Letters: Anti-Mumia tune falls very flat

IRONIC would be a polite term for the juxtaposition of the new, improved "reasonable" image Michael Smerconish has been selling lately and and the old Mumia-hating version that still regularly erupts, as in his July 22 column

"A suprising tune on Danny Faulkner."

Employing some of the trademark incestuous logic of the kill-Mumia crowd, he boasts that rock mediocrity Gary Cherone, after reading Smerconish's deceptive book on Abu-Jamal, felt compelled to share with Maureen Faulkner a song he'd written in which he vents his confusion about the case.

The song and Cherone are being exploited to further a murderous agenda to which he is clearly oblivious, and Smerconish uses this unfortunate development to validate his own propaganda.

Not only are Smerconish's arguments based on discredited "witnesses" and evidence, but, similarly to the Shirley Sherrod episode, the trial transcripts that constitute the bible of the anti-Mumiaites are but one decontextualized piece of a larger whole. They are records of a proceeding in which Abu-Jamal knew he was about to be railroaded and refused to participate.

As for the shooting itself, there is more circumstantial evidence against William Cook's friend (and apparent passenger) Kenneth Freeman than against Mumia, who had likely been shot and immobilized by officer Faulkner prior to Faulkner being killed.

Nathaniel Miller

Philadelphia

nolead begins

Mr. Stevenson, in laying out his brother's qualifications, forgot the most important one:

His brother is friends with a guy who sits on the board of the DRPA. My guess is whoever got the job over your brother was more qualified. So please stop you whining and tell you brother to get back in line with the rest of us trying to find work in this economy.

Fran Tidd, Mount Laurel