WILBERT RIDEAU ON DEMOCRACY NOW
The promo for the website Democracy Now says it is “a TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, airing on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States.”
That’s impressive media credentials. So it was natural that Wilbert Rideau on April 7, 2011, just after the George Polk Award committee had re-bestowed upon the former convict editor his 1979 Polk Award, would appear on Democracy Now to share his compelling story about a free penal press and the changes that need to be made in the nation’s prison system.
I just watched the interview. Was not impressed at all. Rideau was once a suave interview. He could spin off answers to reporters’ question in a rapid fire, almost in an assembly line manner. I have watched several interviews he has done since the release of his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), including the one he did with Roland Martin on the Tom Joyner Show. In all these interviews, the former famed prison journalist stutters, stammers, and pauses as he struggles to find a coherent thought pattern to express in response to a question. It’s almost embarrassing. This famed writer/journalist cannot even put together meaningful thoughts, ideas, or proposals. You might as well be reading the “nutrition facts” on a box of cereal.
For example, Amy Goodman asked him: “We only have a minute, but as you wrote your book In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, what is your assessment of the prison system today?”
Rideau responded (and I am not making this up): “It is not a prison system; it’s an industrial complex. That’s what it’s become. It’s no longer about—I mean, the people believe that it’s crime and punishment. It’s not. It’s about power. It’s about money. It’s about politics. It’s about prejudice. And you—every society needs law and order to function; you can’t do without it. But you don’t need this monster you’ve created. And the best—the most profound impact, the most profound reform will ever be made in prison will be to lift censorship. Once you do that, you’ll see a dramatic change in things.”
I swear I did not make this disjointed response up. It came out of the mouth of the former award-winning convict editor. Prison is not prison, prison is an industrial complex, ruled by power, money, politics and prejudice. Really! Why is it that most prisons do not have any industry, or even meaningful work programs in them? Why is it that most states, as their lawmakers grapple with budget deficits and other fiscal woes, are closing prisons, releasing inmates through “early release” programs while slashing rehabilitation and treatment programs? Rideau doesn’t understand these issues because he doesn’t know anything about the prison system – he spent 44 years in the Louisiana prison system as the most coddled, privileged inmate in that system’s history “sucking up” to C. Paul Phelps or any prison administration that would sanction his privileged status.
Amy Goodman was even somewhat taken aback by Rideau’s dimwit observation that the most “profound reform” in prison would be to “lift censorship.” The TV/radio host asked him” “What do you mean, lift censorship?”
Rideau responded (and, again, I swear I am not making this up): “Well, you automatically create—right now, you only know what prison authorities let you know. You have to take their word for the fact that, oh, our prisoners are well, the prison is being run well. That’s like asking dictator, you know, what is your regime like? What is he going to tell you? But once you remove censorship, what you’ve done is you’ve empowered prisoners and the employees, you know, all be more or less participants in an oversight committee. In our prison there was, what, 7,000 people: 5,000 prisoners, 2,000 employees. And they could call anybody they wanted to. As long as somebody was willing to pay the charges, every inmate could pick up the telephone, call collect to Democracy Now, New York Times, or any other place and say, ‘Hey, look, this guy is raping this guy next to me. Or this guy’ – that works. You’ll be surprised how quickly they clean up their act.”
This literary fraud, none other than Wilbert Rideau, is diseased with the dumbass! In the Louisiana prison system inmates can call anyone on their “approved telephone list” after the administration had run “background checks” on those individuals. All these calls are recorded and closely monitored. Inmates talking about wrongdoing, either among fellow inmates or prison personnel, can be locked up as a “threat to security” or for “spreading rumors” depending upon the nature of the activity discussed over the telephone.
But more to the point: I am sure the American public is ready to embrace the notion that convicted murders, drug dealers, contract killers, terrorists, child molesters, and a host of other “bad guys” should have either the right or privilege to call the news media or anyone else they like to reveal information about some guy in the next cell being raped or drugs being sold in the prison or inmates screwing around with guards. The information flowing out of the prison would be so incredible, so outlandish, so fabricated that inmates would not even enjoy the very limited credibility they have now. The vast majority of inmates in prison today are not “do-gooders,” corruption fighters or individuals bent on trying to make prisons safer, more law-abiding places.
Rideau’s article, “A Sexual Jungle” for which he captured the 1979 Polk Award, vividly described the inhuman level of violence and enslavement among inmates. Can anyone truly believe that these violent inmates want to end or “reform” that system. Prisons today, with their increased security measures and more guards, are more sexually and racially violent than they were in 1979—and all the phone calls to the New York Times or Democracy Now would not change that.
Wilbert Rideau needs to stay out of New York and remain anonymous in his cubbyhole in Baton Rouge where the water is bad and the air is worst—perhaps explaining his dumbass affliction. He most definitely needs to shut up when it comes to talking about prisons, penal reform, and the need to “lift censorship.” Some in the liberal news media may still drink at this trough but it’s truly pathetic. As I have said, and will continue to say, Rideau is a fraud—and his memoir is a personification of that.
