Four Degrees of Separation

You want to meet Bo Greitz? I know a woman who used to work with a guy who knows him; they used to hang out together.

Not that I’ve ever met the guy. After all, he’s one of the world’s most famous wackjob Soldier of Fortune pinups. He’s even got a character named after him in one of the world’s most popular whack ‘em and smack ‘em computer games. But if I really wanted to, I could make contact, I think.

How close are you to one of “them?” Closer than you think, I bet. My own closeness was brought home to me after I ran across something on a blogspot.

I have been pretty diligently avoiding any detailed coverage of the whole Terry Schiavo fiasco over the last few weeks. Not that it can be escaped altogether. It is impossible not to be aware of the basic outline of the situation, at least. But I don’t have cable TV, thank god, and I avoid broadcast “news.” Even on the Internet, radio, and newspapers, I’ve attempted to avoid anything more than a brief skim of commentary addressing tangential issues about constitutionality and the legal mechanics of living wills, etc.

So it was a bit of a facer to run across a brief sentence on a blog describing a man who’d gotten himself arrested while trying to “deliver a cup of water” to Mrs. Schaivo. And giving his name: Bo Greitz.

Oh, just go and Google the dude. Fewer 24-karat nutjobs have ever managed to rack up quite such a long resume of malignant kookiness. He’s right up there with Randall Terry and Fred Phelps. An iconic figure among “them.”

There “they” are. On television, doing “their” thing. Last week it was Terry Schiavo. A couple of months ago they were “saving Christmas.” (Christmas in danger? Who knew? Last I saw the sales figures were through the roof.) Next week? Who knows. They’ll turn up at some prominent gay person’s funeral with creepy, hate-laden placards, picket some judge, whatever…

We stare in horrified fascination; they’re so appalling, so wacko, so “out there.” The narrow white rims around their passionately-gazing eyes. The tight huddles, packed for maximum camera exposure. Wherever they are, you’ll usually find cameras, although who is following whom remains an unanswered question. Even those who might share some distant philosophical underpinnings with them —those sincerely worried about the growing ease of euthanasia in a culture seeming to lose its value for the vulnerable, the unwanted, the expensive among us— find their extreme tropes on the topic repulsive.

They’re not always religious, either, though religion has always been a potent escalator of mental illness. The common factor seems to be a monster-sized grudge against a world that won’t be the way they want it to be. Sometimes they’re just sad and silly and amorphously repellant. Sometimes they buy guns, or rent trucks and fill them with fertilizer, or construct bombs from lengths of pipe.

Who would want to wade into the primordial swamp of hate and delusion to examine just what separates the ones content to stand and hold signs and scream their hate from the ones who are stockpiling ammunition? Not me. It’s squicky enough to realize that I’m only a couple of degrees of separation from ol’ Bo, I have no interest in closer ties.

shudderingly,
Bright

He nominated me for West Point and Annapolis while I was a senior in high school.

... trying to pick up some reflected glory by adopting the nickname, "Bo."

Because, the character you refer to spells his last name, "Gritz."

Cheers.

...but I think it's actually the same guy. Green Beret, ex-Colonel, total nutjob.

He might very well have his reasons for swapping spellings around from time to time.

Either way, rhymes with "nights" or "frights."

bemusedly,
Bright

My dh's family, who lived in Germany when he was young, was good friends with a woman who received birthday gifts from Herman Goering when she was a young girl. Yes, from the man himself. Her father had been in the Nazi party sometime in the 1930s.