Dear Abby: Please read these letters from the Houston Post`s ”Sound Off” section. They show a different perspective in the Rodney King case.
M.W. Daura, Bellaire, Texas
Here`s the first letter:
”I was in a Colorado hotel room with cable TV that carried `Court in Session,` a live broadcast of current court cases where television was permitted, much like C-SPAN carries congressional sessions.
”The Rodney King trial was on for six hours each day. I saw a total of 40 hours. I heard and saw videotapes and testimony of the normal effect of stun guns – police-in-training receiving a stun gun shot, and falling like poleaxed steers – yet Rodney King only blinked and kept coming at the officers.
”I heard testimony of Mr. King`s throwing officers – two at a time – to the ground like rag dolls. All this was in the 20 minutes before the famous one-minute `bite` that was all most of the media and a segment of our population saw.
”The media explained the looting, burning, beating and killing as `rage` over the verdict. I`m sorry, but it`s happened too often, and appears to be simply a carefree opportunity for looting, burning, beating and killing.
(Examples: Watts, Miami, the St. Croix looting after Hurricane Hugo, and others.)”
Glen Swenumson, Houston
Here`s the second letter:
”All my life I`ve supported a free press and appreciated the role it serves in keeping the public informed. But today I am angry. I feel that television has taken me for a ride.
”For 13 months I`ve seen a 90-second clip of videotape that shows a man face down on the ground and four police officers taking turns hitting him with batons.
”It wasn`t until 3 a.m. on Friday, on CNN, that I was finally given the opportunity to see the tape in its entirety. Here I saw a man who had been hit four times with 50,000 volts of electricity continue to fight and resist police. I saw him lunging at a policeman. I saw him defying all normal reaction to pain, and behaving as if he could feel no pain.
”I saw a brief moment when he lay still, and at that moment one policeman reached for his handcuffs. Then the man was up on his hands and knees again.
”I wonder, who decided to limit the public`s access to the entire tape?”
Julie R. Wise, Houston
Dear M.W. Daura: Obviously, the jurors saw all the videotape. The public, including me, saw only the edited one-minute bite, believing that was the entire story, which it was not.
Dear Readers: After I printed a limerick sent in by a reader who did not know who wrote it, I heard from the author. So thank you, Mary Owen Rank Kelly, for this:
Said a potentate gross and despotic,
”My tastes are more rich than exotic.
”I`ve always adored
”Making love in a Ford
”Because I am auto-erotic.”
