OF MURDER, JUSTICE AND THE NEW AMERICAN WAY
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - February 14, 1996
Author: DICK FEAGLER

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The kid who butchered Vincent Drost for the fun of it is going to prison for at least 36 years. Somebody ought to write a rap song about that.

As revealed here some months ago, Avery Holland and his pals went hunting for human prey after listening to a gangsta rap song called "Creep On A Come-up." This is gibberish for mugging somebody when he isn't looking. It's a musical salute to cowardice, animal instincts and murder. But Avery Holland made it the music of his life.

Holland has had his last waltz. When the music stopped, he found himself looking at Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cleary, who is a no-nonsense jurist. If his sentence means what it says, he will be sitting out the creeping years in a small concrete room until 2032. The state of Ohio will have 36 years to make a normal human being out of Avery Holland. We call that rehabilitation, but there's nothing "re" about it. If Holland is trained to some level of civilization, it will be a brand-new experience for him.

Homicide investigators discovered that the county had removed him from an abusive home. There are reports that he was deliberately scalded as a child. He passed through a series of foster homes until the county, unsure what to do with him, parked him in a YMCA on W. 25th St. He was 17 when he plunged the knife into Vincent Drost on a street corner in Lakewood.

"I'm not the heartless person you think I am," Holland told Judge Cleary.

Ah, but he is. He just doesn't know he is. When, in his 17 years of life, had anybody explained the properties and function of the human heart? What instructions Holland got, he got through a set of earphones. A rap song told him it was OK to go prowling for victims, so he went out looking for Vincent Drost with a soundtrack beating in his head, suggesting adventures unheard of over at the "Y."

In America, many self-righteous lies are told for profit. Tobacco executives insist that cigarettes are not addictive. Millionaire foremen of the entertainment factories deny that violent lyrics and violent programs make murder seem a valid pastime to people like Avery Holland. They are lying a lie about money that they disguise as a truth about rights.

Theirs is the only kind of air pollution the government shrinks from controlling. The government will sniff your tailpipe and tell you you're a hazard and charge you for the experience. But the toxic emissions that made Avery Holland so murderously giddy are perfumed with essence of free speech. The First Amendment doesn't mask the stench. It's like a squirt of Chanel No. 5 in a privy.

Now we are told we will be saved from contamination by the V-chip. This much-acclaimed silly notion is designed to stall our fears until we catch on to its impotence. What broadcaster is going to brand his product unfit? What advertiser is going to associate himself with such a product? What delinquent parent of a delinquent kid is going to give a damn? What V-chip would have interfered with Avery Holland's seduction by the rap "artists" who pointed him toward Vincent Drost and gave him a little push?

The answer isn't V-chips and the answer isn't censorship. The answer is outrage and boycotts and condemnation from a society trying desperately to stop itself from sliding into chaos. Voices have already been raised against this mind pollution and there ought to be more of them and they ought to be louder.

Do I think rap music alone made Avery Holland a murderer? No, sir. Here's what I think. I think for 17 years he was abused and passed around and ignored and shoved out of sight. I think he grew up belonging to no one, a misfit. And then one night, the slick voices in his head told him there was a whole disgusting way of life that was normal and natural and OK.

I think the "artists" who sold him that should have been called to the courtroom and introduced to Vincent Drost 's heartsick family and his fiancee. And to say goodbye to the kid who told the cops his ambition was to be a rapper.

I think they should have been there to watch their fan as he faced Judge Cleary's music. It might have been his last chance to get an autograph. When he comes out of prison at 54, his musical tastes will have changed.

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