News reports are coming in fast and hysterical that this generation's most prolific killing machine may be getting unplugged. Not so fast.
The good die young. The bad linger on. Don't ask me why. I just live here. I don't make the rules.
This isn't the first time. A year ago, Yasser Arafat was also en route to his 72 virgins, not counting Suha.
Then, too, the world was in a tizzy as word spread that he was running a fever. Europe was especially upset. Jacques Chirac sent best wishes, roses and bon-bons. Imagine losing a man who's murdered thousands of Israelis and more than a hundred Americans. In Europe, and other places, they knew they had the right man for the right job.
I said all this happened a year ago, and I mean that almost exactly to the week, if not the day, if you'll check out my column of October 19, 2003, titled, "Is He Dead Yet?". So this is all deja vu, if you'll pardon my French.
My point was, and is, that bad things happen to good people, yes indeed, but good things happen to bad people, over and over again.
Late word is that the murderer is breathing his last. Even later word has it that he's been shipped to Paris. This minute, we hear that he's already recovering.
Told you so.
What I said then, and am repeating now, is that Osama Bin Laden is alive, but JFK is dead. What does that say?
It says, not so fast, when it comes to men of evil; they manage.
Figure this. Those generals place a bomb right under the table, precisely at Hitler's feet; the bomb goes off, and Hitler lives. He lives to murder millions more.
Some 20 years later, a man takes a shot from a distance at a moving vehicle, and John F. Kennedy is lost forever.
Does this make sense?
Or this. John Lennon is dead, O. J. plays golf. Just last week Fidel Castro had a great fall. We all saw the clip of his tumbling off some stage.
People were already numbering his days. But the man is up and about.
As Arafat goes on ticking, his contemporary, Anwar Sadat, is no more, taken down by bullets.
It's a near fact that assassins who aim at good guys seldom miss the bull's eye. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were taken from us in their prime.
Meanwhile, bloody dictators like Cambodia's Pol Pot and Uganda's Idi Amin were rewarded with length of days.
Heaven only knows.
So don't be counting out Arafat so fast, although that photo of him from the other day does reflect the movie Weekend at Bernie's, where a group of kids keep propping up their dead boss. That Arafat photo-op, flashed around the globe to prove that the glorious leader of terrorism is still alive, has become instantly famous as it shows a dirty dozen of his sycophants surrounding him and smiling through gritted teeth.
Or, seen from another angle, it's almost like they're about to give him the heave-ho.
Viewed here with that wool hat above a pair of glazed, goo-goo eyes, his torso all folded up and decked in something like pajamas, altogether the image of a chimp, the most fitting caption might be: "Bedtime for Bonzo." Some might remember this 1951 film starring Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan plays a professor trying to teach human morals to a chimpanzee.
Did someone say human morals? Where's that?
Over there in still-Vichy France they've already rolled out the red carpet for the man (man?) who picked up where Hitler left off.
"France will always be at your side. It is with concern and sympathy that I keep informed of the development of your health."
Those are the words of French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, toasting this killing machine. Yes, he'll always have Paris.
Suha is already there, suffering for her people at an allowance of $100,000 a month from her husband's olive oil business.
(Who's counting the billions squirreled away in Swiss banks and distributed among his thug cronies?)
Wherefore England? When all this started, the BBC led off its evening news with the mournful report that "there is renewed concern" over the health of Mr. Arafat.
We're shown Ramallah, where thousands are gathered around his compound in prayer. Europe also prays. Hanan Ashrawi assures the world, through the same BBC, that there is no need to panic. President and Chairman Arafat is receiving the finest medical care. Right, no need to panic.
Absolutely, no need to panic, for this world will not permit wickedness to pass away so soon.
(If I'm mistaken and he's gone by the time you read this, I take nothing back, for this Arafat has been around 70-plus years too many.)
The good die young. The bad linger on. Don't ask me why. I just live here. I don't make the rules.
This isn't the first time. A year ago, Yasser Arafat was also en route to his 72 virgins, not counting Suha.
Then, too, the world was in a tizzy as word spread that he was running a fever. Europe was especially upset. Jacques Chirac sent best wishes, roses and bon-bons. Imagine losing a man who's murdered thousands of Israelis and more than a hundred Americans. In Europe, and other places, they knew they had the right man for the right job.
I said all this happened a year ago, and I mean that almost exactly to the week, if not the day, if you'll check out my column of October 19, 2003, titled, "Is He Dead Yet?". So this is all deja vu, if you'll pardon my French.
My point was, and is, that bad things happen to good people, yes indeed, but good things happen to bad people, over and over again.
Late word is that the murderer is breathing his last. Even later word has it that he's been shipped to Paris. This minute, we hear that he's already recovering.
Told you so.
What I said then, and am repeating now, is that Osama Bin Laden is alive, but JFK is dead. What does that say?
It says, not so fast, when it comes to men of evil; they manage.
Figure this. Those generals place a bomb right under the table, precisely at Hitler's feet; the bomb goes off, and Hitler lives. He lives to murder millions more.
Some 20 years later, a man takes a shot from a distance at a moving vehicle, and John F. Kennedy is lost forever.
Does this make sense?
Or this. John Lennon is dead, O. J. plays golf. Just last week Fidel Castro had a great fall. We all saw the clip of his tumbling off some stage.
People were already numbering his days. But the man is up and about.
As Arafat goes on ticking, his contemporary, Anwar Sadat, is no more, taken down by bullets.
It's a near fact that assassins who aim at good guys seldom miss the bull's eye. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were taken from us in their prime.
Meanwhile, bloody dictators like Cambodia's Pol Pot and Uganda's Idi Amin were rewarded with length of days.
Heaven only knows.
So don't be counting out Arafat so fast, although that photo of him from the other day does reflect the movie Weekend at Bernie's, where a group of kids keep propping up their dead boss. That Arafat photo-op, flashed around the globe to prove that the glorious leader of terrorism is still alive, has become instantly famous as it shows a dirty dozen of his sycophants surrounding him and smiling through gritted teeth.
Or, seen from another angle, it's almost like they're about to give him the heave-ho.
Viewed here with that wool hat above a pair of glazed, goo-goo eyes, his torso all folded up and decked in something like pajamas, altogether the image of a chimp, the most fitting caption might be: "Bedtime for Bonzo." Some might remember this 1951 film starring Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan plays a professor trying to teach human morals to a chimpanzee.
Did someone say human morals? Where's that?
Over there in still-Vichy France they've already rolled out the red carpet for the man (man?) who picked up where Hitler left off.
"France will always be at your side. It is with concern and sympathy that I keep informed of the development of your health."
Those are the words of French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, toasting this killing machine. Yes, he'll always have Paris.
Suha is already there, suffering for her people at an allowance of $100,000 a month from her husband's olive oil business.
(Who's counting the billions squirreled away in Swiss banks and distributed among his thug cronies?)
Wherefore England? When all this started, the BBC led off its evening news with the mournful report that "there is renewed concern" over the health of Mr. Arafat.
We're shown Ramallah, where thousands are gathered around his compound in prayer. Europe also prays. Hanan Ashrawi assures the world, through the same BBC, that there is no need to panic. President and Chairman Arafat is receiving the finest medical care. Right, no need to panic.
Absolutely, no need to panic, for this world will not permit wickedness to pass away so soon.
(If I'm mistaken and he's gone by the time you read this, I take nothing back, for this Arafat has been around 70-plus years too many.)