Where are they now? (Part 1)

Every now and then, I like to dig up the names of sensationalized figures from news stories of the mid-90s and see where they’ve landed. This week: Glen “Rodney” King and Michael P. Fay.

You may remember King from when we saw him getting his brains splattered across the ground by a team of four policemen while trying to beat the crap out of them since he was out of his mind on PCP. The policemen were acquitted in the first trial, and two were later convicted of violating King’s civil rights when President George Bush (the first one) brought charges against them. So where is he now?

Since the 1991 riot-inspiring incident, King has been arrested for drug infractions, wife beating, random violence, and “driving infractions.” What happened to the $3.8 million dollars he won in his civil suit against the LAPD?

Gone. Gone faster than the money Will Smith made on his first rap album. Today, King lives bankrupt and in a drug rehab center. Despite this, he continues to be an icon for anyone seeking to rally against police brutality.

Michael P. Fay may be a name harder to remember, but I’ll give you a big hint: caning. Fay was rambling about Singapore back 1993 and decided it would be a good idea to smash expensive cars, throw eggs at them, and saw off and steal some traffic signs. He did this for about two months and had a gay old time before the Singapore police picked him up.

Fay pled guilty and was sentenced to four months in jail, a $2,233 US fine and 6 lashes with a cane. The story was sensationalized in The New York Times with stories of first-hand accounts of the public caning, even though canings are not conducted in public in Singapore.

Clinton picked up on the story calling the punishment barbaric and extreme, and used it as a launch pad for creating a clash between “Eastern and Western values.”

So where is he today?

After his caning, he returned to the USA to live with his father and do television interviews to make people feel sorry for him and keep the media machine rolling. In 1994, he suffered burns on his hands and face after a “butane incident”: in other words, he was getting high inhaling explosive gasses.

After entering the contest for 1994’s Darwin Award, Fay again turned up in 1998 when arrested for drug paraphernalia, a charge to which he confessed.

Oh, just to make sure we get in our proper amount of propaganda, please take a look at the 1998 AP Wire story for the drug charges: