In this superheated, paranoid, class-warring world, I am sure that the title of this piece raised expectations in many of your overwrought minds of yet another attack on one of the Teabgging right wing/Christian Militia/Catholic Church pedophile/Sarah Palin holier-than-thou (“But I will burn witches if elected!”) crews that populate the far right edges of our media-delineated universe.
But it is not.
It is about a simple working class man who performed an heroic act today and saved three lives.
I ran into his story on my semi-nightly “Click through the local NYC 11PM news shows as fast as possible to see if there is anything happening on the streets that I should take into account when I go out of the door tomorrow” run through the corporate media hell that we laughingly call “TV.”
Read on.
Eddie Clas looks like he is a working class, 40-ish man who lives in a working class, ’40s-ish neighborhood in the NYC outer borough of Queens. That’s what I saw as I clicked into the story in full flight from some piece of shit news or garbage advertising on one of the other local channels. Medium height, old plaid shirt, needs a shave, maybe a little on the heavy side…looks like a quiet beer or two every night to me but it might just be McDonald’s or a wife who cooks pretty well. Whatever. You’ve seen him a million times. Maybe on an ad for the lottery or working in your local auto repair shop. Mr. Everyman, USA version thereof.
But what stopped my clicking dead in its tracks were two sentences that I heard him say and the sheer honesty with which he said them.
Interviewer: “Do you feel lke a hero for doing what you did?”
Mr. Clas: “No, I’m a Christian. That’s what Christians do.”
And what did he do?
He rescued two young children and a grandmother…three separate trips into an old, fiercely burning wooden frame building…from certain death in a blaze that consumed two houses in the space of about four minutes flat is what he did.
And all he had to say was “No, I’m a Christian. That’s what Christians do.”
I cried a little.
He could have been one of the original Christians, “doing what they do,” following the directives of the prophet Jesus Christ.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Like dat.
He speaks Spanish (Read the linked article.), but his English is uninflected by anything other than a regular NYC/Queens/working class dialect so I’m guessing that he was born here of immigrant parents.
He is not a bomb-throwing Muslim terrorist.
He is not a gun-carrying Hispanic gangbanger or a Christian soldier for the Capitalist Christ or an upward-striving, yupped-out supercollege grad.
He is not any of these things.
He’s just a just a working guy who when asked why he did what he did, answered:
If God forbid it was my house burning, my kids were inside, I hope someone would come and save my kids. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the way my mother raised me.
Yup.
The real America, alive and well in Queens.
It’s the right thing to do. It’s the way my mother raised me.
Yup.
Like dat.
Just sayin’…
When we all begin to wonder “Why am I still trying? In the face of the Madoffs and the Cheneys, the Paris Hiltons and the Snoop Dogs, the Larry Kings, the Katie Courics and all the rest of the talking puppetheads who bring us the official reailty, amid the maelstrom of credit card ads, insurance scams and Big Pharma drug efficacy lies, why do I still give a shit?” the answer lies in the history of Americans like Eddie Clas.
Too big to fail?
No.
Too damned good to fail.
Still.
Bet on it.
I am.
Later…
AG
God knows we could all use one.
Couldn’t we?
Yup.
Later…
AG
Have you ever noticed that this is pretty much what heroes – real heroes – always say? “Just doing my job.” “This is what the Marine Corps trained me to do, so I did it.” “You would have done the same thing.”
Yup.
But they do not get much media coverage for it, and eventually almost all seriously media-hypnotized people turn nasty and pessimistic. Confronted with a barrage of unrelenting negativity, a whole culture can go sour.
That is what is happening to us.
Perhaps Mr. Clas only watches sports. There is less negativity presented there than elsewhere, although there is no media safe haven from the nasty habit of the Pekinese of the Press (Jimmy Breslin’s immortal line) of searching for bad smells by sticking their noses up the asses of those who actually try to do something in the world.
So it goes.
Ever downward, it seems today.
And that’s why I wrote this piece, as well.
I fear that the left will once again give up in sheer exhaustion. Almost nothing but bad news about the actions of human beings ever makes the news. Why wouldn’t one be tempted to walk away?
Don’t.
The life of Life is still evolving.
Bet on it.
AG
.
Just wondering about the historic name Ozone Park …
FBI agents, backed by cadaver-sniffing dogs, a helicopter and heavy construction equipment, swooped down on the site on 75th Street in Ozone Park, Queens, specifically searching for at least two bodies believed to have been stuffed into steel drums, and three more wrapped in canvas, sources said.
In addition to Gotti’s tragic former neighbor, those believed to be buried there include Tommy DeSimone — the crazy hit man portrayed by Joe Pesci in the movie “GoodFellas” — and Bonanno crime family capos Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera and Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone, sources said.
… At the top of the list of suspected victims entombed beneath the three to four feet of concrete is John Favara, Gotti’s one-time neighbor in Howard Beach.
The 51-year-old dad of two was driving home from work March 18, 1980, when Gotti’s 12-year-old son, Frankie, who was on a minibike, darted in front of his car and was struck and killed.
After four months of being terrorized by Gotti goons, Favara disappeared after leaving work. Witnesses said they last saw him being ambushed and then beaten bloody by Gotti thugs before being thrown into the back of a van.
The Teflon Don
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
The name “Ozone Park” was chosen to “lure buyers with the idea of refreshing breezes blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean to a park-like community.”
Compliments of Wikipedia.
thanks for this diary. There’s a constructive side of religious traditions, really the vision of the tradition, which has been lost in the culture wars and the bellicose forms of the religions today, which, however, usually misrepresent what the religious traditions are about. The guy who is the subject of your diary has it right. I thank you, as do my students.
Real religious “traditions”…the beginnings of all great religions…are simply very highly evolved survivalist rules.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” etc.
Long-view survivalism.
Survival of the species.
And then…like every great idea…they decay.
So it goes.
We are in the decay mode in the U.S. right now.
So that goes as well.
Until someone comes up with effective new expressions of those old ideas…ideals, really…people like Mr. Clas will be artifacts of the past. He is, y’know. Were he more “modern” he would have been all over his moment of fame. Facebook, Twitter, some YouTube vids, maybe a NewAge/Digital Age publicity guy to help him out…you know…
But he’s not.
However…he’s not alone, either.
We shall see.
Soon enough.
Do the whispers of hundreds of thousands of good trees in an un-videoed, unrecorded forest equal the squeals of a few well sound-bitten pigs?
We shall see.
Sink or swim time, coming up.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
Thanks Arthur. Still an “optimalist,” eh?
Looks like goodness has a lot to do with it…. Evolution isn’t over.
I guess it all depends on what you consider the proper definition for the word “it”, Alice.
Ms. Wests’s definition?
Getting over.
(It pertains…)
AG