At 12:08 7/10/2000 CDT, you wrote:
>
>I think in general the phenomenon of>intellectuals/academics/artists being
>fascinated by criminals is pretty well attested in America at least, and is
>a particularly late twentieth century characteristic.
>
People have been fascinated by the likes of Napoleon, Lenin, Alexander and
other great criminals for a long time. If you owe a bank $10,000 and can't
pay it you are in trouble. If you owe a bank $10,000,000 and can't pay it
the bank is in trouble. Large scale crime is not thought of as crime. Crime
in the service of a nation state or an ideal one approves of is not thought
of as crime.
Like Saddam Hussein Winston Churchill had the air force bomb the Iraqi
Kurds. It was in the early twenties. I find it hard to think of Churchill as
a criminal, but he was one.
>I think the fascination with the outlaw/criminal in America is pretty well
>across the board, not just confined to intellectuals/academics/artists--from
>the idolization of the James Boyz and Billy the Kid to The gangsta rappers.
>And it was in the dime novel, a l9th century phenomenon, that you can find
>the literary precursor to those gangsta rap
>CDs, though I have read that poems and odes to various New York Gangsters of
>the middle l9th century were passed down orally.
>
>And it may not be just American. What about the Australian Ned Kelly? The
>British Krays, or the granddaddy of 'em all, Robin Hood?
>
Lumping the Krays together with Ned Kelly to me is unfair. Kelly was not
vicious in the way the Krays were and belonged to an oppressed people. The
Irish small farmers in nineteenth century Australia were oppressed by the
large English land owners the same way they were in Ireland. My grandparents
lived in the Adirondack Mountains almost 100 years ago. They lived deep in
the woods and their property adjoined the Rockefeller Estates. Rockefeller
goons harassed them by killing their animals and destroying crops.
Eventually they left, and their land was absorbed into the Rockefeller
estates. Stealing Rockefeller cattle or horses is the beginning of a
criminal career, but it is understandable and even forgiveable. To the best
of my knowledge the Rockefeller goons were not prosecuted for their crimes,
but those who struck back were. Ned Kelly's mother served three years in
prison due to the perjured testimony of a policeman trying to hide his own
incompetence.
I regard the Krays as deep dyed criminals. I regard Kelly as a criminal but
less of a one than Napoleon, Lenin or Alexander the Great.
One of John D. Rockefeller's descendants became vice-president of the United
States. One of John Kennedy Sr's (a very successful bootlegger) descendants
became president of the United States. An ancestry of successful criminals
can be a launching pad for high office.
David Fisher
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