Rusty Saber: Mozart, Bach fighting crime in Florida

From time to time, certain news items tickle my fancy as fodder for Rusty Saber topics. The fodder for this column consists of three such fancy ticklers.

From West Palm Beach, Fla., comes a news story having nothing to do with voters who were baffled by election ballots. No, this one concerns the efforts of the police to reduce crime at an intersection where drug deals, thefts, muggings and shootings were commonplace. Two unfortunate motorists were recently murdered when a wrong turn brought them to the area.

So many loiterers gathered, day and night, that the local residents whose taxes pay for the streets and sidewalks had to walk in the streets because the loitering thugs refused to relinquish the sidewalks. Under an aptly named project, Nuisance Abatement, the police set up in an abandoned building a CD player and speakers aimed at the intersection playing selections from Mozart, Bach and Beethoven 24 hours a day.

Even if you didn't read the Associated Press account of this event, you probably can guess the outcome: Most of the loiterers fled the scene straight-away; crime of all sorts is down and locals for the time being have their neighborhood back. It is said that music has the power to soothe the savage breast. It even has the power to cause drug dealing, murdering thugs to take a powder.

Irony drips from this story: The works of musical geniuses, composers whose works have been cherished by civilized society for centuries, is so abhorrent to a bunch of thugs that they find other places to practice their thuggery. This should fortify all you lovers of good music, be it classical, jazz or just plain easy listening: you have excellent taste!

This story helps prove my theory: Car stereos turned up so loud that the ground rumbles for miles around never play listenable music. No, the musical fare is boisterous grunts, groans and electronic screeches that go far beyond dissonance.

I'll bet no one has ever heard Beethoven or Miles Davis screaming and rumbling from a car stereo.

Air rage remains in the news. Recently, flight attendants, who are most likely to confront air rage up close and personal, have stepped front and center, demanding that something be done about it. USA Today reported that air rage is even cropping up among first-class passengers. This must mean that first-class passengers are beginning to act like third-rate bums?

First class or coach, it appears that people who are hooligans on the ground are hooligans in the air; it's just that more of them are flying today, and they endanger passengers and crew members.

Liquor appears to be a common denominator in far too many air rage incidents. Passengers overdo the booze, leading to uncouth behavior. I suppose airlines could rid the skies of this menace to safety by installing secret ejection switches that would send unruly passengers on the world's only roller coaster ride without the roller coaster.

It wouldn't take many ejections of air rowdies at 50,000 feet before the word would get around. Admittedly, that might be a tad bit extreme. How about this: Stop serving liquor on airplanes. Why not? People used to smoke up a storm on airplanes; it became a problem; smoking was banned. If booze is a problem, ban it. If smokers can do without a cigarette in the air, so can drinkers do without the booze.

If you think that people in the 21st century are more enlightened than in earlier times, ponder this story: Since the middle of June, villagers in northeastern Congo have hacked to death 200 "suspected" witches. The crime they were punished for without benefit of trials is that these witches are responsible for diseases that have broken out since the start of a war in Congo three years ago.

I claim little knowledge of witches.

I have no notion as to whether they actually exist. There are individuals who claim to be witches. If they exist, I have no insight as to their aims in life, but I'm almost positive that spreading disease isn't one of them.

I suspect that the people who hacked these innocent victims to death have the same mindset as the classical music-hating drug dealers and air raging airline passengers. Thugs are thugs. What do you think?

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)