Part 4—Harvard Law School flies to Finland: Based upon this week’s report from the Justice Department, the city of Ferguson has been running a horrible police department and overall city government.
In the past two days, the New York Times has run detailed reports about these matters. At our fiery liberal orgs, we’ll hear a lot about that part of what the Justice Department has found.
For ourselves, we’ve been surprised it has taken so long to see news reports of this type. We liberals have largely dragged our heels about the topics under discussion—for example, about the alleged targeting of black residents for the endless traffic fines which kept that city afloat.
We’ve dragged our heels when it comes to that topic. The mainstream press corps has followed suit.
We’ve also failed to ask basic question about the remarkable state of affairs which seems to have obtained in Ferguson down through the years. How is it possible that the practices in question haven’t been challenged by local civil rights organizations, by local elected officials and by local ministers? How is it possible that the elected official which drove these practices just kept getting re-elected in a city which was roughly two-thirds black?
The fecklessness of our liberal world has been on vivid display as these rather obvious questions have largely been ignored. Because of our tribal lassitude, you haven’t seen these questions explored at our favorite liberal orgs. Instead, you saw our leaders express their devotion to “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
As we’ve noted in the past, we modern liberals will get upset if you kill a black kid. Other than that, our high-minded, extremely useless tribe doesn’t much seem to care.
We’ll get upset if you kill a black kid. Like the ditto-heads we apparently long to be, we’ll then start making shit up!
This brings us back to the part of the story which isn’t being discussed at our liberal sites. We refer to the judgment the Justice Department reached concerning “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
Did Michael Brown have his hands raised, in an act of surrender, when he was shot by Officer Wilson? We can’t exactly tell you.
We weren’t present at the scene. No videotape has emerged.
That said, the Justice Department has found that the forensic evidence doesn’t support some of the familiar claims which were widely bruited about these events.
“The evidence establishes that the shots fired by Wilson while he was seated in his SUV were in self-defense,” the Justice Department says on page 80 of its official report.
Two pages later, the Department states a second, similar judgment: “The evidence establishes that the shots fired by Wilson after Brown turned around were in self-defense.”
We don’t know if we would agree with those judgments if we conducted a thorough inquiry, but those are the judgments reached by the people who did. In a footnote on page 83, the Department adds these pungent remarks about the work of “the media:”
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT (page 83): The media has widely reported that there is witness testimony that Brown said “don’t shoot” as he held his hands above his head. In fact, our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said “don’t shoot.”“Furthermore, there are no witnesses who could credibly testify that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was clearly attempting to surrender.” So the Justice Department states at the top of page 82.
Should Wilson have fired on Brown that day? We can’t exactly say. We would prefer that police officers fire their guns as rarely as possible, that they'd even consider running away if suspects refuse to surrender.
(Most likely, they can’t really do that.)
That said, we would also prefer that excitable groups—including pseudo-liberal pundits—would refrain from inventing tall tales to drive their agendas forward. This would be especially true when pundits are concocting tales with the express purposes of getting people accused and convicted of murder.
Increasingly, this is a game our fiery cable pundits very much like to play.
In his speech about his department’s report, Eric Holder said he agreed with its findings. He then raised a very good point.
He asked where narrative come from—false narrative, that is:
HOLDER (3/4/15): I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department's findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial, widely-reported accounts of what transpired.As he continued, Holder explained why regular people in Ferguson might have been inclined to believe the worst about their city’s police department. He doesn’t explain why cable pundits behaved so unprofessionally as our own lynch mobs moved forward.
And I want to emphasize that the strength and integrity of America's justice system has always rested on its ability to deliver impartial results in precisely these types of difficult circumstances, adhering strictly to the facts and to the law, regardless of assumptions. Yet it remains not only valid, but essential, to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly and to be accepted so readily.
We’ve gotten pretty good at that in the past few years! We’ve gotten good, at times like these, at inventing bogus facts (George Zimmerman was told to stay in his car!) and at hiding behind completely irrelevant drama. (All he had was a bag of Skittles!)
Because we know how upright we are, we seem to think that it’s OK when we and our “leaders” behave in these ways. Needless to say, it isn’t OK, although you’ll never convince our tribal legions of that.
In this morning’s New York Times, Jack Healy pens a front-page report in which we liberals express our right to our own born-in-Kenya tales. If the other side can stick to its bogus tales, well then so can we!
Because we know how right we are, we claim the right to Our Own Beliefs. In this passage, a local activist says he still truly believes:
HEALY (3/6/15): Others rejected the Justice Department’s conclusions entirely, and said they still believed Mr. Brown was trying to surrender when he was killed.“To McPherson,” Brown still had his hands up! And of course, to millions of others, Barack Obama was born in Kenya; Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster; Al Gore said he invented the Internet; and the moon is made of blue cheese which gets shipped from Mars.
They said they did not trust an earlier state grand jury process that had cleared Mr. Wilson, who left the Ferguson police force late last year, of state criminal charges in November, and had no faith in the federal investigation or the high bar set to find a law enforcement officer responsible for civil rights violations.
“To me, he had his hands up,” said Michael T. McPhearson, co-chairman of the Don’t Shoot Coalition in St. Louis. “It doesn’t change it for me.”
On what basis does McPhearson continue to say he believes? There is no sign that Healy asked that question. Later, Healy quotes a political leader engaged in a tiny bit of postmodern okie-doke:
HEALY: Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said he had no regrets about making the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture in a speech on the House floor last year as part of a series of speeches by Congressional Black Caucus members.No one was saying that Brown did that! Where did folk get that idea?
“If I had to do it again, I would proceed in exactly the same way,” he said. “I made clear in my remarks that ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ is a rallying cry for people all across America who want to see the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law brought to life.” He added, “At no point in that speech did any member of the black caucus indicate that that’s what occurred between Mr. Wilson and Mike Brown.”
Here in our tribe, we’ve gotten quite good at making up stories like this. We don’t mean that as a criticism of regular people in Ferguson who may have misspoken.
We do mean that as a criticism of the millionaire TV stars you see playing the fool, and dumbing you down, on our own cable TV shows.
We’ve gotten quite good at making up facts and trying to get people thrown into prison. Regarding America’s superb black youth, who we see in this city each day:
Our TV stars seem to get mad when someone gets killed, don’t seem to give a flying fark about pretty much anything else.
Last weekend, we saw a professor from Harvard Law speaking about our black youth.
She seemed to know nothing about public schools, but public education isn't her beat. But when she took the trip to Finland, all the analysts cried.
Our overpaid leaders are quite unimpressive. They’re actually good at very little, except perhaps conning us rubes.
As we follow them other their cliffs, plenty of swag lands in their pants. And then too, there is the output of our own professors.
On Monday, we’ll start to discuss that latter group. We’ll start with the Harvard professor who took the scripted trip to Finland. We’ll also mention the bright young reporter who took the same low-IQ ride.
When we take that trip, we slander the superb young people we see here in Baltimore every day. We also slander their public school teachers. We cuff both groups to the curb.
We’re rattling script that the plutocrats wrote. But my, how we do love that ride!
Starting Monday: The caliber of our professors
For those who seek to punish themselves: Last Sunday, Professor Guinier discussed the state of the public schools midway through C-Span’s three-hour program, In Depth.
The professor knows nothing about public schools. But she does know the Finland script!
If you want to punish yourself, you can watch her flight to that marvelous land. It starts at roughly 1:35:00 of this three-hour tape.
Even Harvard professors can rattle that script! As soon as they saw that it was coming, each of the analysts cried.
"For ourselves, we’ve been surprised it has taken so long to see news reports of this type. "
ReplyDeleteThen you weren't paying attention last August. There was report after report after report of blacks in Ferguson telling just such stories to explain why they were so angry and finally taking to the streets to protest the killing of Michael Brown.
But of course, you and the rest of the right wing noise machine were far more interested in pleasing tales of stolen cigarillos.
And how quickly Somerby touches that base and heads right back to whether Brown had his hands up.
DeleteThere is no point to discussing things people agree about, unless you need your thoughts validated. Somerby goes for the points of controversy, the areas needing change.
DeleteYou got that, Anonymous 2:42 PM.
DeleteAdmitting the ugly truth (in this case, the United States is systemically racist) is an election loser.
Berto
I don't think it's "racist" to prosecute violent crime. Most people just don't want to put up with it.
Delete"Somerby goes for the points of controversy ...."
DeleteSomerby goes for the points that will bash liberals.
FTFY - you're welcome.
2:42 PM - when you're standing or sitting in the wind, do you hear a whistling sound?
DeleteLibs, go ahead. Tell us what you think about Eric Holder. I bet you won't talk about him.
ReplyDeleteHis failure to charge, prosecute and imprison those who crashed the world's economy so badly the government had to prop it up, will be seen historically as a huge marker in the march to guillotines.
DeleteDon't forget to add the loss of this bet to your long list of being incorrect.
Even he knew charges against Wilson or Zimmerman wouldn't pass the laugh test and he'd end up embarrassed, as much as he would have liked to go forward with them anyway.
DeleteI agree with 3:06, but consider Holder's decision regarding the Ferguson case to be a personal Profile in Courage.
Delete3:27 -- Maybe you were unaware that the standard for a criminal conviction is a bit stiffer than passing the laugh test.
DeleteHow about the media talking about how the protesters should have voted? Doesn't Somerby have a problem with that crap, since it was the media who helped kill ACORN for providing residents, like those in Ferguson, with the opportunity to do so?
ReplyDeleteBerto
If the situation is so bleak then they should be motivated to get registered without the help of ACORN or anyone else. In this day and age it's not all that difficult to register and vote. One just needs to get off their backside and stop bellyaching.
DeleteAfrican Americans in Ferguson are registered to vote. And if they face something as horrific as the specter of a Romney presidency you can count on them to go to the polls. It's just that the police brutality, the tax the poor with citations policy, and the appalling jail conditions [LINK] in that city are just not yet seen as the danger to well-being that the Mittman posed. An alternative explanation would be that, as suggested at Think Progress [LINK], it is too much to expect of the oppressed that they would exercise the franchise in a succession of Aprils, including if you can believe it Aprils that might fall outside of even number years.
Delete[QUOTE]***Diminished turnout, however, appears to be a much greater problem in Ferguson’s municipal elections than it is in presidential elections. Though Ferguson’s whites turned-out at nearly three times the rate of African Americans in 2013, black turnout during the 2012 presidential election was almost equal to that of white turnout. Fifty-four percent of Ferguson’s African American voters turned out in November of 2012, as opposed to 55 percent of whites. Admittedly, 2012 may have been an unusually high year for African American turnout in Ferguson, given President Obama’s presence on the ballot, but even if black turnout typically fell 20 points behind white turnout in a presidential year, that would still be better than the 3 to 1 disparity during the April municipal elections.***[END QUOTE]
" In this day and age it's not all that difficult to register and vote."
DeleteGive the GOP a break, they're working on this. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Even if it is inconvenient or even difficult to vote, shouldn't people who care enough about civil rights to protest be standing in line at their polling places? It's the same thing without the yelling and signs.
DeleteThanks for that information, CMike.
DeleteAs CMike provided, even in a presidential election, only about half the people in Ferguson voted. I think voters (black and white) are discouraged from voting by both Republican and Democratic candidates, since it is easier to win an election (and cheaper) when only a few voters turn out. My guess is that Ferguson black voters are told (and believe) that their votes don't matter.
Delete"This would be especially true when pundits are concocting tales with the express purposes of getting people accused and convicted of murder. "
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of progressive are you? Getting innocent people accused and convicted of murder serves the greater good if they're the wrong color, of the religion, reside in the wrong region, or work in the wrong occupation.
The kind of audience this site apparently needs now. It looks like the crossover is complete.
DeleteWonder what other wingnut sites they bounce around daily before they come to this one? They sure do know all the talking points. And so does Somerby.
DeletePoor @5:56 had to resort to the W bomb since R bombs don't pack the same punch they used to. It's all they got but that's what happens when it becomes obvious your positions are what's known as "wrong."
DeleteElitist white liberals sympathize with egregious criminal behavior because they are safely distanced from it. Poorer people like Zimmerman who live in environments menaced by the Browns and Martins are less likely to behave like dumb sitting ducks. Elitist white liberals change their tune and bring on a Giuliani the moment they begin to feel the same threat those in Zimmerman's neighborhood experienced. In the meantime, they judge poor people for defending themselves and attempt to get them convicted of murder for sport.
ReplyDeleteHow the hell would a wingnut like you know?
DeleteLULZ
The trolls can't handle the truth.
ReplyDeleteAnd you do a crappy Nicholson.
DeleteThat would be Lani Guinier, a former punching bag for Clinton's conservative opponents now transformed into a punching bag for neo-cons like Somerby.
ReplyDeleteTo those of you who celebrate and exult in the killing of black teenagers I say: Eat shit & die.
ReplyDeleteHow dare you.
White people killed the Jews.
Massacred the Native Americans.
Enslaved black people.
How dare you.
I am black and have three children. All college graduates.
I am an old man, but if you hurt my children or grandchildren I will hunt you down.
LG
This is why we cannot discuss race in this country.
DeleteWe'll all hunt down anyone who hurts our children or grandchildren. We all are members of groups that kill, massacre, and enslaved. Right now blacks in America victimize more of each other and of other groups than any other group does, and by significant proportions. What's your point?
DeleteYou discuss race, but you lie to yourselves.
DeleteThe truth hurts.
Evil lurks in the hearts of men.
LG
How sweet is that.
DeleteWe all do it. Ain't that nice?
Holocaust? Massacre? Slavery? Police & thieves?
All the same.
LG
You feel comfortable ascribing evil to an entire race based on skin color. I think that is a form of evil itself.
DeleteLG, black people in Africa rounded up and sold their neighbors to white and arab slavers. They are still doing it. Black people in ancient Egypt enslaved people from the upper Nile. There are ethnic cleansings in Africa that rival the holocaust. You do not have a moral highground.
DeleteI ascribe evil to people who do evil.( or want to) and come to these forums and celebrate.
DeleteLiberals, probably.
LG
LG, your comments are both stupid and racist.
DeleteLG is demonstrating why you shouldn't drink while commenting.
DeleteOMB (The OTB's Week in Fergutory, Mo.)
ReplyDeleteHi, BOBfans! Think I'd left your miserable little melting planet completely?
Just dropped by to see your BOB being praised for being vindicated by the Justice Department in the Brown matter. Well, while all those slimy journalists were inventing fake facts by covering what people on the streets of Ferguson were saying and doing, this is what was what the OTB was covering, starting the day Michael Brown was shot.
A Saturday, August 9 post on whether Rick Perlstein exaggerated claims about emergency room visits when film "The Exorcist" first showed in 1973.
A Monday post on Rachel Maddow's show from the previous two weeks concerning paper dolls and toy trucks.
A Monday post in which BOB promised to cover dolls all week.
BOB reviewed the dolls on Maddow's program in July again on Tuesday, this time fixating on Chucky dolls and Maddow "pleasuring herself."
Tuesday, taking a break from the dolls of July, BOB offered a supplemental on Charles Blow and Syria.
BOB returned to the Maddow of the Dolls Wednesday, but went even further back in July, hitting on a mid-month piece concerning executions.
Thursday BOB continued to play the doll theme, but went to Hillary instead of Chucky and managed to get us back to Gore.
Thursday BOB goes all doll, all week in the headline, but finally mentions Ferguson. Of course his focus is on the unfair coverage by Joan Walsh of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Ben Carson over Ferguson.
BOB supplements Dolls with Cartoons the same day, this time going back to review "Nixonland", published in 2008.
Friday Dolls are the headline theme again, but Ferguson is mentioned so BOB can defends Rand Paul against Joan Walsh. Then he praises a guest ON the Puppy's Program in Ferguson saying good things about black kids, which allows BOB to mention he checked on how black scores on 8th grade NAEP math are in Missouri. They are way up!
A supplement allows BOB to take time off from the dolls to attack Pamela Druckerman for dissing Miami.
Saturday BOB Somerby Announces the death of the west! Not because Brown had been dead for a week, Ferguson had been torn apart, and fake facts had stacked up thicker than doll posts in a Howler series. Alas! The west was dead because back in 2008 Rick Perlstein played with Nixon Dolls in his book.
Coming: We will review the event which allowed BOB to take a courageous stand against fake facts and finally get around to Ferguson and all those flying "R" bombs.
Miss me, BOBfans? Probably not much. But we may be around a while. The OTB is going to Finland again, believe it or not!
It was also in this general time frame that Our Own Harvard Blogger picked up his Parade Magazine, saw the profile of Meredith Vieira and her fabulous home, then launched into his long-promised "The Houses of Journalist County" series.
DeleteIronically Our Own Harvard Blogger interrupted his planned "House of Journalist County" for the umpteenth time in order to devote time to Ferguson a week after it happened.
DeleteHave you not learned that most of what is reported immediately after an event gets rewritten substantially as the facts trickle in?
DeleteIt also seems odd to me that you expect Somerby to be a journalist himself when his agenda is critiquing press coverage. That coverage has to occur before he can talk about it.
Who are you suggesting has not learned?
DeleteI'd reread the chronology. Several times while Somerby was himself playing with dolls while complaining about the press playing with dolls, he interrupted his silly theme with posts about contemporaneous press coverage, it just was about other journalists he hated, not about press coverage about Ferguson. Maybe you missed that story. It was virtually non stop throughout the period.
Somerby writes a vanity blog. He can write about whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases. You don't have to read it.
DeleteZdoK, I thought you might have been cured. Apparently not.
DeleteAC/MA repeatedly states that reading and commenting in the Howler is a disease.
DeleteOMB (OTB Takes a Stand)
ReplyDeleteOn August 18th, 9 days after Michael Brown had been shot and Ferguson had erupted, on August 18 BOB and the Daily Howler began to cover how the press had handled Ferguson. Fortunately for BOB Somerby, that was the morning the autopsy results had been put on the front page of the New York Times stating Brown had not been shot in the back.
This gave BOB all the rear view mirror he needed to belittle the press for covering what those crazy witnesses who would later be dubbed not credible by the Justice Department had been saying.
We are sure BOB said some good things during his subsequent coverage and we proabably wrote some dumb comments (as we always do). But BOB wasn't out front on this issue by any stretch of his readers reaching over to pat him on the back.
Press coverage of events like this have always gravitated to those who speak and act out. And people who have an ideological view tend to agree with those who say things that reinforce previously held views.
BOB thinks this is a revelation from him to you. If you find it to be so, you are as dumb as he keeps telling you that you are.
* Newbies can ask oldtimers for an explanation. Maybe deadrat will reappear too, to supply the necessary diagnosis.
DeletePress coverage of events like this have always gravitated to those who speak and act out.
DeleteWhat do you mean by "events like this", ZKoD*? If you're talking about events that get this kind of press coverage, then your statement is true, but it's a tautology. If you're talking about inter-racial killings, then your statement is half true. It's true when a white kills a black, but not when a black kills an Asian or a White.
Yes, poor white people. Their murders never make national news, except for all the time. You ever watch Nancy Grace?
DeleteTry police shootings, David in Cal. Add to it police shootings in which the local populace erupts in protest. Try police shootings where the protests are met with militarized police response.
DeleteOr try vigilante killings. Add to it vigilante killings where no charges are filed and no grand jury investigation is held and protests results.
Perhaps those are the events the commenter had in mind.
Somerby has been lambasted and lampooned every time the issue has been raised for months now. He merely cautioned restraint until more facts were known, and warned against liberals adopting this as a political cause based on false information. Thats not luck, it's wise advice in any case.
DeleteRather than continue to look for some angle, any angle by which they can deride Somerby, it's time the.critics man up, swallow their pride and admit, at least to themselves, that there's a lesson to be learned here from the Ol' Teacher. Critics, you've been schooled.
Distorting facts to fit your world view rarely turns out well because life doesn't care what you believe. Clashes with reality are determined in favor of reality. Somerby warns liberals against compiling their own set of pseudo-facts and living in their own factual bubble, as the right has been doing for some time now. It led to them seriously believing Romney was going to win the presidency. In the case of Ferguson, the left's bubble led to them believing the Grand Jury would indict Wilson. These rude awakenings wouldn't be so rude if people remained open to facts that don't necessarily support their preferred narrative. That is what Somerby has been saying.
DeleteKZ, it was nice when you were gone -- or at least pretending you weren't here. Is there any chance you will go away again?
The mob accused the Ferguson Police of being racists. In this case, the mob, not Bob was correct.
Delete"He (Somerby) merely cautioned restraint until more facts were known, and warned against liberals adopting this as a political cause based on false information. Thats not luck, it's wise advice in any case." Anonymous @ 10:56
DeleteNot exactly. When Somerby turned his attention to Ferguson, 9 days after the event and after the Governor had had to declare martial law and a curfew, Somerby weighed in after news of the autopsy debunked what most of the witnesses willing to talk to the press were saying, that Brown was "shot in the back" while fleeing and shot again after he turned and tried to surrender with his hands up.
Somerby weighed in with criticism of a Sunday Washington Post article, an article even he acknowledged could not have had much impact on the events which had unfolded for 8 previous days. He correctly noted:
"The shooting death of Michael Brown is a very important event. The speed with which events have unfolded—including events in the middle of the night—have made Brown’s death and its aftermath a very tough challenge for journalists."
There was no warning to liberals about a political cause.
I think 10:56 may be mistaking Ferguson for Iraq.
DeleteIt was in Iraq that Somerby merely cautioned retraint, warned liberals against taking up the cause that the Bush claim about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was wrong. He even predicted they were heading for a fall.
Say, didn't Somerby attack the New York Times just the other day for not correcting their error on how many shots were fired in the Trayvon Martin case? Did Somerby ever acknowledge his error of judgement on this one?
Yes, showing restraint is always admirable. One should never draw broad conclusions based on scant evidence. Too bad Our Own Harvard Blogger doesn't practice what he preaches.
DeleteLike when he read the aforementioned Parade profile of Meredith Vieira and launched thousands of shippy words about "The Houses of Journalist County."
Or wondering why D'Leisha Dent couldn't get into a four-year college weeks after she was accepted into one -- on scholarship.
Or taking two years-old profile to prove that Rachel Maddow was lying through her teeth when her partner "seemed" to "imply" that Maddow was a crack shot, when Maddow herself said she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with an AK-47. There could only be one explanation. Both were lies.
Even poor Nicholas Kristof. By showing his concern for his dead high school buddy, Kristof barely mentioned his kids. Obviously, Kristof, like all liberals, doesn't care about kids.
Meanwhile, Bob carefully considered all the evidence and proclaimed Brian Williams a liar of the first rank.
That probably means that not enough evidence is in yet about Bill O., who once called Somerby on Alexander Graham Bell's device, because Somerby is showing his restraint.
KZ, claiming that Somerby is a hypocrite doesn't invalidate anything he says about other people. Please don't reintroduce that broken record to this site. It wastes everyone's time.
DeleteReally? You're going to continue to believe a guy with such an utter lack of integrity?
DeleteBe my guest.
I didn't see KZ say a word about Somerby's hypocrisy. I saw him saying those applauding Somerby for being right about Ferguson were applauding the blogger for something he did with plenty of hindsight supplied by a front page autopsy story in the New York Times. It seems he is saying such people are not bright. But then, since you believe in Somerby, you should already know that.
DeleteYou are dumb liberals who are members of Tribe Howler.
Having read KZ's recap of Somerby's week while Ferguson fell apart, I would also be careful who you accuse of wasting your time.
Yet another person who finds Somerby's blog worthless and yet frequents it in order to tell others how bad it is. Talk about wasting time.
DeleteThe mob accused Officer Wilson of committing a race based murder. In this case, the mob was wrong. Officer Wilson defended himself and the public against a violent menace.
DeleteYes, Ferguson is filled with "violent menaces." Some of them wear uniforms and badges.
DeleteOh, I can think of bigger wastes of time, 10:27, such as coming here to lecture others about wasting their time.
Delete@7:24, to be sure, but the left's zeal to convict an officer for murder under the assumption he was a violent menace with a badge, an assumption made simply because of the color of his skin, is disgusting and racist.
Delete@ 11:12 AM your propensity to stupidly project group thinking onto others probably perplexes some on the right who might agree with you on many issues.
DeleteMost will not say so for fear of disgusting you and being called a traitor to their race.
Yes, an officer that turns a jaywalking/shoplifting beef into an officer-involved shooting, discharging his service weapon 12 times on a residential street at noon on a summer Saturday?
DeleteNo "menace to society" there. Why, Ferguson PD used to give guys like that medals instead of firing them.
Shoplifting is surreptitious theft. Brown strong-armed the clerk by shoving him into a rack of merchandise. Witnesses say they saw him attack Wilson. That isn't a simple jaywalking beef. He was shot because an officer cannot allow a violent person to walk off into the neighborhood to harm others. It was his job to stop Brown, especially after he attacked an officer. That is what protecting people is about. Whatever else Ferguson police did, Wilson did his duty and shot someone who was behaving violently and thus a menace to others.
DeleteI find it disgusting when people like you try to minimize Brown's behavior by calling it jaywalking and shoplifting. No one is permitted to attack a cop (no matter what time of day it is) without consequences. Somehow Brown got the idea it was OK for him to behave that way. Where do you suppose he got that idea?
Officer Wilson chased a teenager he felt could kill him with one punch.
DeleteOfficer Wilson wasn't hired for his smarts. He was hired to keep black people in their place.
An officer who shoots a criminal running at him who punched him in he face moments before and nearly took his weapon is a hero, not a menace.
DeleteOfficer Wilson chased a violent teenager who could kill him in a fistfight because Wilson had a gun, which he was entitled to have as a person employed on behalf of the public, whose duty is to protect he public from he likes of Brown.
DeleteIt is everyone's place to refrain from committing violence against other people. Brown thought it was OK for him to push around store clerks, and apparently cops. It wasn't.
DeletePolice are hired to keep everyone in their place and that place is the same for white and black people. If you are walking, it is on the sidewalk. If you are talking to a cop, it is to remain outside the police car window and keep hands off the cop. If you are being arrested, it to stand with hands up (as he did not do) and not run. White people know their place. Why don't black people?
Some people are told their place is anywhere they want to be, doing anything they want to do. Michael Brown was taught this. The rest of us know our place isn't in a convenience store stealing property and pushing people around, or inside a cop car punching a cop and trying to take his gun. We learned that growing up. Others learned if they behave in that way, liberals will make excuses for them. Some of those people end up dead as teenagers because too many liberals make too many excuses.
Delete"Michael Brown was taught this."
DeleteOh, the pleasing tales we will spin!
So it was the liberals? Good to know. I thought it was those who taught him "the Lord Jesus Christ" would get him through tough times and led him to have a picture of Jesus on his wall.
DeleteThose were, after all, the thoughts Brown expressed right before his fatal liberal taught rampage.
Not being taught not to shove store clerks and attack police officers, and having apologies made by dumb liberals when you do, is being taught to do it. Brown learned things from his "parents," peers, and liberal politicians and activists that got him killed.
DeleteAre you saying that the Lord Jesus could not overcome
Deletethese earthly distractions?
Ferguson protesters were claiming a black man was executed while trying to surrender. That didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteNo that did happen. What they were claiming did not.
DeleteThat Ferguson protesters were willing to believe their local police force was capable of that speaks volumes. And folks like yourself don't "seem" to hear that part.
Some people are willing to believe anything, that doesn't make it so. Credible witnesses didn't believe it.
DeleteI think some people are more willing to believe it because there is more focus on past atrocities of slavery, Jim Crow and lynching and less on change and racial progress, so kids with no sense of history think nothing much has changed. They couldn't be more wrong, but too many irresponsible people in the black community are encouraging black youth to believe they can be shot for no reason -- largely because all the reasons Michael Brown was shot have been ignored by Crump, Brown's family, and the liberal media. It makes a bunch of young people too cynical to vote, join the police force, work patiently as activists instead of street rioters, or do the other work necessary to improve communities. It works against their own interests when this happens and I find it very sad.
DeleteMLK didn't only eschew violence, he knew how to sustain hope and motivate people to work for change. He knew that doesn't happen when you categorically vilify allies in the white community, and when you portray cops as murderers.
LG is an example of what Crump's approach produces. He doesn't care what happens to black communities as long as he gets his payday.
"He" refers to Crump, not LG.
Delete"LG is an example of what Crump's approach produces. He doesn't care what happens to black communities as long as he gets his payday."
DeleteMore of that world-class restraint Somerby teaches.
I'm not the one threatening white people with violence as LG did yesterday.
DeleteNo, he said that. He did assign a race. Hevsaid only white people did those things.
DeleteWhat he wrote is what he wrote. What you add to it that he did not write is a function of your reasoning. I leave it to others to form their own individual conclusions about the condition of that function in your case. Some might say it makes you like the mob in Ferguson, some that you are like the blogger, and some a little of both. Still others might call it par for the course.
Delete7:53@ Yep, a hooray for me, the hell with anyone else attitude.
DeleteAh, blogger supports yet another killing of a black man, worked in Zimmerman being told to stay in his vehicle and excoriated "we liberals".
ReplyDeleteHe can phone in these posts.
Ah, the first phrase in your comment is totally unfair, but the remainder seems pretty accurate. Which is why you can phone in these comments as well.
DeleteI don't see either the Martin or Brown deaths as a liberal-conservative issue. I'm certainly to the left of what passes for "liberal" these days. IMO the Zimmerman case was probably properly decided, and Brown's death came the result of a lack of impulse control and his own aggressive behavior.
DeleteAnd there is no cause to worry about the "impulse control" of the guys with the guns.
DeleteCan we admit that punching a cop in the face and trying to wrestle his gun away is at the very least poor judgement?
DeleteYup. He should have shot the cop.
Delete12:05:
ReplyDeletedumb or something?
Blogger might as well say it with neon signs:
'
Should Wilson have fired on Brown that day? We can’t exactly say. We would prefer that police officers fire their guns as rarely as possible, that they'd even consider running away if suspects refuse to surrender.
(Most likely, they can’t really do that.)
'
Indeed we are so dumb we cannot distinguish between "We can't really say" and the neon lit "I support."
DeleteYou could have said:
"Alas, blogger seems to think another shooting of an unarmed black man might have been justified in a society which didn't defend Al Gore."
Then you might be as smart as Somerby. I, of course would still be dumb. Or something.
"In this morning’s New York Times, Jack Healy pens a front-page report in which we liberals express our right to our own born-in-Kenya tales."
ReplyDeleteSomerby seems to say all liberals think alike. Another example of mansplaining.
Just go away.
DeleteTrollsplaining
Delete12:36
ReplyDeleteI have discerned where blogger is by using the concept of "indignation gap" - something I saw first in the writings of the lowest human being imaginable - the execrable Dinesh D'Souza.
What has D'Souza done that makes him "exacrable" and "the lowest human being imaginable"? Has he planted a bomb the killed a bunch of innocent people? Committed rape? Swindled poor, ignorant people out of their meager savings? Spread disease by not vaccinating his children? Was part of a mob that physically attacked people of another race? Abandoned his wife and children and left them destitute? Committed bigamy?
DeleteNo. All he did was to disagree about some political questions. Anon 1:56 -- there are good people who hold different political views or different religious views or different philosophical views than you do. And, there are bad people who share your religious or political views. You should learn to disagree with someone's beliefs without automatically assuming that beliefs different from your make someone the lowest human being imaginable.
D'Souza tells bigger lies than Bill O'Reilly, and that is hard to do.
DeleteAnon -- if he tells so many lies, can you provide a dozen or so examples of big lies D'Souza has told? (Ideally include links to verify what he actually said.) Thanks.
DeleteD'Souza doesn't lie. He tells the truth and they just think it's hell.
DeleteD'Souza is a credit to his race. And to English colonial culture lifting his backward land to Christian modern values. And to the American exchange student program which allowed him to jump ahead of others wishing to come here from the subcontinent.
DeleteI don't know, DinC. I know he claims he came here on a student VISA. That is not immigration. I know he is a convicted felon and lied in the process of violating the law. Had he done things illegally and lied about them during the time after his arrival in his attempt to gain citizenship, it can be revoked because he obtained it illegally.
Delete"I know he is a convicted felon and lied in the process of violating the law. "
DeleteD'Souza and his fanclub love to talk about accountability (for poor people).