Hans van der Kamp

Yesterday I read an article signed by ‘a Hollywood reporter’ distribited by Reuters. It was a news item about Engel, a freelance journalist who found himself ‘virtually alone’ in Baghdad during the invasion, because ‘almost every other Western journalist had fled the country’. Is that so, Mr. Hollywood reporter, I asked myself. What about the French camera crews who gave some of the best coverage during the invasion?

The French do not seem to exist in the eyes of many Americans so I accept the idea that the poor schmuck felt like he was on his own carrying a large bag of syringes with anti-nerve gas that he hoped he would never have to use. At that point my eyes had started to water over all that misery and hardship of a freelance reporter being stuck without backup — if the Hollywood reporter hadn’t been in a rush to explain that this lost soul in Baghdad is currently NBC News’ chief Middle East correspondent.

Okay, so Engel’s idealism to cover this war was apparently based on the fact that he desperately wanted a desk job. Boy, do we live in a competitive world, or what?

Engel’s plan could have easily backfired, as the stories about the nerve gas would have been as true as the stories from the same source telling the world that the ‘liberation’ of Iraq wouldn’t take more than a week or two. He must have anticipated that fact because he had a plan B; he was carrying a video camera to cover the events. Not to air any of the material, mind you; just to keep a modest video diary.

Why do I never trust modest people?

So, here we are years later and there is a pile of boxes filled with cam tapes. NBC News senior vp (and now “Nightly News” executive producer) Alex Wallace began to dig through the tapes ‘with an eye to the hour-long documentary that will air in the coming week’.

Engel is quite an intellectual. His intriguing comment on the result: ‘I don’t think this documentary is pro-war; I don’t think it’s anti-war. It tries not to be judgmental.’ I could almost see Engel leaning over his desk with that all American attitude: ‘It is what it is, man.’

No of course one does not want to be judgmental in a documentary that is going to be aired in an America where 40% of the people still think that the invasion of Iraq was/is a good thing. On the other hand — Americans mostly do not like documentaries that are not judgmental either. So what’s left?

Yes, you guessed right; that is where the Hollywood reporter had to come in, boasting away about the graphic nature of the documentary. You can see a hand blown off!

All right, now we are talking money; we have the violence, we have the dumb-ass attitude, now all we need is some romance to finish it off.

Well, romance must have been hard to find during those bloody days and nights in Baghdad, so Engel’s divorce is running through the documentary instead. Of course he is not dwelling on it. Quote: ‘Engel said he was tempted not to mention it all but thought it was important because it mirrors what was happening to Iraqis and the American soldiers and their families back home’.

See, that is why I do not trust modest people. Modesty is the standard cover up of the megalomaniac. This is no documentary, this a film script. The documentary is just a pilot. In two or three years we will see Engel’s story turned into a box office success.

And yes, if we insist on being distasteful; a divorce is just the kind of metaphor we are currently looking for to describe the misery of the Iraqis.

Today the Dutch government was celebrating the fact that it was 50 years ago that the foundation for a unified Europe was laid. I mean, it was an old idea that uncle Adolf had tried to impose on us earlier on without success, but for them it is all about future and there is no place for the past. Most Dutch citizens were not celebrating today because for them Europe is synonymous to the Euro, a currency they sincerely hate because it is their conviction that all goods doubled in price since its introduction.

So it was time for our politicians to remind us of all the good that will come from a strong EU. They even invited some school children who have no recollection of a beer costing 2 Dutch Guilders instead of 2 Euro (4.4 Guilders) to remind us older people of the joys and the happiness a strong European Union will bring.

Well, for me it was all water over the hill, because I already was all European at age 4, as you can see on the photograph above. Please do not think that somebody forced me to wear that silly German hat with a feather. At that age I was as clever as I was obnoxious, so I had insisted to live up to the German dress code before crossing the German border for our summer vacation — as a gesture of good will. I was deeply afraid that my mother would continuously remind them of the fact that she had lost her whole family in World War II. Just in case things went bad after all I wore dark shades so that I would not be recognized on later visits.

I woke up and snow was falling over the roofs of Amsterdam, hopefully to mark the end of winter rather than the beginning of spring. I made a photograph, took a cup of coffee and had a look at my statistics program to see that my previous post had become more popular over the weekend than I would have anticipated. Also there was a nasty comment on that post by somebody who had only read the first half, so I deleted it. From a rational point of view I should not have posted about Oudkerk or the people around him, but I had to get it off my chest sooner or later and I obviously chose ‘later, much later’ on a harmless, personal weblog.

We all face situations in which we feel treated badly by people who would do better taking a good look in the mirror first before they judge others. Sometimes these degrading experiences can mark our lives and the memories can slowly grow into a mental tumor. For those of you who are afraid I will make a sequel based on that theme, do not worry.

Lately I received a Google alert of an article published about Rob Oudkerk, a Dutch politician who was forced out of office years ago for ‘visiting’ one of the few places in the Netherlands where prostitution is not ’socially acceptable’ because heroin addicts, some under the age of 18 try to pick up customers there. Rob Oudkerk was obviously addicted to sex and there was a long list of incidents that were not listed as a reason for him to step down. Apparently these facts were not known to the political party PvdA he was working for or maybe his cronies did in fact know a lot more but did not want to be embarrassed by Oudkerk any further.

Do not get me wrong here. I have been quite a philanderer in my time and a visit to a prostitute has been part of that more often than I can recall, so I will be the last person alive to judge anyone over visiting a prostitute. (Although I would most likely have picked a different, less morbid location.)
Visiting a prostitute is not something to boast about but it is a lot better than sleeping around with people you do not care for while telling them you feel love just to get in their pants — as a lot of ‘respectable’ men - and women - tend to do.
In fact I was a lot more upset by Oudkerk when he publicly referred to our Dutch youth of Moroccan descent as ‘kutmarrokanen’. This lame Dutch expression is hard to translate, but by telling you that the word “kut” means cunt, you will get the general idea that it was a discriminatory remark. That should have been the ideal moment for him to take responsibility for his lack of restraint and to step down gracefully.

All this is history of course and it happened years ago so what happened recently that got me irritated? Well, I saw an article on http://www.radionetherlands.nl and I read the following quote next to Rob Oudkerk’s picture;

“No one should be able to determine what occurs between doctor and patient in the doctor’s surgery. [This would be] a failure to do justice to the rights of woman, no, even of women in general. And that’s something that needs saying so soon after International Women’s Day.”

My heart missed a beat. The hypocrisy.. Rob Oudkerk, the ‘feminist’ is still trying to get back in the political arena. It is obvious what he is aiming for. His popularity amongst women is damaged by the fact that he - a medical doctor and a politician with a reasonable salary - was having sex with heroin prostitutes who are known to work for very little money and often without any protection. So now all of a sudden International Women’s Day is on his calendar. I just wonder if the Dutch are stupid enough to buy this kind of nonsense. Why do I even bother?

I can answer that question very well; in fact I have been waiting for my son to reach the age of 21 to do so and I will answer it in detail if you don’t mind.
Rob Oudkerk was my house doctor ages ago. A good one too, as I thought when I first met him. He was a joyous man with a good ear for his patients. At that time I could hardly walk and I was working up the courage for an operation to have my original, damaged hip replaced by a total hip implant. It was no easy decision, because I was scared and there was some disagreement amongst orthopedic surgeons whether this was the right solution for the problem. So, I was hesitating and I did not visit my doctor for quite some time to make up my own mind in what seemed to me as a very crucial decision. Rob Oudkerk however did not give up. Whenever he was in the neighborhood he rang my doorbell, but I was out of the house a lot so he would leave tiny notes on the doorstep. At that time I was married to a would be model and a stewardess who may not have been much of an intellectual but she sure had looks. She would either answer the door or read me Rob Oudkerk’s notes in which he gave me support to have the operation.

At that time my marriage was about to end. My former wife and I were quite open about it. We tried all sorts of solutions as living apart and getting back together again, but we were hopelessly incompatible and I assume we both knew it had to end for our own benefits. As we started accepting that fact our main focus became our son. My ex had her lovers and I had mine, we would be fine with the separation but we were both immensely worried about our son. Since we also had different ideas how to handle the situation the tension grew and my ex decided to consult Rob Oudkerk who acted as our family house doctor.

Rob Oudkerk immediately assured me that there was no conflict of interest and that I should not worry about the stories my ex was telling him about me. Stories, what kind of stories, I wondered. I was under the impression we were splitting up in a somewhat decent fashion, at least as decent as break ups can be.

A few weeks later our four-year-old son approached me with the following text: “Did you know that the doctor’s body is all covered with hair?” It took little imagination what happened and when I spoke to my ex about it she immediately admitted she was in love with Rob Oudkerk and that she was having an affair with him. In the beginning we all tried to be very civil about it, although I really wondered why my son had to witness their love life. It was an odd but manageable situation until I filed for the actual divorce and my son was appointed to me in the preliminary session of the court without any objection of my ex who was advised by Oudkerk to just hand the child over to me. In his mind I would soon be tired with that situation to send our son back to her. All would be settled before a court decision became necessary.

It did not happen that way. Taking care of a child is not easy but I was working from my home as a freelance journalist and I had the help of a friend while my ex was making many long hours outdoors. Married man Oudkerk obviously was not going to lend a hand; he brought my son to school - once. For the record, I presume. By the time the final decision of the court arrived there was some panic. Rob Oudkerk had decided to run for a political office and suddenly the whole situation became a danger to his media-image of the trustworthy bicycling house doctor in a problem area of Amsterdam. From that moment on Oudkerk’s actions became desperate. He advised my ex to send my son to several psychiatrist friends of him, such as Dr. Pam who had to find ways to discredit me as a father so that my son could be with his mother, a situation that was much safer for Oudkerk. With me discredited in court as a philanderer, an alcoholic and a junkie who was not capable to take care of his own child, it would also be a lot easier to have me silenced once I would try to rightfully criticize him for breaking his Hippocratic Oath and by doing so damage his credibility as a coming man in politics.

The years to follow were the darkest in my life. The things I went through sound quite unbelievable for a country that seems so ‘open-minded’ as the Netherlands. There were times I simply could not handle the pressure and started addressing the system or him in person, only to be accused of being an anti-Semite, although I never knew Rob Oudkerk was Jewish in the first place.

It never came to a final judgment over the custody of my son. There was an advisory meeting where my ex told her story of me being an irresponsible alcoholic and so on and the following question was asked to her; ‘So you have left your son all these years with a man who was not responsible enough to take care of his child?’ I have no idea what she answered, but my son stayed with me.

He is doing fine, my ex seems to do fine too, but I still feel enormous mistrust towards doctors and politicians and ashamed as I am to admit it; I still have nightmares about it after all these years. I probably did not cope with that situation very well. Back then I badly wanted to file an official complaint against Oudkerk as a way of dealing with the situation — because I sincerely hate to be a push-over, but I was advised not to do so, because that would have involved my son testifying, creating enormous psychological distress for him.

One could say I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I would simply state that I was emotionally blackmailed by a Dutch politician with a sex problem.

There were many people who were aware of the vulgarity of what was really going on, besides official institutions as the Riagg. To name a few: Oudkerk’s brother in law (I forgot his name) who knew through his colleague Drs. Lidwien Geertjens (child psychologist) and even Oudkerk’s wife (Psychiatrist) and they all kept very, very quiet despite the fact that the life of a completely innocent child was put under tremendous pressure by a narcissistic house doctor who wanted to build a political career. And last but not least child psychiatrist Dr. Pam who now claims two things: amnesia and the fact that he does not keep his medical records for a long period of time.

These people above all ‘live’ for our mental and medical well-being. That is what they want us to believe. That is what they are generously being rewarded for. As for Rob Oudkerk himself: he should simply learn to refrain from commenting on certain matters. His compulsive need to make statements in the media is slowly turning him into a bigger fake than I could have ever imagined him to be.