In the Name of the Son
Michael made a deal with Suzie to stop there, but a friend told him that was a mistake, that he had a great opportunity to speak out, get his views heard. Michael was given permission — no, not permission, but the idea that his impulse to speak was important, a mandate. That, in fact, he had to speak.
He was riding rage and grief, of course, but it was more than that. Michael suddenly couldn’t believe how passive he’d been. As if once voting for Dick Gregory for president or sitting out 2000 by tabbing Ralph Nader was really taking a stand. In fact, that was something he was learning from Nick, before his murder: Michael eulogized his son as the kindest man he knew, as the kindest man he’d ever known. It was not an exaggeration of pure mourning. Nick was out in the world with a grand plan. He was an engineering wunderkind who’d spent time in Uganda creating a brick-building business he left behind as a gift, who got into radio-tower repair because he loved to climb, loved to fix things, and he wanted to go global to help link the world. It was both simple and large: Fix towers. Do it where lives will be changed. That’s what he was doing in Iraq — along with, sure, the danger of it luring him. And he’d been mentoring Michael, who was Nick’s business manager. Nick’s murder made it so clear how guilty Michael was — not because he didn’t try to stop his son from going to Iraq. He couldn’t have, and he doesn’t believe he should have tried. No, he was guilty for being timid, being too concerned with what others might think. That was over.
A STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ button had been sitting on his dresser. Now Michael would wear it, and not take it off, until the war was stopped. He would wear an anti-war t-shirt, every day. He spoke at peace rallies, wrote an essay that ran in London’s Guardian: “George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily. … ” The reaction against him quickly become nasty, tragedy or no. Glenn Beck, a Philadelphia-based nationally syndicated radio talk-show host: “Can you let your son’s body become the same temperature as your son’s head before you turn this into a political campaign against the President — could you do that?” Local radio host and Daily News columnist Michael Smerconish was gentler but made the same point, as did newspaper letter writers and call-in radio listeners nationwide: We’re sorry, but this guy is deluded, has lost all perspective on who the bad guy is. Not to mention: What was a 26-year-old Jew with an Israeli stamp on his passport thinking, tramping around Iraq alone? Michael got phone calls raging that he was a coward. It didn’t bother him. But he wanted his say, and now he “began to be glad for them” — the requests to speak. For a platform to talk about this President and war.
