Soccer Dad

Snoop's redemption

The very next morning, July 19, 1981, the Sunday edition of the New York Times carried the review of Abbott's new book, In the Belly of the Beast. Reviewer Terrence Des Pres gave a mostly favorable report and expressed gratitude to Abbott's mentor, Norman Mailer. "We must be grateful to him (Mailer) for getting these letters into publishing form and, a job more difficult, for helping to get Abbott out on parole."

"The very next morning?" The night before this literary giant, Jack Henry Abbott had gotten into an argument with a newly married 22 year old waiter.

After he took the order, Adan brought the information to the kitchen. Within a few minutes, Abbott arose from the table to use the men's room. When he asked Adan where the men's room was, the waiter explained that it could only be reached by walking through the kitchen and was off-limits to customers. But Abbott insisted on using the restroom. A verbal argument ensued between the two men, though it was quiet and hardly heard by the other diners. "It was all very low key," an employee later told a reporter from the Times. "You could hardly hear what they were saying before they went out on the street." Abbott told Adan to "take it outside." The two men exited the restaurant onto Fifth Street. The argument continued for only a minute longer. Abbott suddenly pulled out a knife and plunged it into Adan's chest. The blade pierced his heart.

"I'm hurt, it hurts!" he cried, "God, how it hurts!" Blood gushed from his chest as a passerby approached him to give aid. Abbott ran back into Binibon's and shouted to one of the girls, "Let's get out of here! I just killed a man!" The terrified girls left with Abbott and walked a block away. Suddenly, Abbott stopped, turned to the girls and said, "You don't know me!" He then ran off into the night without saying another word. The police arrived within minutes and found Adan dead in the street. Witnesses immediately told police what happened, and the two female students who were with Abbott provided his name.

What reminds of Jack Henry Abbot and the support he got from Norman Mailer? The Washington Post's profile of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, The Role of her Life.

Snoop, as she was called on the street, is now an actress playing a character named "Snoop." The beginning of the profile plays up her redemption.

What he had in mind was a role on "The Wire," where she plays a coldblooded assassin with whom she just happens to share a name. Among other things.

"They saved my life," Snoop, now 26, says of "The Wire's" producers. "The route I was going was, I was going backwards again. God works in mysterious ways, that's all I can say. Thank God."

Adds her cast mate Andre Royo, who plays Bubbles on the show: "Thank God God watches HBO."

The problem is that "[a]mong other things" that the article subsequently mentions.

April 27, 1995.

It was a Thursday night, a school night, and Okia "Kia" Toomer had just run out to the store. She ended up in an alley around 9 p.m., not far from her house. There, Kia's grandmother, Sylvia Williams, says, and police records agree, "some girls got to fighting."

It's not clear what they were fighting about.

But one thing is clear, according to court records: Felicia Pearson pulled out a gun and fired it. Twice. The crowd scattered. Kia ran, too. But a bullet pierced her left buttock, tearing through nerves, veins and arteries before it exited the other side.

Kia fell down in the alley, calling out to a friend, who lay down with her, right there in the street, and waited for the ambulance, according to her grandmother. She died on the operating table at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"At 11:02 p.m.," her grandmother says.

Kia was 15.

Snoop was 14.

I'm not going to say that Snoop didn't have a hard life. She was born drug dependent; her parents died when she was a child; the people who became her "family" were thugs. In fact it's pretty clear that for all of his self-pity, Jack Abbot's early life was easy compared to that of Snoop's.

But now Snoop's a star. Her victim is a memory; a painful one to her family.

It's been nearly 12 years since Kia was killed, but the wound is still fresh. Hearing about Snoop on "The Wire" ripped off the scab. One of Williams's daughters saw the show and called Williams, crying.

"She said, 'That girl that killed Kia is on "The Wire." She's still acting violent.' "

Williams can't bear to watch the show. How did this girl get to be on TV? Why are they letting her grandbaby's killer play a killer? As Williams sees it, Pearson didn't do enough time -- "she came out of prison, bragging" -- and now she's on TV?

On one hand the fact that someone with Snoop's background has achieved something in life is encouraging. We live in a society where a street thug can be redeemed. But Snoop didn't just rob and do drugs. In a moment of apparent malice she killed.

On one hand she served her time - even if it was an extremely lenient sentence for manslaughter. Now she should be able to make a go of her life. Also escaping - and staying away from - her former life she will live a full life without having to look over her shoulder all the time. Society can't demand more of her than the law does. But she didn't just get any job. She got a job that made her a celebrity. Somehow that seems inappropriate.

But the bigger problem is what prevents Snoop from going the way of Jack Abbott? Abbott was championed by Norman Mailer and others on the grounds that one who created art at a certain level was incapable of the evil that he would one day commit again.

Why should Snoop be different?

Though I'm no forensic psychologist, I'd suggest one possibility: an author need not fit into society. Sure he's got an agent, but for the most part his art is individual and requires no interaction with others. Abbott could create his art and not change as a person.

An actor, on the other hand, does have requirements. Snoop plays her character in accordance with a script, a director and other actors. She can't be anti-social the way that Abbott could be - even if he lved the life of a celebrity - now that she's seemingly found her calling.

I hope that the producers of The Wire are correct in giving her the break.

UPDATE: Zino.TV objects a lot more strongly.

Blogdigger tags: The Wire, Felicia Pearson, Snoop, Jack Henry Abbott.