Perhaps Rodney Could Have Gotten the Job Done After All

A few days I suggested that perhaps we should send Rodney King to France to settle things down. Of course I was joking, but according to this guy, maybe Rodney could have done the job after all:

Mahmoud Khabou, 20, the jobless son of Algerian immigrants, knows little of the world beyond the concrete housing projects that rise in bleak rows barely an hour's subway ride from the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and other grand monuments of Paris.

But he knows who his heroes are. ''Osama bin Laden and Rodney King," he said, referring to the Al Qaeda leader and the African-American whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 spawned massive racial riots.

''One because he gives pride back to the Muslims," the young man asserted as he and a trio of friends stood near the charred ruins of a carpet shop. ''The other because he was just a poor man, a 'nobody man' of color, but he caused a great city to burn."

Even when I'm kidding I'm right.