As flies to wanton boys

are we to the Mainstream Media;

They kill us for their sport.



From the Associated Press

Jewell, falsely tied to '96 blast, dies

By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writer

Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was wrongly linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing and then waged a decade-long battle with news organizations to defend his reputation, died Wednesday. He was 44.

Jewell was found dead in his west Georgia home. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday.

"There's no suspicion whatsoever of any type of foul play. He had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems," said Meriwether County Coroner Johnny Worley.

Jewell was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year and later had a few toes amputated. He had recently been on dialysis, the coroner said.

Lin Wood, Jewell's longtime attorney, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that he was "devastated" by the news. He described Jewell as "a dedicated public servant whose heroism the night of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing saved the lives of many people."

"He will be missed, but never forgotten," Wood said.

The Jewell episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. His very name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information.

Jewell, who was working as a sheriff's deputy as recently as last year, was a security guard in 1996 at the Olympics in Atlanta. He was initially hailed as a hero for spotting a suspicious backpack in a park and moving people out of harm's way just before a bomb exploded during a concert.

The blast killed one and injured 111 others.

Three days after the bombing, an unattributed report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described him as "the focus" of the investigation.

Other media, to varying degrees, also linked Jewell to the investigation and portrayed him as a loser and law-enforcement wannabe who may have planted the bomb so he would look like a hero when he discovered it later.

The AP, citing an anonymous federal law enforcement source, said after the Journal-Constitution report that Jewell was "a focus" of investigators, but that others had "not yet been ruled out as potential suspects."

Reporters camped outside Jewell's mother's apartment in the Atlanta area, and his life was dissected for weeks by the media. But he was never arrested or charged, although he was questioned and was a subject of search warrants.

Eighty-eight days after the initial news report, U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander issued a statement saying Jewell "is not a target" of the bombing investigation and that the "unusual and intense publicity" surrounding him was "neither designed nor desired by the FBI, and in fact interfered with the investigation."

In 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expressed regret over the leak regarding Jewell. "I'm very sorry it happened," she told reporters. "I think we owe him an apology."
…

It is well to remember that once you have had a target painted on your back and the shelling begins, you are never whole again.

You can win in court, you can slug your way back from being a pariah, and if you have the backing of millions of dollars and voters, you can ride it out and even hang on and remain President for eight relatively prosperous and peaceful years.

But one of the few people I ever knew of who more-or-less completely recovered was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, who was accused of child sexual molestation in 1993, at the height of that period’s “recovered memory” witchhunting fever. Given the hideous reputation the Catholic Church has earned as a haven for pedophiles, I never thought he would get his good name back, but he did.

He is the exception.

And it is also well to remember that this ever-hungry slaughterbeast that rips men apart and drives them falsely to infamy, despair, suicide and ruin is the favorite pet of the GOP; deployed almost daily for petty, partisan gain by the racist, bible-pounding, bottom-dwelling denizens of America’s culture Men’s Room with Benefits.

And that it was not Richard Jewell who murdered and maimed so many in Atlanta, but White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph.

Who, like White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Timothy McVeigh, did nothing more than implement in deed the kind of homicidal Jebus Jihad against liberals and government employees that the Mullahs of the Christopath Right like Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberston, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage (to, sadly, name only a few) have been relentlessly and hysterically fomenting for the last 30 years.

God's peace be with you, Mr. Jewell, and with your loved ones.

I'm sorry our culture destroyed you.