I really drink very little, so I wouldn't have been drunk and disorderly in public. But I
might have knocked on a door to ask for directions. If I did that in the United States, would the homeowner have the right to shoot me and kill me?
To me, this case meant that my belief in the American legal system and its commitment to defend the sanctity of life got a blow that it has never quite recovered from.
So you are going to have a very, very hard time convincing me that Superman didn't commit a crime when he ripped Billy Church's heart out. The only way to do it is probably to show me that Superman knew that only a show of horrifying force and cruelty would be enough to stop and break Intergang. You could try to show me that Superman knew that if he
didn't kill Billy Church, but instead just grabbed him and flew him off to a police station or to the FBI headquarters or something, then that wouldn't be enough to stop either Billy Church or Intergang. That might have led to a lot of legal hassles, where Billy Church might have been set free on bail and where his lawyers could get him off on a technicality during an ensuing trial, or where they could simply make Superman look like a demented vigilante who was unlawfully interfering with the lives of upstanding citizens. In short, I can see the possibility that if Superman hadn't struck with sufficient - and deadly - force at Intergang, he might not have been able to break that organisation. Of course, I'm not going to buy the suggestion that Superman was at once almost crazy with grief because of Intergang's killing of people close to him, and at the same time he was coldly calculating that only a terrible show of brutality was going to stop this criminal organisation. Either Superman was crazy with grief, or else he knew exactly what he was doing.
But I object to this, too:
I ask you to put out of your minds the good things Superman has done and concentrate on this one very, very bad thing he did.
How can all the good things Superman has done over the years be irrelevant here? If it can be shown that Superman's behaviour this time was remarkably different from what it has always been before, doesn't that bolster the suggestion that the evil of Intergang was also different from anything Superman had been up against before? Doesn't that bolster the suggestion that Superman isn't likely to kill anyone else the way he killed Billy Church?
Because this is certainly also true:
Superman didn’t barge into a church and kill a priest. He didn’t swoop down out of the sky and take a saint or a generous philanthropist or a children’s cancer doctor away from us. He didn’t end the life of a man whose life held joy and good deeds and was full of promise for the future.
No, Superman didn't kill a saint when he killed Billy Church. He didn't kill a drunk exchange student who rang the bell of the wrong house to ask for directions. He didn't kill a run-of-the-mill thief or forger or extortioner, not even a run-of-the-mill murderer. He killed Billy Church, who was a horrible threat to all of of society. That fact must not be forgotten.
And now Lois is going to be called to the witness stand. I so, so wonder what she will say. What she will be obliged or forced to say. And I so wonder how her testimony will affect the relationship between herself and Clark.
Ann
