Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           In the May/June 2010 edition of Mother Jones, Wilbert Rideau was asked by Bruce Gilson: “What’s happened to the Angolite since you left?” Rideau responded: “While I was still there, they were clamping down on it. If you pick up the magazine now, there’s no controversy, there’s no criticism of the administration or anything that’s going on in the prison. There’s a whole about sports and religion. They’ll write about issues, but not about practices. Mostly it’s about religion. If you go by what you read and what you hear, Angola probably has the largest congregation of Christian prisoners in the world. I know prisoners. And prisoners, as a rule, when they’re out of prison are the most irreligious group of people in the world. So, when you tell me 70 percent of the prison population up at Angola are supposed to be Christian now because of this administrative push to turn the prison into a church house, I’ve got some questions! [laughs] That’s not to say there aren’t some religious prisoners. But the majority have never been, and whenever they get religion, it’s usually as a means to an end. It’s kind of a con job.”

            This paragraph reflects a lot about the true character of Wilbert Rideau. First, he downplayed the journalistic significance of The Angolite now that he is no longer its editor. The truth is that the prison publication has done quite well without Rideau. It was the recipient earlier this year of the Eleventh Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Special Award for its journalism endeavors, particularly in the area of the death penalty. Still, Rideau elected to take a cheap backhanded slap at its current staff by saying “there’s no criticism of the administration” in the publication.

           I challenge anyone to produce any article published in The Angolite by Wilbert Rideau that was critical of an “administration” during a time when that administration was ruling over the magazine. You won’t find any. Rideau had every opportunity when he was the magazine’s editor to criticize the administration of Angola Warden Burl Cain, but he didn’t have the balls to do it. He waited until after he was free to criticize Warden Cain in his memoir.

           Rideau could have easily given credit and recognition to the current staff of The Angolite for their Thurgood Marshall Award, particularly if they are working under the kind of pressure described by him, but the famed prison journalist has never been one willing to share success or give credit to others.

            Second, the former award-winning editor also questioned the sincerity of “the majority” of Christian inmates at Angola. He called their religious conversion a “con job.” There was no greater rehabilitation “con job” than the one perpetrated by Rideau when he continuously touted himself as “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner” during his 44-year incarceration. There’s no doubt that some of those Christian inmates are trying to ride the “religious pony” out of prison just as Rideau admitted that he rode The Angolite pony out of prison. The truth is that Rideau was the “most privileged inmate” in the history of the Louisiana prison system. His prison rehabilitation was as fraudulent as any of those Christian inmates who are faking their conversion to Christ.

            Okay. I know. I have been accused of trying to discredit the man. In fact, one of Rideau supporters recently said that if I didn’t stop all these negative posts about Rideau, someone was going to run off with my wife! Yep, that’s what’s “Nancy” said. Another Rideau supporter, “Stacy,” said she can’t even read anything about “Wilbert Rideaux” [sic] on the Internet without coming across this website. I guess Stacy does not understand the purpose of this website or any website. The objective is to drive traffic to it. Apparently it’s working for this site.

           But this website has not discredited Rideau any more than he tried to discredit a number of people with in his memoir. He used his memoir to “get even” with any and every one he believes wronged him in some way during his prison incarceration. If you don’t believe me, ask former Angola Wardens Ross Maggio and John Whitley, both of whom Rideau cast in a negative light and misrepresented what they said to him in his memoir. Put bluntly, the famed prison journalist lied about them! He fabricated scenes with the two wardens that did not happen!

            The media created the mythical image of Wilbert Rideau—one that was clearly evidenced in Mother Jones interview. The magazine gave him a forum to hype his memoir with little or no regard for the book’s factual accuracy. For example, Bruce Gilson stated that Rideau and The Angolite were “doing big exposes on the guards.” There was not one expose about prison guards in the magazine during Rideau’s tenure as its editor; however, there were numerous flattering articles about wardens, guards, and other penal administrators with whom the convict editor was currying favor with. Rideau and The Angolite participated in, and former Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps covered up, a massive criminal conspiracy that resulted in a Mississippi judge and his wife being murdered in Biloxi in September 1987. What about that for an expose!

            I have written that Rideau hogged all the credit in his memoir for the success of The Angolite. He did the same thing in the Mother Jones interview. “I guess in a lot of ways I was novel,” he told Gilson. “I used to often liken myself to a dog playing a piano, because here I am, I’m a prisoner and I’m doing all this journalism, I’m an editor. I wasn’t being censored. No other prisoner in America was able to do the same thing.”

            First, The Angolite was a censored publication. I was with the magazine for nine years. I know. Second, Rideau was not the “only prisoner in America” doing “award-winning” journalism. Every major journalism award on Rideau’s resume is also on mine. We were the “Woodward and Bernstein of prison journalism.”

            But I am pleased that Rideau’s supporters are concerned about my life, my wife, and that they cannot travel the Internet in search of the famed prison journalist without encountering articles from this website. I don’t know how to break it to Rideau’s supporters but a “public debate” is not about one party being able to express his or her views on a given subject. Rideau’s supporters would be content to hear only his point of view about every subject matter discussed in his memoir, but that will not happen. I have given voice to the “other side” of the Rideau debate, and if that makes me a “jealous and envious despicable person,” so be it. At least I’m telling the truth.