A Google search for Malachi Ritscher came up with more than 120,000 hits this week, but the only mention of him in the Tribune remained the brief paid death notice published November 12. It described Ritscher, 52, as someone “active in Chicago’s avant-garde/experimental jazz scene as a recording engineer, fan and sometime-musician” and as someone who “loved his country; hated this war; and was not afraid to act on his convictions.”
By November 7 people who knew Ritscher were pretty certain who’d died. Peter Margasak posted their conclusion on his Reader blog that day, and the body was definitively identified a day later. Roeper then wrote a second column in which he said there were two schools of thought–that Ritscher was a martyr and that he was mentally ill–and they might not be mutually exclusive. But “if he thought setting himself on fire and ending his life in Chicago would change anyone’s mind about the war in Iraq, his last gesture on this planet was his saddest and his most futile.”
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And from the Tribune, nothing. An editor who might have explained the paper’s silence didn’t get back to me.
A few minutes later “Kirsten Major” said in a blog post that a friend had forwarded Margasak’s story to her in New York City and she was going to forward it to others–“but this really deserves national pickup.” Other voices chimed in.
He went on, “If God watches the sparrow fall, you notice that it continues to drop, even to its death. Face the truth folks, God doesn’t care, that’s not what God is or does….It is time to let go of primitive and magical beliefs, and enter the age of personal responsibility….My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one….I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. I will not participate in your charade–my conscience will not allow me to be a part of your crusade. There might be some who say ‘it’s a coward’s way out’–that opinion is so idiotic that it requires no response. From my point of view, I am opening a new door.”
I got an e-mail from Joe Germuska, a DJ at Northwestern University’s WNUR. He knew Ritscher a little and was puzzled by the lack of coverage. “There are a lot of people who are feeling that it is strange that it hasn’t been covered more,” he wrote, “but maybe they are all delusional and it really doesn’t qualify as news.” Was Ritscher’s cause the reason? “It doesn’t seem like the anti-war movement gets much press coverage in any way,” Germuska reflected. Or was it the way he died? “If no one notices, then is it possible that he gave his life for naught? People do not believe that all suicides are newsworthy, but this one was designed to evoke a response.”
It’s not uncommon for a libel verdict to be overturned or for damages to be sharply reduced on appeal, but this would be no ordinary appeal. As Abdon Pallasch wondered in the Sun-Times, “How could the justices of the state Supreme Court hear an appeal of their chief judge’s case–in which most of them testified?” Aside from the First Amendment issues any libel suit poses, the sheer ungainliness of a suit brought in state courts by the highest judge of those courts is why I’m not alone in wishing Thomas had satisfied himself with a stiff letter to the editor.
