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Prison-Yard Kaffeeklatsch

By Edward Rothstein
Posted Thursday, March 11, 1999, at 12:01 PM ET

Dear Sarah:

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Our final day of breakfasts ... and I feel like I'm just learning how to eat and type at the same time.

After reading the papers, I had all sorts of grand ambitions: raising questions about this administration's foreign policy or about the altered meanings of monopoly in the Internet age.

But, forget it. What really fascinated me this morning was this: What do Timothy J. McVeigh (of Oklahoma City bombing fame), Theodore J. Kaczynski (the Unabomer) and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (World Trade Center terrorist) have in common aside from their record of killing, maiming, and destroying? And what is it they may be sharing with Luis Felipe, the leader of the Latin Kings gang who has been convicted of orchestrating three murders from prison? Answer: prison-yard conversations.

In the New York Times, Benjamin Weiser reports that they are all being held in isolation at the nation's most secure Federal Prison in Colorado. The first three killers are allowed into the yard for an hour a day, where they are held in widely separated mesh cages and speak loudly to each other. A former prosecutor on the Kings case described this as "the oddest kaffeeklatsch in the history of Western civilization."

What could the subjects of conversation possibly be? Movies, according one attorney (which strengthens my suspicion that hit movies may be the only cultural experience shared by most Americans, no matter what their criminal backgrounds.)

But this kaffeeklatsch, with its Islamic militant, back-woods Luddite, and right-wing extremist, may not just be the oddest in Western civilization, it may actually be founded on shared attitudes toward Western civilization. Or at least the aspect of Western civilization we roughly refer to as "modernity.'' And that would be a fine subject for yard discussion. Maybe the Cuban gang-leader could join in as well.

McVeigh could inveigh against the United States government with its soft, liberal institutions that evolved out of notions from the European Enlightenment. Kaczynski could elaborate on his manifesto, which declared: "Primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is"; he dreamed of a world of Nature "independent of human management and free of human interference and control." Yousef could chat about how modern Western ideas of rights and liberty are a plot by the Zionists to endanger the Islamic world. And if Felipe is allowed into the group (he is apparently so ruthless that people fear any conversations he has could end up sending signals to his henchman), he could explain why he would feel more at home returning to Cuba--though given the nature of his Machiavellian, bureaucratic business, he may be the odd man out in this kaffeeklatsch. Amazing how all of this leads to violence.

That almost brought me back to the new forms of political violence I started the week brooding about, but in the interests of good digestion, let me just draw your attention to a small piece in the Wall Street Journal. It contains a few horror stories from computer "help-desk" managers. There was the user who responded to the message "press any key" by searching for a key labeled "any." There was the retail store that had a jammed floppy drive because cashiers had thought the slot was a place to stuff checks. And there was the user who couldn't open e-mail attachments and was advised, over the phone, to "right mouse click"; it didn't work: the user had written the words "mouse click" all over the screen.

Best,
Ed