The Memorial To A Mass Murderer: Please Come To Oakland And See How It's Done

The Rev. Jim Jones and his executioners have been given a freshly washed new face, ladies and gentlemen.

Now let us pray......for a return to sanity.

It all became official at noon time last Sunday during an Oakland, California ceremony that loudly proclaimed all murderous psychopaths -- no matter how notorious, whatever heinous crimes, tortures, or executions they perpetrated -- are now eligible to be honored as "victims."

And with just the right supporters, these monsters can even be memorialized in marble, right along side the men, women, children, and babies they happened to have exterminated.  Just think -- all the other colorful personalities that can now be featured on memorials worldwide.  Mr. Pol Pot, now your departed spirit really has something  to smile about!

Let's propose that Pol's pic be featured in the photo gallery of all his murder victims posted in  Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Museum, formerly the notorious prison where his Khmer Rouge "inner circle" goons did their ghastly work.  And why on earth not; it's the healthiest way acknowledge the entirety of the tragedy.  Brings closure to ALL the relatives of those who suffered in the madness, be they givers or receivers.  That's right.

The very disturbed Mister Pot surely had good intentions at the start of his divine mission, didn't he?  His nation-devouring Khmer cult simply wanted to create an egalitarian world with a rather radical form of "social engineering," where everyone could farm communally, peacefully, and free of bourgeoise contaminants.

Give him credit at least for being truly sincere, even if he did fall far short of the dream of "Apostolic Socialism."  That little utopian notion belonged all to James Warren Jones and his Peoples Temple cult.  But due to the little problem of Jones being a raging sociopath since childhood -- killing animals for "pet funerals," shooting guns at friends that didn't follow his directions and beating others -- his Brave New World was pretty much doomed from the start.

But for some reason, Jones's cult apologists just won't quit trying to resuscitate this demon.  So on Sunday they took it a step further and included his name on a new memorial to all the Jonestown dead at Evergreen Cemetery.  When this perverse proposal was  being bandied about last November by one of his surviving sons, Jim Jones, Jr., one of my readers expressed the outrage:

"What a horrid, bloody nightmare and it just indicates that there is a serious and sustained effort to sanitize Jim Jones's image to the public," wrote Jei Hu Quan, " Jones was a psychopath, a rapist, a paedophile, a rampant abuser and grinning, braying sadist.  It's clear that there's a concerted push by the same parties that engineered the massacre and other interests to minimize the actual atrocities carried out there.  Every year around this time I see vile propaganda pushing the 'official story'.....making sure the story adheres to the deployed line.  Monsters infiltrated amongst true survivors to synthesize credibility....." 

Jynona Norwood (white dress), who has tried for the last ten years to erect a memorial wall -- one that would never feature the name of the monster that destroyed 27 members of her family -- leads the camp of relatives and their supporters (including the legendary Dick Gregory) that are understandably outraged.   She went to court to try to have the new Jim Jones enhanced memorial blocked but failed.

According to the Oakland Tribune, "Norwood's work to build a memorial wasn't successful -- the stones that were unveiled Sunday were the work of organizers including Jones' adopted son, Jim Jones Jr. -- and her efforts in court to stop the version with Jones' name from being made public were turned down by a judge last week.

She promised to protest the ceremony, calling Jones' inclusion a deep insult to his victims, but she was not present Sunday, and the ceremony concluded without any disruption. Despite her conflict with the organizers, though, Norwood's name was spoken with respect during the ceremony.

'I want to take a moment to appreciate the faithfulness of Jynona Norwood,' said Rebecca Moore, a survivor whose husband was among the fundraising organizers for the memorial. Year in and year out, she said, Norwood has diligently worked for the well-being of her fellow survivors and organized numerous ceremonies to help them come together."


Ahhhh, Becky Moore and hubby Mac McGehee.  Should have seen their greasy cult apologist prints all over this "new & improved memorial" travesty. (The real question is who exactly is the money bagman behind this desecration.)  Now she adds insult to injury by patronizing Norwood while she, Mac, Jones, Jr., and the rest of 'em turning the knife round and round.

And a couple of corrections are in order regarding Becky:  She's not a "survivor" since she never was a member of this cult (though a hell of a Temple publicist to this day, yes) and, secondly, there's the matter of her two sisters, Annie and Carolyn, who both died at Jonestown.  These two were in Jim Jones's inner circle and were busy murdering babies, children and anyone else they could find during that horrendous day in November, like a couple of obedient Manson girls.  The same question should apply:  As with Jones, should the homocidal Annie and Carolyn (and any other of  his mass murderering thugs that day) also have the privilege of being memorialized with their victims? 

  One of the members of their camp, Jonestown survivor Leslie Wagner-Wilson, called their Jones-The-Victim salute a "healing wall" that's in the spirit of "inclusiveness and forgiveness."

Jim Jones, Jr., pictured on left, appeared delighted last Sunday at their triumph (while his brother Stephen Jones, on the right, looked less than thrilled.)  But the only victory here was one for the revisionists and cult apologists for whom this is far more than an issue of just "inclusiveness."  What it sadly demonstrates is just how desperate people will behave in order to blast to smithereens that elephant in their room that just won't go away.

If some people actually believe putting the sadistic killer (and his depraved executioners) of this little child on the same memorial is not only healing but moral, then our society is clearly much further along the road to depravity than previously imagined.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are also some diehard disciples of the Khmer Rouge that would have no problem with adorning any and all future memorials in Cambodia with the "healing" inclusion of the brutally efficient man that had children bludgeoned to death with iron bars and pickaxes.

In all likelihood, that was probably far more merciful a fate than that cyanide.