European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 24, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tonya Harding and talk radio could use body slams Andy Rooney id i Tell you Tonya called she did. Tonya Harding called me. She was doing a radio talk show in port land ore., and she wanted me to come on with her and wrestle. That was the Deal. I was to wrestle Tonya Harding on radio i guess. Even though i look better on radio i declined. Neither Tonya Harding nor radio talk shows interest me a great Deal. I get several Calls a week from radio disc jockeys who Are on the air. They re All looking for some cheap easy Way to get through the morning. I do the same thing i do with callers who Are Selling something. I hang up. Why does someone making a living doing a radio talk show feel free to interrupt whatever someone else is doing to get five minutes of free entertain ment driving to work i listen to a talk show done in new York by an aging hippy named Don Imus. He s Bright amusing and marginally funnier than he is dirty. It s interesting How Many americans listen to dirty radio talk shows. Howard Stern is the most Lis whipped up Over Singapore s Savage penalty Clarence Page Max Jennings editor of the Dayton daily news thought he was going Roget away with a Calm reasoned Opin Ion on the Case of Michael Fay Busboy was he was in for a Surprise. If Fay s name does t ring a Bell maybe the Singapore swing kid As one headline put it does. The 18-year-old Dayton native got himself into a Heap of trouble in Singapore where he was sentenced recently to six lashes with a thick moistened Rattan Rod wielded by a martial arts expert. Those who have witnessed or experienced this punishment offer ghastly descriptions of flying bits of flesh blood paintings reviving More lashes Shock and permanent wounds physical and mental Fay s crime he confessed to two counts of Spray painting cars two counts of mischief and one count of receiving stolen signs. Is this punishment excessive by american Stan Dards yes. Tonya Harding in january before the fall. Tend to on miming radio and by far the dirtiest. Pm curious to know How Many regular Christian churchgoers listen to Stern or iras. Stern is jewish Imus is an atheist or at the very least an agnostic. His audience is several Hundred in Points above Sterns but to guess that More than half of the listeners to each program Are churchgoers. I Don t understand How people can profess virtue on sundays and listen to Howard Stern weekdays. We All know All the words and All the body parts but there s an unwritten agreement among civilized people that there Are things we Don t say or do in Public. We dose the bedroom door when we re in there with someone and we dose the bathroom door when we re alone. Anyone willing to break the unwritten but sorry Mike Singapore Ain t America. They execute drug users in Singapore they Fine you if you Chew gum fail to flush a Public toilet or Wear your hair too  is not How most americans want to live. But that does t mean a lot of americans Don t wish we had such Tough Laws. Jennings found that out when he wrote a Calm reasoned column on How a modern country like Singapore has barbarous punishment for such a minor  thought i was pretty much expressing the View of most readers Jennings recalls wrong mail poured in. Almost All of it said 1 Fay had it coming and 2 maybe Little Singapore has a thing or two to teach the Good of Usa. What Dayton thinks is particularly significant be cause Dayton has Keg been viewed Fay marketing experts and political pollsters As a Belh Ether for the nation. Companies test the Appeal of their products with Dayton Consumers. Political pundits and consultants Parachute into Dayton a Ery four years to test Middle american political views. As Dayton goes so goes America. If America is saying Fay should be flogged it is a troubling sign of something most of us already know about America s growing frustration with crime. Such was the tone struck by Singapore s ministry of Home affairs in an official statement that noted we do not have a situation where acts of vandalism Are commonplace As in cities like new York where even Poike cars Are not spared the acts of  the Gintom administration has protested the can ing but no too loudly. Compared to Serbia Haiti or North Korea Singapore can breathe easily. Americans get err itrel about the Fay Case because unlike Whitewater Bosnia or the prime rate it is something everyone understands or thinks they do. Many of us deplore the collapse of civility in modern life a collapse that feeds a Rise in crime and unwed teen aged pregnancies and babies raising babies and More welfare dependency Aix lower test scores and More crime. We re sick of it. We want to lock up rules can get an audience on filth alone. So anyway i m not going to wrestle Tonya har Ding. Five already had trouble with my Knees. Nancy Kerrigan Well maybe. If we did wrestle i d kill Tonya Harding even with the age difference. She must be muscular but i outweigh her by at least 60 pounds and i wrestled in College. Once you be Learned How to handle your body you have a great advantage Over most people. A Boxer might Knock out a wrestler with one punch but if he did t and the wrestler made Contact the Boxer would be finished. One of my great moments in the army was the Day As a recruit i got in an argument with a North Carolina regular army Corporal named Fay funder Burk. We agreed to meet in the company Street for a fight the next morning. The next Day everyone turned out for the Brawl Between this College kid me and this mean old vet eran.  Fay hit me once in the ribs. I dived for his legs brought him Down straddled his Back wrapped my legs around his midsection in a figure four scissors and put both my arms under his armpits and up be Hind his neck. I squeezed with my legs and forced his head Down on his Chest until he could hardly breath. It s an illegal hold but we weren t fighting by the rules and no one knew the rules anyway. Within 30 seconds i made Fay Funderburk say  literally i made him say it. Say Uncle " i yelled. He gasped. Louder i screamed As squeezed Uncle he wheezed. I got off let him up and from that Day Forward i got a great Deal More re Spect from the other Guys in the regiment. They did t know i wrestled dirty. I would t do that to Tonya. Not even on talk radio. Tribuno Media services Andy Rooney is a former stars and stripes Rop Ortor More criminals. We look at Singapore and think a maybe they have the answer. But crime studies and simple experience show it is not the severity of punishment that deters crime but the certainty of it unfortunately punishment has become less certain because of crowded courts and jails. Yet politics has been pushing us toward stiffer penalties while doing Lutle or nothing to increase the chances that the penalty will be carried out. Our jails have become so full that those who com Mit major crimes get lighter sentences if any at All and youths who commit minor crimes like the vandalism to which Fay confessed Are not even held. Yet it is through minor juvenile crimes that big time criminals have their first exposure to our criminal Justice system and lose their respect for it. Even now with bipartisan sentiment running to Ward three strikes you re out legislation to lock up More repeat felons for longer terms emotions Cool quickly when the same voters Are asked to raise taxes or Cut popular programs to pay for it. And consider this while the Little Island nation of Singapore is one of the world s most crime free countries it is also one of the world s most Prosper Ous countries. The Gap Between Rich and poor in Singapore is microscopic compared to the chasm that divides poor americans from the rest of us. Part of the resentment toward Michael Fay seems to be directed at the presumption that this is a privileged suburban White boy who knew better but thought he could get away with his crime like he undoubtedly would have gotten away with it in the states where the jails Are too full of Young murder ers and drug runners to accommodate him. Maybe Many of us figure it s time for him to learn a valuable Long overdue lesson. But if we americans let our resentments and frustrations reduce us to applauding barbarism Fay is no worse than we Are. As Harry and Louise say in their famous insurance Industry commercials there must be a better Way. Chicago Tribune april 24,1994 sunday pages