Honda calm about France's `faux pas'

U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell, has a name that ensures recognition. He pursues eloquence the way I play the cello, which is to say it doesn't happen. But he has a good heart. As long as Honda produces good cars, he has a safe seat.

So maybe it shouldn't shock us that Honda took an unpopular vote recently, one likely to irritate police officers in his district. With his kind of political capital, he can afford a generous line of credit.

The vote came on a symbolic motion. Two Philadelphia-area congressmen introduced a measure to ask the French government to reverse the naming of a street in a Paris suburb for a convicted cop-killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, now 53.

Most Congress members would rather pass a kidney stone than side with a cop-killer. The measure passed 368-31. But along with several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Honda voted no.

"Congressman Honda's vote on this issue was based exclusively on a reluctance to dictate to a foreign country, and particularly a municipality, how it should or should not conduct its business," said Honda spokesman Daniel Kohns.

Likelihood of guilt

I happen to believe the odds are 1,000 to 1 that Mumia Abu-Jamal is guilty of killing the cop. But I find myself agreeing with Honda. Let the French commit their own stupidities. We've got enough of our own.

You may know the story: In December 1981, a Philadelphia cop, Daniel Faulkner, was shot to death as he was pulling over Abu-Jamal's brother. Abu-Jamal, a sometimes-journalist who was shot in the fray, was convicted of murder and given the death penalty in a flawed trial that sparked 25 years of litigation.

Since then, Abu-Jamal has become an international cause celebre, a symbol for critics who detest America's death penalty. Last spring, the Parisian suburb of St. Denis, which has a heavy Muslim populace, named a street the Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal.

To Philadelphia's cops, this was a smack across the face. It led to the measure asking the central French government to intervene. U.S. Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren voted yes.

So why do I side with Honda? For starters, the vote was wholly symbolic. The central French government has no more desire to get involved with street-naming than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does in christening San Jose's roads.

Tough to persuade

Second, it's a futile idea. I know something about the stubbornness of the French. For a few months, I once had a French girlfriend, whom I visited at her mother's apartment in Paris. Because we spoke German with each other -- we had met at a German language institute -- her mother was convinced I was the Boche, an occupying power. Nothing could remove the stigma. The relationship foundered not long afterward.

But maybe the most important reason I agree with Honda is that I accept the idea that other people don't see the world as we do.

Yes, naming a street for a cop-killer insults anyone who's served as a police officer. But the best way to counter it is not to try to shut the critics up. That draws more attention to them. It's to assure that our own system of justice works fairly.

After the St. Denis controversy surfaced, a letter writer to a Philadelphia newspaper suggested that the city council could name a wastewater treatment plant or a municipal cesspool after Abu-Jamal. That idea poses legal and political problems. It's insulting. But it has the virtue of being within our own grasp.