Cracked Window

In 1978, when I was a young newspaper reporter in Melbourne, Florida, I covered a protest march by a few dozen Iranian students. Carrying placards and shouting slogans, faces flush with anger, they looked as if they had wandered onto the wrong movie set.

I didn’t know much about the target of their rage: the Shah of Iran and his hated secret police, SAVAK. Passing motorists gave the group confused looks. Nobody was paying attention to the unrest in Iran, of which these Florida Institute of Technology students were a distant part. Nobody could have guessed that the rich and powerful Shah would be overthrown the next year, or two years after that, in 1981, Islamist revolutionaries would seize fifty-two American hostages, ensnaring the United States for decades.

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I don’t believe in the Rapture, though the concept intrigues me spiritually and intellectually. Perhaps that’s why a man’s suit caught my eye yesterday, abandoned on the steps of a downtown Portland church. A fine-looking suit with a subtle glen-plaid pattern. I considered inquiring at the Portland Korean Church, SE 10th and Clay. But if I knocked, what would I ask when the door opened? Is the suit only a test, like those we hear on the radio about the emergency warning system? If this had been a real Rapture. . .

I looked around, wondering whether the suit owner had zipped off on a practice spin for the June 14th World Naked Bike Ride. No luck. Was there really a Superman, and Clark Kent couldn’t find a phone booth? Had I missed an alien abduction? Or missed the Rapture itself, and this lone empty suit signaled bad news for Portland — the select few here are very few indeed?

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News item: Hillary Clinton says as president she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. Clinton made the comment as people in Pennsylvania voted in the Democratic primary.

I’ve become painfully accustomed to Clinton saying and doing anything to defeat Barack Obama. That her supporters seem all the more fervent as she ratchets up her rhetoric says much about them, I suppose. At least she’s making the choice between Democratic candidates all the more stark. According to the Clinton narrative, she’s displaying her toughness. I’ve known tough people who were weak leaders.

Clinton’s “as far as I know” comment in response to a question on 60 Minutes about whether Obama is a Muslim still burns like bile climbing up my throat. “Totally obliterate” is altogether different. It reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid and my next-door neighbor showed me a book with photos of Holocaust victims. They were strewn in jumbled stacks, naked and dead in a pit.

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