A Million Stories

Evan M. Lopez

Dept. of Pants on Fire

With a begrudging hat tip to our frenemies at Phawker — those Phuckers — we would like to direct your attention to the fact that our beloved police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey , the very savior of this city, may have a wee bit of a truthiness problem back in Washington, D.C., that swampland from whence he came.

Back in September 2002, Ramsey, then the district's police chief, gleefully (he actually called it a "thing of beauty") presided over the arrests of some 400 World Bank protesters in Pershing Park — many of whom, it turned out, weren't protesters at all, but rather curious onlookers, bikers, legal observers and nearby nursing conventioneers who had wandered into the park at the wrong time, when Ramsey's goon squad descended en masse, herded the supposed hooligans into buses, carted them off to jail, strip-searched them, hog-tied them on the floor of the police academy's gym, and held them for up to 12 hours. Officially, they were arrested for disobeying a police order to disperse. Protesters later told the media they'd heard no such order; others said they'd actually tried to leave but the cops wouldn't let them. Allegations of brutality were widespread.

The day after the arrests, Ramsey did a media victory lap, proclaiming how he kept the city safe. But then the shit hit the fan. The city declined to prosecute any of the 400 wrapped up in Ramsey's dragnet. Predictably enough, class-action civil rights lawsuits followed. And during depositions, Ramsey swore up and down that he hadn't ordered those arrests.

Detective Paul Hustler, a 22-year veteran of the D.C. force, begs to differ. As first reported by Washington City Paper (no relation), Hustler says in his Nov. 16 affidavit that, as police were forming a perimeter around the park that day, "I was standing about 8 or 9 feet away from Chief Ramsey and [other D.C. police officials]. At this time, no arrests of those protesters had been made. As I walked closer, about 5 to 6 feet away from them, I heard Chief Ramsey say we're going to lock them up and teach them a lesson." And then, he continues, the police moved in.

So what does Ramsey have to say about all this? Quoth the lady who answers the phones in the commish's public affairs office: "We're not willing to comment, and neither is he!" Click. Touchy, touchy.

In related news, local pop-rock musician/obvious Beach Boys aficionado Charles Ramsey (no relation, presumably) has a new record out, good morning & good night. It's not terrible, and — added bonus! — it won't destroy your civil liberties.

But Where's the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Just the other day, we were sitting on the front porch, sipping the brown liquor that this fascist state forces us to buy at its government-run stores, and thinking to ourselves: You know what this town needs? More crazy Christians.

Well, praise Jeebus, our prayers were answered! Ray Comfort — the pornstached evangelist best-known for making YouTubes with Kirk Cameron (who, according to our research, was on a TV show once) in which he talks about "perfectly designed fruits," something called a crocoduck and other bits of scientifically illiterate nonsense that suggests, to people with double-digit IQs, that the world is 6,000 years old and the fossil record is a result of Noah's flood (which actually happened!) — devised a neat little plan to convince you secularists that everything you know is wrong. He asked his minions to go to 50 college campuses — including that satanic lair known as the University of Pennsylvania — on Nov. 19 and distribute free copies of the Comfort-edited version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. See, Darwin's work is now in the public domain, which means any jack-nozzle with a vanity press can republish it. Comfort added his own helpful introduction, which basically says that the entire book is bunk, but Genesis is literal. Science!

But future denizens of hell were not amused. All over the country, secularist groups stood ready to protest Comfort's troops. The Secular Student Alliance planned a counterattack of sorts, and even printed a bunch of pro-Darwin bookmarks to give to the students who took one of Comfort's books. Crafty! So, Comfort pulled a fast one — and moved his go-date up to Nov. 18, which totally caught the heathens unaware. Craftier! He was mighty proud of himself, too, on his blog. "Owing to our date change," he posted, "no doubt they have a lot [of bookmarks] left over." He offered to pay their printing bills, because they're going to burn for eternity anyway.

We wandered over to Penn on the 19th, not yet hipped to the fact that this thing was over and done with. But! We found a few people who were there, as the Jesus Freaks handed out their fake-Darwin books near the campus library. And no one was all that worked up about it, one way or another. Even the Christians we talked to weren't particularly fond of this Comfort guy. Says one student who runs a prayer group through Penn Students for Christ

— This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman and Billy Kekevian