Vengeance

Mike Tyson's ear-biting may have been provoked by just plain meanness, but to speak of the ''dissolution of the veneer of civilization'' is a bit much (Op-Ed, July 3). Civilizations have uniformly been subject to violence -- with or without veneer.
Contrary to Joyce Carol Oates's assertions, biting an opponent's ears violated not a ''taboo,'' but a rule. Winning within the rules is what distinguishes boxing at its best, two individuals fighting for one prize, from mere thuggery -- one individual aiming to destroy another for vengeance or evil intent.



Vengeance for Polly

There were all sorts of small things that drew public attention to the killing of Polly Klaas. Her quiet, suburban hometown of Petaluma, Calif., had been seen in the movie ''American Graffiti.'' The actress Winona Ryder had grown up there, too, and joined in the search after Polly was taken at knifepoint from a slumber party at her home. And there was always the shy, innocent smile of a 12-year-old girl that kept connecting to people for weeks after she was kidnapped in October 1993 and for months after her body was found. When jurors decided the fate of Polly's confessed killer last week, they, too, seemed to have had that photographed smile in mind.

A defense lawyer described Richard Allen Davis as a troubled man who had done horrible things but ought to be spared because he had himself been mistreated as a child. But after several days of debate, the jurors in San Jose decided a death sentence was ''the proper thing,'' their foreman said. Polly's death and Mr. Davis's criminal past helped bring California's tough ''three strikes'' sentencing law into being in 1994. But holding a large photograph of his daughter's smiling face, Marc Klaas chose to remind people after the verdict of what would not change, even with Mr. Davis's eventual execution. TIM GOLDEN

Re ''What Clinton Can Do'' (column, Dec. 18): Many of those who advocate President Clinton's resignation often cite moral reasons. But there is a compelling argument against his resignation. The President's predicament has resulted from a long campaign of political vengeance that becomes more fervent with each passing day. Were he to resign, that vengeance would would turn on others, unleashing a two-year interregnum of partisanship that could cripple the democratic process.

Kosovar Vengeance Has Roots in West

Published: August 07, 1999

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To the Editor:

Re ''Kosovo's Costly Disorder'' (editorial, Aug. 6):

Vengeance may be a natural outcome of a decade of oppression, imprisonment and torture of Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs, followed by two months of rape, slaughter and ethnic cleansing. But it is also an outcome of Western indifference to the events of the decade since the annulment of Kosovo's self-rule and the West's inaction during the two months of atrocities while war criminals in the Serbian military fled unpunished to Serbia. Most crucially, the West allowed Serbia to maintain sovereignty over Kosovo.

How do we expect people to behave after watching their tormentors walk free? How do we expect them to behave toward a minority they view as a source of past horrors as well as future threats?

George Rivero, the silver-haired star of ''Fistfighter,'' looks far too mature for the role of a man who can whip to a quivering pulp anything that stands in his way. As C. J. Thunderbird, a muscle-bound drifter who sets out to avenge the death of a boxer friend, he creams several fighting machines that are younger, meaner and hulkier than he is.

In fulfilling his mission, C. J. journeys from Arizona to a South American town where barehanded boxing seems to be the only thing happening and where the evil local overlord is a crooked fight promoter. Thrown into prison, C. J. endures slave labor on a chain gang and solitary confinement in a metal box without a murmur of complaint. And in the sweatiest sequence of a movie drenched in perspiration and blood, he overcomes a savage giant who breaks people's limbs as though they were toothpicks.

''Fistfighter,'' which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, doesn't even offer the visceral charge of good fight sequences. The appearance of gore is the only thing suggesting that all the flurries of thrown punches (with crudely overdubbed thuds and smacks) might be landing on something. Throughout the movie, the monosyllabic star, who when photographed from certain angles bears an odd resemblance to Keith Richards, maintains the same fixed expression - the self-satisfied glare of an invincible comic-book hero. Pow! Zap! Bam! FISTFIGHTER, directed by Frank Zuniga; written by Max Bloom, from a story by Carlos Vasallo; director of photography, Hans Burman; edited by Drake Silliman; music by Emilio Kauderer; produced by Mr. Vasallo; released by Taurus Entertainment. At Criterion, Broadway and 45th Street, and other theaters. Running time: 96 minutes. This film is rated R. C. J. Thunderbird ... George Rivero Billy Vance ... Mike Connors Harry (Punchy) Moses ... Edward Albert Ellen ... Brenda Bakke

The United States Supreme Court has done more than overturn recent precedent (editorial, June 30) by ruling that relatives of victims of capital offenses may testify to influence sentencing: the Court has legitimized vengeance as a purpose, rather than as a consequence, of criminal justice.

The enormity of this atavistic pronouncement may escape most Americans familiar with the description of our public morality as the product of a Judeo-Christian ethic. The alternatives seem stark: forgive the offender or exact an eye for an eye.

There is a third course, traceable to our legacy of self-government from ancient Greece. Aristotle taught that justice is reason without passion. More than a century earlier, Aeschylus presented the ultimate civilized truth in the "Oresteia": justice is not vengeance, but a process that serves the ends of society.

The problem with vengeance is that it creates the expectation of satisfaction where there can be none. No measure of retribution can compensate for the worst crimes that beset our country. All of the cruelty of history, from the devices of the Middle Ages to the "death of a thousand cuts" in imperial China, could not repay the grief of a single family that has lost a loved one to violence.

Re ''Volpe's Father Says Warlike Stress Led to Violent Outburst'' (news article, June 2): Robert Volpe says that his son ''just lost it'' because of the warlike conditions he faced as a police officer on the street the night he tortured Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant. Many people ''just lose it'' in the face of the stresses of life these days. We have a name for such people: we call them criminals, and recently we have been locking them up for increasingly long periods of time.