I’m willing to give Jared November the benefit of the doubt. Some might say there’s not a lot of doubt to work with, but what there is, sure. Let him benefit by it.
So when he says he was trying to do a good thing by auctioning off to the highest bidder a purported memento from the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo, I’m willing to suspend disbelief. Willing to say it’s entirely possible he’s not just some bottom-feeding, publicity-seeking lowlife.
Unfortunately, even if you accept November’s plea of good intentions, the thing he tried to do still seems tawdry and small. Seems to minimize and trivialize both an innocent man’s death and the painful national soul searching that death produced.
But for the record, here’s his story. November, a 52-year-old retired cabbie from the South Bronx, claims that in February, he found in the garbage a bullet-riddled chunk of the door before which Diallo stood, unarmed, as New York City police used him for target practice. This week, November posted it for sale on eBay, the online auction site. He asked $41,000–a thousand for each bullet fired. Questioned by a New York Times reporter, November swore he had no interest in making a profit. He wanted to use the money, he said, to support a march on Washington demanding increased oversight of the police. And also, to help turn the Bronx building where the young African immigrant died into a memorial.
More Top Picks Bathroom Fans
Diallo’s parents were infuriated when they learned of November’s efforts. In the face of their protests, the Web site has removed the listing.
In a way, I find it more comforting to believe November is a cynical, shifty-eyed hustler who does not understand the meaning of basic propriety.
I mean, you look at the stuff people have sold, tried to sell, or purported to sell in recent years–body organs, Nazi memorabilia, artifacts of slavery, human eggs–and it makes you shudder. Not just that people market such things, not just that some people might buy them, but that we as a culture appear to have adapted to it. Indeed, become inured to it.
Do you remember the O.J. Simpson trading cards that were available at the height of his murder trial? Remember how two people were brutally hacked to death, a third stood trial for his life, and the whole sordid tragedy was reduced to a set of collectible cards? Do you remember any sense of widespread indignation about it, people rising in revulsion?
Me neither.
Maybe I’m entirely too naive to live, but it has always seemed simple to me: There are things you sell and other things you don’t. Other things that, by their connection with bottomless human tragedy or their symbolism of limitless human potential, demand a reverence the marketplace doesn’t allow. And to sell such things–particularly on the open market like a Ping-Pong table or a used car–is to deny them the weight of meaning. To make them common and small.
Granted, if he does indeed own a piece of the door where Diallo died, Jared November is perfectly within his rights to sell it. But this isn’t about rights. Rather, it’s about RIGHT. And wrong.
The problem is that when money enters the picture, some folks lose the ability to tell the one from the other. When money comes through the front door, common sense goes out the back.
How else could November have failed to anticipate that what he proposed to do would be questionable at best and mortally offensive at worst? How else could he fail to understand that what he proposed to sell wasn’t just a piece of wood, but a piece of our ability to set aside, to honor and revere. That ability is, it should be noted, among the precious few things that set us aside from the other animals.
And it’s worth a heck of a lot more than $41 grand.
———-
E-mail: [email protected]