I will not use the name Norm Porter or "Every Newspaper in the Country Is Trying To Convince Me There's An Innate Link Between Poetry & Homicide"
J.J. Jameson was one of the best writers this city had goin for it, and the closest we were ever gonna get to our own Bukowski. The last time I saw him was a couple months ago at the Tuesday night reading at the Cafe. He was ornery, cranky, irritable, loud, slurring, and occasionally full of laughter. He read a piece about being old, and laughed dry, hard, old man's laughter. A gob of spit flew from his mouth as he slowly enunciated 'and I...DON'T...NEED NO...GODDAMN VIAGRA...YET.' He was there with a much younger woman with red hair.
The first time I saw him was six years ago at the library in Oak Park. I borrowed my parent's car and went out there for the youth slam that Nell, who would become my roommate a few years later, hosted once a month.
He was old then, and one of those people you'd imagined had been old his whole life. It just suited him. He was being a cranky, irritable complete sonuvabitch and there were nods across the room from boys who thought in unison, "God, that's what I want to be when I'm old."
Nell was interviewing him for the feature. He was giving his life story and, we would only find out yesterday that it was nearly all lies. He didn't grow up exactly where he said he did, he never had one...or two adult daughters.
None of this matters to me. I don't care about the past of Norm A.Porter, Jr., I've never met the man. What's important to me, is John/Jacob Jameson's.
As an entity, J.J. Jameson, a name randomly cribbed from a phone book in 1985, is 20 years old tody, the same age the Norm Porter was when he killed a store clerk during a robbery in 1960. J. Jameson's work for the antiwar movement, towards prison reform, at his Unitarian Church, for the betterment of Chicago's conscious as a whole, none of it will matter, nor should it. Just as the rest of us, he is subject to the laws of the land, even as an old man. It can be argued that the 20 year old criminal is long-reformed, it doesn't matter. His reformation was supposed to happen in the confines of a prison, where he will probably go back to.
What matters to me is how the local papers treat the story and he himself. The Sun Times and it's idiot, kid sister Red Streak barely mention the name he's given himself. They disregard the entire life he'd made for himself here. Every caption of him is Norman Porter, if even that.
In the Sun Times, it's
"Killer Poet's Lie on the Lam"
In the Red Streak, it's
"Killer Poet Captured"
in the Sun Times again (and a number of other clever papers across the country):
"Poetic Justice...."
On a personal level I take issue with it. J.J. was a good person, even if he made himself that way, and even if Norm Porter wasn't. He's heard me, and scores of other Chicago writers, and we've heard him. That's my own beef.
On a critical level, however, it's just one (or three) headlines in a string of a long history of bullshit. Regularly, the Sun Times comes out with these cutesy irreverent or alarming sensational, editorialized, tabloid headlines that mock the content of the stories. In Red Streak it's nearly forgivable; it was born with a considerable pretense of safe, built-in snark. Besides, the only thing that makes that paper salvageable are Zippy the Pinhead comics and the fact that it's better than Tribune Co.'s RedEye.
The Sun Times is a grown up newspaper though and they've been getting worse and worse over the last few years. Or maybe it's only been more noticeable with the war on terror, where it's seen fit to head up the day's war roundup with something making fun of a war victim.
In all that he worked for since boarding that Greyhound to Chicago J. Jameson deserves more than that, and the rest of the city does as well.
Of course the Sun Times wasn't the only guilty party- both the killer poet and poetic justice lines were aped around the globe- they were just the one who should've been trying harder. The one that would've gotten to his friends.
As people turn to blogs for their news the old newspaper dynasties are stumbling all over themselves trying to sound casual and ironic and making fools of themselves. This has been happening more and more. These kind of dynosaur trends usually happen en masse, but for the Sun Times it is old hat.
The result is that a lot of people, innocent people, guilty people, more often than not accused or dead people have their dignity robbed of them. I'm not gonna be the one to say whether he was a despicable person that did good things or a good person who did one the worst possible things a man can do.
The L.A. Times said that the "Escaped Killer Hid as Poet in Chicago". They're wrong. The "escaped killer" WAS a poet in Chicago; he was one of the best, and I hope to get to see him read again.
p.s. for a very interesting discussion thread betwen J.J. Jameson's friends, the curious, the distraught and the rest of the world, go here. It touches on the good points and the bad, the killer and the victims, the man we all knew a little bit and his words.
The first time I saw him was six years ago at the library in Oak Park. I borrowed my parent's car and went out there for the youth slam that Nell, who would become my roommate a few years later, hosted once a month.
He was old then, and one of those people you'd imagined had been old his whole life. It just suited him. He was being a cranky, irritable complete sonuvabitch and there were nods across the room from boys who thought in unison, "God, that's what I want to be when I'm old."
Nell was interviewing him for the feature. He was giving his life story and, we would only find out yesterday that it was nearly all lies. He didn't grow up exactly where he said he did, he never had one...or two adult daughters.
None of this matters to me. I don't care about the past of Norm A.Porter, Jr., I've never met the man. What's important to me, is John/Jacob Jameson's.
As an entity, J.J. Jameson, a name randomly cribbed from a phone book in 1985, is 20 years old tody, the same age the Norm Porter was when he killed a store clerk during a robbery in 1960. J. Jameson's work for the antiwar movement, towards prison reform, at his Unitarian Church, for the betterment of Chicago's conscious as a whole, none of it will matter, nor should it. Just as the rest of us, he is subject to the laws of the land, even as an old man. It can be argued that the 20 year old criminal is long-reformed, it doesn't matter. His reformation was supposed to happen in the confines of a prison, where he will probably go back to.
What matters to me is how the local papers treat the story and he himself. The Sun Times and it's idiot, kid sister Red Streak barely mention the name he's given himself. They disregard the entire life he'd made for himself here. Every caption of him is Norman Porter, if even that.
In the Sun Times, it's
"Killer Poet's Lie on the Lam"
In the Red Streak, it's
"Killer Poet Captured"
in the Sun Times again (and a number of other clever papers across the country):
"Poetic Justice...."
On a personal level I take issue with it. J.J. was a good person, even if he made himself that way, and even if Norm Porter wasn't. He's heard me, and scores of other Chicago writers, and we've heard him. That's my own beef.
On a critical level, however, it's just one (or three) headlines in a string of a long history of bullshit. Regularly, the Sun Times comes out with these cutesy irreverent or alarming sensational, editorialized, tabloid headlines that mock the content of the stories. In Red Streak it's nearly forgivable; it was born with a considerable pretense of safe, built-in snark. Besides, the only thing that makes that paper salvageable are Zippy the Pinhead comics and the fact that it's better than Tribune Co.'s RedEye.
The Sun Times is a grown up newspaper though and they've been getting worse and worse over the last few years. Or maybe it's only been more noticeable with the war on terror, where it's seen fit to head up the day's war roundup with something making fun of a war victim.
In all that he worked for since boarding that Greyhound to Chicago J. Jameson deserves more than that, and the rest of the city does as well.
Of course the Sun Times wasn't the only guilty party- both the killer poet and poetic justice lines were aped around the globe- they were just the one who should've been trying harder. The one that would've gotten to his friends.
As people turn to blogs for their news the old newspaper dynasties are stumbling all over themselves trying to sound casual and ironic and making fools of themselves. This has been happening more and more. These kind of dynosaur trends usually happen en masse, but for the Sun Times it is old hat.
The result is that a lot of people, innocent people, guilty people, more often than not accused or dead people have their dignity robbed of them. I'm not gonna be the one to say whether he was a despicable person that did good things or a good person who did one the worst possible things a man can do.
The L.A. Times said that the "Escaped Killer Hid as Poet in Chicago". They're wrong. The "escaped killer" WAS a poet in Chicago; he was one of the best, and I hope to get to see him read again.
p.s. for a very interesting discussion thread betwen J.J. Jameson's friends, the curious, the distraught and the rest of the world, go here. It touches on the good points and the bad, the killer and the victims, the man we all knew a little bit and his words.
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