WAIT A MINUTE ON THE MURDER OF KITTY GENOVESE

March 13, 1964: Kitty Genovese is walking home in the dark and early hours of the morning. She’s just ended her shift as a bartender in her hometown of Queens, New York. She’s a hundred feet from home when a man named Winston Moseley comes up to her and starts to stab her over and over again.  She carries no weapon to repel the man; it’s dark; she’s alone; soon, she’ll be dead.

Kitty begins to scream, and I mean really scream. She screams so loudly that her calls for help awaken 38 neighbors in her apartment building just across the street. The lights go on in bedroom after bedroom as 38 eyewitnesses rush to their windows to see what in the world is going on. Seeing the lights, Moseley flees as Kitty staggers  from the street into an apartment stairwell.

Minutes later, Moseley returns. He attacks. He stabs her again and again. He kills her. Kitty dies alone.

HOLD ON

Wait. What are the 38 doing? Are some yelling at the attacker? Are some rushing to help her? Are some calling the police?

What would have been a story buried way back in the pages of The New York Times becomes a worldwide sensation as its headlines a few days later announce: “37 WHO SAW MURDER DIDN’T CALL THE POLICE.” Over the years those headlines have triggered books, articles, sermons, sociological studies, and references in TV shows (“Perry Mason,” “SVU” et al.), as actors, one after another say what the ashamed witnesses said in 1964, “I didn’t want to get involved.” NY City and America became tarred with a broad brush as being callous, uncaring, and scared, because, “We didn’t want to get involved.”

WAIT A MINUTE!

Were there 37 or 38 eyewitnesses? First I wrote about the 38 neighbors, then there’s The New York Times' headline back then that reported, “37 WHO SAW A MURDER.”  Which is it?  38? 37?

What people don't know is that the number was changed from 37 to 38 and that change should have told us, “Something’s up.” That change should have caused us to ask, “What’s going on here?” We should have asked, “Wait. How in the world could anyone know what the number was in the first place?” Did some reporter count the windows on that side of the building? But even if someone did count the windows, how would he know how many woke up to come to their windows; how would he know how many were in their rooms at the time to become witnesses? Or maybe someone interviewed the 38 and that's how they knew the count. We would assume so.

NOW YOU TELL US

Something was up back then. We now know The Times’ story of the infamous 38 was fabricated as was their cold and callous indifference that night. It was all a lie. We learn 50 years later that one witness did start yelling at Moseley from his window as the attack was in progress and that was another reason Moseley momentarily fled. Another neighbor did call the police and the police told her, “We’ve received calls. We’re on the way.”  So some of the 38 (or 37) did call the police. Now you tell us.

And to cap it off, Kitty’s best friend in the building heard her screams and rushed down the stairs and out of the building, risking her life, but when she got to the scene, Moseley was gone. She held Kitty in her arms as Kitty bled to death. Yet, the reporter wrote for the world to read, “She died alone.” She didn’t. Now you tell us.

WAIT. WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

Why didn’t the editor of the article, Abe Rosenthal, check the facts before tar and feathering the 38 (or 37) and the rest of New York City?  In his answer, decades later, he said, “It [checking the facts] would have ruined the story.” It would have ruined the story? Yes, that’s his answer, 50 years later.

But why didn’t someone else check out the facts and write the truth? CBS news correspondent Mike Wallace answered that question, 50 years too late: “Because it was The New York Times,” he said. One doesn’t check out The Times. Why not? Because it’s The Times.

Fifty years later, Wallace, was asked to comment on why he reported back then, “Why did 38 people fail to act? The answer to that question concerns every one of us who fears perhaps that apathy has become part of our way of life.”

He answered, “Oh, I think to a certain degree it was a media creation. No one investigated the 38. No one followed up on it or anything of that nature.” Wait. A media creation? Can we say, "A media lie"?

Then came the follow-up question: “Do you have any feel for why [no one investigated the 38] which would have been normal with this case or any other case?

Wallace said, “Because it was taken seriously by The New York Times.”

Getting down to the basics, the real reason the editor invented the story is because the lie fit his worldview. In other words, he wanted it to be true. He concocted a story to fit his agenda. 

PAUL NAILED IT

Paul refers to this penchant in man to make the facts fit his agenda. The way he puts it is, ". . . men suppress the truth in unrighteousness." A recent case of suppression of the truth is a book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code.

In his work of fiction, Brown writes that the church, in a meeting of over 300 bishops, declared Jesus to be divine in the 4th century by a vote, "and a relatively close one at that." 

Unfortunately the average reader of fiction is as knowledgeable of church history as a fruit fly. The average reader doesn't know that the Council of Nicea (the meeting Brown's character in the book is talking about) was called because the deity of Christ, already established, was under attack by a heretic named Arius. 

This gathering in 325AD was for the purpose of condemning the Arians and did so by reaffirming what the Bible already taught: that Jesus had the very same nature as God.

The meeting wasn't to "vote in" the deity of Christ; it was to declare and reaffirm what was already established doctrine. At the conclusion of the meeting, the members of the council were asked to sign their agreement (not vote) with the biblical teaching that:

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”  

In the Da Vinci Code, Brown says the vote was "a relatively close one at that." Relatively close? Relatively close? Brown must have been using magic math to come to the conclusion that his so-called vote was close; those who signed that they agreed with the above statement declaring the deity of Christ numbered 316. Those who opposed it numbered 2. 

If the score of a football game was 316 to 2, who in the world would pronounce it, "A relatively close game"? 

IMPACT

In Britain, The Da Vinci Code is the number one best-seller ever, even beating Harry Potter. Over 40,000,000 people purchased Brown's book. It's been translated into over 40 languages. In 2006, Ron Howard made it into a movie with Tom Hanks. It made 758.2 million dollars.  

Let's call the book and the movie what they were: an attack on the gospel because part of the gospel is that Jesus of Nazareth is God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity.

To suppress the truth, Dan Brown fabricated a situation, a vote, and "a relatively close one at that." Like the reporter on the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, Brown invented a story to fit his agenda. 

The more things change, the more it's the same old same old.

 

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