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Show r i"' '" Page A12 Thursday, February 4, 1988 Park Record WDaacDdl9ya mm. BY RICK BROUGII w m a " ! ii.i 1 jFW White Dog and the Singers Wouldn't you know it. Some weeks almost nothing happens hap-pens around Summit County. Then, on the very same day that the United States Film Festival opens, a Mormon Mor-mon Church is Kamas is blown up and the 13-day siege of Marion begins. The festival was intended to show off Park City as a center for cultural activity and a fine winter tourist town. The Singer siege attracted attention, too, but not the right kind. Utah made the headlines for nearly two weeks, portrayed as a state with gun-toting fundamentalists. fundamen-talists. The two events could hardly to more different. Is there anything in the U.S. Festival that could relate to the Singer's all-American story gone wrong? Maybe. There was a movie called "White Dog." It's a fable about hate. It starts out as almost a Disney movie. A young actress ac-tress (Kristy McNichol) is driving along a canyon road at night when she hits a dog-a beautiful snow-white German Shepherd. She fixes him up and adopts him while looking for his owner. The first few minutes of the film are calculated to make you like the animal. Gee you say, what a big affectionate affec-tionate lummox. Look at him knock Kristy down and slobber over her. What a big, strong dog ! He only has one problem. He attacks people, seemingly seeming-ly at random. His white coat spotted with blood, the dog suddenly becomes a monster. There seems to be no reason for the attacks, but the audience notices one common factor. All the victims are black. Kristy takes the mutt to an animal trainer, where she's told that she's got a White Dog. Of course he's white, she says. No, says the trainer. A White Dog is someone trained by whites to attack blacks. It has been indoctrinated to carry out somebody else's hostility. It's easy to create a White Dog, says the trainer (black actor Paul Winfield.) Find a black wino or junkie when the dog is a pup. And have the black whip the living hell out of the dog. That way the dog is programmed to at tack blacks before they attack him. It's a fascinating premise, and a true one. (The director direc-tor of the film, Sam Fuller, told me there are still White Dogs in South Africa.) And suddenly this past week, it reminded me of this second generation of Singers. Have they been programmed to carry on the fight that ended with John Singer's death nine years ago? Do they believe they have to attack society before society attacks at-tacks them? As the Singer case was re-hashed endlessly last week, we wondered, can it happen again? What happens when the 14 to 15 year olds in the Singer-Swapp clan reach adulthood? What will the babies hear as they grow up? This is a time when the United States attorneys publicly public-ly express apprehension about the Singer adults being allowed to talk to their children. U.S. Attorney Brent Ward said last week that the "delusion of adults'; led in part to the death of Lt. Fred House. Can the mind-set of hate be broken? In the movie, the black trainer 'certainly tries. I won't give away the movie's ending, except to say it's decidedly downbeat.- Fuller made the film in the late 1970's. But it has never gotten a wide release, except on cable. The studio producers pro-ducers shelved it, and you can understand why it would scare them. Imagine, a movie with a psychotic Rin Tin Tin." Who, they must have wondered, wants to see the cancer behind a Norman Rockwell face? In the film, we finally get to meet the White Dog's original owner, who we know must be a vicious bigot. He turns out to be a twinkley-eyed grandpa, the kind who could sell lemonade on TV. You want to like him. You want to like the Singers too: the late patriarch, a hard-working self-reliant immigrant. Vickie, who looks like one of those 1800s Plains farm wives who has aged before her time, her quaint lovely daughters; the son, struggling to get through life in a wheelchair. In a picture released during the siege, the Singer-Swapp Singer-Swapp clan looked like the Waltons. But now, looking at the group, especially the kids, you ask yourself How many of them are White Dogs? ttu3k sa Veto BY TERI GOMES Images qf,Singgapp saga ! It is late at night as I write this column and the events of the past few weeks are jumbled in my mind, creating a blurry kaleidiscope of images. The SingerSwapp saga which I so closely followed and which occupied a disproportionate amount of my time away from family and my other duties as editor, is already becoming a series of fused memories... Day after cold unchanging day, Deputy Commissioner of the Public Safety Department, Doug Bodrero, would come out of his command trailer, the fur collar on his parka turned up against the elements, and share with us what he could. Last Thursday, minutes after the shooting of Lt. Freddie House, Bodrero appeared outside the trailer and seemed to be going back in without coming com-ing to talk to us. "Hey.. .Doug," a press person called to him. And Bodrero turned to us, threw his hands up in anguish and we saw his tear-stained face. He did not brief us again. One day, early on in the saga, I approached the command com-mand trailer to advise F.B.I, negotiators that David Fleisher would be willing to enter the house and talk to the Singers. As I waited to speak to the "right person," a camouflaged SWAT team member came into the room and not seeing me, said to his commander, "What about the dogs?" Seeing me, the SWAT man froze and then barked "get her out of here." Later I photographed a German Shepherd in the back of a police vehicle being taken up the road to the Singer compound. I have no idea if that was the same dog I saw sitting graveside at Lt. House's funeral Monday, but I suspect it was... Waiting and watching took the bulk of everybody's time during the 13-day ordeal, and the press people took up position on the side of the parking lot that was in the most direct view of the Singer compound. Everyone huddled hud-dled together television and still cameras all lined up in a row, along with site scopes and one little stepstool we took turns sitting on. In the afternoon sun one day we all joked and laughed when we spied through all the lenses the SingerSwapp children flying paper airplanes in their yard. The video cameras rolled, the still bodies set on tripods snapped away, while dozens of us chatted and jotted down notes in a shared cooperative way. Last Thursday, after the helicopter had left for the hospital, after the armed transport carrier had taken the surrendered SingerSwapp members into custody, there was an eerie stillness in the mid-morning filtered sunlight. I looked at the camera spot that long had been such a hub-bub of activity. There were still tripods set up with lenses but the camera bodies had been taken off to cover details in other locales. The television cameras were still rolling tape "just in case," but there was no one there to man them. The lone figure on the stepstool was Park Record reporter Sena Taylor. She was looking off at the farmhouse, far-mhouse, and maybe a point beyond. I suspect she was trying to make some sense of the morning, let alone the past two weeks. I did not disturb her... There is a strange sort of battle comraderie that takes place among reporters who cover the same story together for long periods of time. Born cynics that we are, a bizarre kind of gallows humor circulates good newsbad news jokes, made-up on the spot about the situation, that unless you suffer through it could only appear ap-pear in bad taste if retold. We saw each other at our collective col-lective worst unshaven, greasy-headed, tired, grubby, and bundled in the kind of clothes you'd expect to wear in freezing temperatures. No matter how I dressed, my feet were always cold. On Monday in Orem we media members mostly nodded nodd-ed wordlessly to one another. There for the funeral of Freddie House, we were suited and dressed in our respective best. We had talked about the possibility of shots being fired from the house coming in the direction of the command post in our direction. We had joked that if we got shot, at least someone else would have to write the story, or shoot the footage. I think Monday we all grimly acknowledged in a very real way Lt. House had died protecting among others us. I don't think anybody from that two-week press corps had shown up to the funeral to simply "cover the story." We went to pay our respects. And as the pallbearers emerged from the church grim-faced, and the hundreds and hundreds of uniformed law enforcement officers saluted at attention, atten-tion, as the flag-draped casket passed, we silently snapped snap-ped our cameras. It is hard to focus when you're crying. At the gravesite where the sun would not shine I was aware my feet were cold again... In the crowded courtroom in Salt Lake City I looked at the striking blonde mane of hair on Charlette Singer Swapp and I listened to her lawyer plead she should be allowed to go free without bail to be with her small child. As the judge droned on I gazed off and in my mind's eye saw the blonde hair of Ann House who had walked past me just hours before, clutching the hands of her small children... And it strikes a vein with me that in nearly a decade of reporting, I have not been so touched by any other story I have covered. It will take some time and some reflection reflec-tion before I can separate clearly the events of past few weeks. Until then, the images blur and farmhouse becomes courthouse and pasture becomes cemetery and the innocent children ... the innocent children... EARLY DEADLINES due to President's Day Display ad deadline Friday Feb. 12, 5 p.m. Classified ad deadline Friday Feb. 12, 5 p.m. Letters to the Editor Friday Feb. 12, 5 p.m. HANDICAP CHALLENGE A Park City Handicapped Sports Association Benefit CELEBKITY SEO MACE Saturday, February 13 Clementine Run Park City Ski Area Join celebrities and local personalities as well as mentally and physically disabled skiers for a fun-filled day of ski racing and comraderie. A tax-deductible tax-deductible donation of $30 will allow you to participate in all the day's activities. Corporate team sponsors are also invited. 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