NO FAVORITE EXAMPLE LEFT BEHIND: The Justice Department doesn’t exist!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2015

Part 3—Restoring Michael Brown:
We’re sorry, but no, Virginia:

No one went on CNN last week and “surreptitiously blamed [Walter Scott] for his own death.”

No one “falsely equated” Scott’s behavior in running away from Officer Slager with Slager’s conduct in shooting Scott in the back. No one actually said that.

When Charles Blow said that unnamed people were saying those things on cable last week, it made for a fabulous column, a piece from the hard tribal mold.

But no one actually said those things! Blow imagined that those things were said, or he may have just made his claim up.

Whatever! Blow produced the perfect column—a column in which Those People were saying horrific things. Of course, it’s easy to write the perfect column when you work in paraphrase—when you don’t name the people you’re assailing or quote what they actually said.

When a columnist plays that game, he can pleasingly invent the latest perfect example. In a trope which dates to prehistory, Blow’s column had his unnamed pundits “reveal[ing] a deficiency in their own humanity,” the way Those People always do when we make our examples up.

Thrilled by Blow’s moral greatness, we liberals cheered in comments. Unfortunately, other voters are able to see how dumb this process is.

Also, how dishonest.

More and more, our emerging “liberal” world seems to turn on these perfect examples. We invent statements and events which illustrate our deepest beliefs about the world. In order to make our examples perfect, we paraphrase wildly or push bogus facts. We make other facts disappear.

Recently, our perfect examples have tended to fall apart:

Rolling Stone came up with a perfect example. It fell apart within days.

Ferguson was a perfect example. In that case, the perfect story we wanted to tell fell apart more slowly.

Finally, the Justice Department seemed to say that the shooting of Michael Brown had been fully justified. We can’t say if their judgment was sound. But after reviewing all the evidence and speaking to all the witnesses, that’s what Justice said.

Unless you read the New York Times editorial page. Unless you read Gene Robinson.

Last week’s shooting of Walter Scott really does look like a perfect example of police misconduct. When the videotape emerged, we saw a fleeing man get shot in the back by a policeman.

Ironically, this videotape showed the behavior we had been promised in the case of Michael Brown. Initially, we were told that hehad been shot in the back. This claim made his death a perfect example, but it turned out to be untrue.

Whatever you think of the shooting death of Michael Brown, it pretty much fell apart as a perfect example of heinous police misconduct. But how odd! In the aftermath of the shooting of Scott, the shooting of Brown was restored!

In a strange New York Times editorial, it almost seemed like that Justice Department report never happened. This is the way the editors started, headline included:
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/9/15): The Walter Scott Murder

The horrifying video of a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., shooting and killing an unarmed black man—while the man is running away—may still come as a shock to many Americans. But this heinous act, which the officer tried to explain away by claiming that he feared for his life, strikes a familiar chord in communities of color all across the United States.

The case underscores two problems that have become increasingly clear since the civic discord that erupted last year after the police killed black citizens in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo. The first, most pressing problem is that poorly trained and poorly supervised officers often use deadly force unnecessarily, particularly against minority citizens. The second is that the police get away with unjustly maiming or killing people by lying about the circumstances that prompted them to use force.
Strange! From that brave account, a person might think that the shooting of Brown helped us see that “poorly trained and poorly supervised officers often use deadly force unnecessarily, particularly against minority citizens” and that “police get away with unjustly maiming or killing people by lying about the circumstances that prompted them to use force.”

As usual, King Rosenthal seemed to be tugging his nether regions as he preened and postured. Based upon that peculiar account, a reader would have no idea what the Justice Department had said about that case, or that the Justice Department had spoken at all.

The Justice Department did describe apparent lying in its report. But the apparent lying was done by alleged eyewitnesses to the shooting, not by the policeman in question.

Beyond that, the Justice Department directly said that Officer Darren Wilson’s use of force was justified in that unfortunate case. The editorial board of the Times doesn’t seem to have heard.

As our emerging liberal culture unfolds, we seem to be adopting a lofty principle: No perfect example left behind! As often occurs at the New York Times, some letters on that very same page followed the board’s lead.

None of the letters named Michael Brown, but the first letter may have evoked him for some readers, especially those who had just read the editorial two columns over.

One of the letters even brought Professor Gates back from 2009! No perfect example left behind!

That editorial struck us as strange, leaning toward baldly dishonest. The next morning, Gene Robinson outdid the Times editors in his column for the Washington Post.

Robinson seemed to have no idea what the Justice Department had said. In his column, he too seemed to restore Michel Brown to the role of perfect victim.

Robinson maintained this posture right from the start of his piece. We think his opening paragraph provides a good learning experience for liberals:
ROBINSON (4/10/15): You thought, perhaps, that we were making this stuff up? That the whole “Black Lives Matter” thing was probably overblown? That the idea of African American men having to fear routine encounters with the police was being exaggerated by self-serving activists?

Let’s go to the video [of the shooting of Walter Scott].
We think that was a strange way to start. We’ll address ourselves to Robinson, and to other liberals:

Have some people “thought, perhaps, that we were making this stuff up?”

Actually yes, they have thought that! All across the United States, many people decided, not without cause, that Rolling Stone was “making stuff up” when they published and pimped their UVA perfect example.

Other people have decided that we liberals were “making stuff up” when we said that Michael Brown was shot in the back. When we later said that he was shot with his hands up, attempting to surrender.

Actually, yes! In these and other high-profile cases, quite a few people have come to believe that “we were making this stuff up.” A fair-minded person would have to say that these people have cause to think such things—and that they were given further cause when they read that column by Blow.

This is a problem for liberals! More and more, American voters are rolling their eyes at our phony perfect examples. Many folk will react the same way to last Friday’s column by Robinson.

All through the column, Robinson adopts the same pose adopted by the New York Times editors. He seems to think the shooting of Michael Brown is still in play as a perfect example of police misconduct directed at minorities. He shows no sign of having heard what the Justice Department has said.

The most striking example of this framework comes in the second half of his column. Earlier, though, he offers this strange rumination as he describes the shooting of Walter Scott:
ROBINSON: Imagine the narrative that might have emerged if the bystander, a man named Feidin Santana, hadn’t happened along. “A violent suspect struggled with Officer Slager, wrested control of the officer’s Taser and threatened him with it. Fearful of his own safety and that of the community, Slager had no choice but to fire. The officer regrets the loss of Mr. Scott’s life but did what he had to do.”

After Ferguson, such an account might not have been taken at face value—especially, I should note, in South Carolina, which has been much more aggressive in holding police officers accountable for fatal shootings. The most basic forensic examination would have shown that Scott was some distance from Slager—and fleeing—when he was shot. Investigators from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division likely would have been skeptical of any claim that the officer feared for his life.
That passage strikes us as strange.

In that passage, Robinson seems to think that Ferguson was a case in which a policeman’s account of a shooting was found to be bogus.

“After Ferguson,” an officer’s claim of innocence “might not have been taken at face value,” Robinson strangely says. This seems to suggest that Ferguson showed that police officers in shooting incidents might lie about what happened.

In fact, the Justice Department supported Officer Wilson’s account of the facts. Robinson doesn’t seem to have heard.

Already, Robinson seems oddly clueless. He doesn’t seem to understand that we liberals have been “making stuff up” in some of our recent perfect examples. He doesn’t seem to have heard that the Justice Department supported Wilson’s account of the facts.

Was Robinson tracking the New York Times? Was he in the process of leaving no perfect example behind? Incredibly, he soon offered this:
ROBINSON: What started the whole thing? Slager pulled Scott over because he had a broken taillight on his aging Mercedes.

Michael Brown was walking in the middle of the street. Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes. For three black men, these misdemeanors became capital offenses.


We don’t know what happened before Santana arrived to bear witness, but I have to assume that Scott might have given Slager lip or otherwise expressed his displeasure. And given subsequent events—eight shots fired at Scott’s back—I have to doubt that Slager initiated the encounter with an Officer Friendly approach.
We’re sorry, but that’s bad journalistic behavior. In that highlighted passage, Michael Brown has been restored as a perfect example.

According to Robinson, Brown was shot “for walking in the middle of the street,” for a “misdemeanor.” All the other facts in that case have again been disappeared.

The Blows, the Rosenthals and the Robinsons do this again and again. Dim bulbs that we’ve turned out to be, we liberals stand and cheer.

But uh-oh! Around the country, reams of voters can actually see what we're doing. They can see that we really are “making stuff up” as we make other “stuff” disappear.

Robinson seems to have feelings about this sort of case. We can understand that. we have feelings about the people who are dead all over the world because of the career-building things he happily did at one point.

Whatever! We’ll only say that Robinson’s judgment served him poorly in this piece, in which he does a fair amount of guessing.

“I have to doubt that Slager initiated the encounter with an Officer Friendly approach?” By the time this column appeared, the dash cam video showed that this was exactly what Slager had done.

That doesn’t change what happened later, of course. But will journalists like Robinson ever stop “imagining the narrative that might have occurred?” Will they ever stop saying they “have to doubt” the basic facts they don’t know yet?

Like the editors at the Times, Robinson restored a favorite tribal example. Around the country, this kind of conduct keeps convincing American voters that we liberals can’t be taken seriously.

In fairness, those voters have cause for reaching that judgment. We've invented and disappeared many facts in the past several years.

Robinson restored a perfect example, one we tribals love. As we read the end of his piece, a further thought came to mind:

When we “liberals” create perfect examples with which we construct an imagined world, other examples may get left out. Sadly for progressive interests, the voters will notice this too.

Tomorrow: Robinson mentions the data

74 comments:

  1. Warning to casual readers of this blog: These comments are unmoderated. They are infested by one or more trolls who routinely attack the blog author in a variety of ways, rarely substantive. Such attacks are not an indicator of the level of interest of other readers, the validity of the content posted nor of the esteem in which the blog author is held by others.

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  2. Brown attacked the cop in the SVU and turned around moving towards the cop after running away. Scott did none of those things as accurately stated by Somerby. Extremist liberals in this comments section will be angry that Bob pointed out the distinction. Expect high troll traffic as a result.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. SUV. Typo. Sorry.

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    3. Sharpton was told to stay out of it by the victim's family. I wonder why.

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    4. It's only a matter of time before volumes of conservative commentary emerge in support of the cop's action against Scott. Until then there is no harm in inventing it, since we know some people are at the very least thinking the wrong thoughts.

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    5. People have already invented a story about Slager built around the video showing him shoot Scott. It suggests he committed a crime. What are the full circumstances? We don't know but people are thinking the worst about him nevertheless. Just as inappropriate to do that as to invent circumstances that would exonerate him, in the absence of information.

      Scott was stopped for a legitimate reason. He was treated politely until he ran. What more was going on in that situation remains to be seen, but I am not automatically going to think the worst of Slager, any more than I would of Scott. There is video showing both men doing good and bad things. The reality not the video -- it is the total situation and we don't know what that was.

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    6. Wow 2:24, that was an actual reasonable comment. Props.

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    7. "People have already invented a story..."
      "He was treated politely until he ran."

      True that. People have already invented a story.

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    8. It isn't a "story" that he was treated politely because the video shows that happening, just as it isn't a "story" that he was shot -- that too is on video and confirmed by autopsy.

      It is important to be able to tell the difference between what is "story" and what is fact.

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  3. The Michael Brown case is a perfect example as long as no one does what Somerby did here. Somerby thinks the wrong thoughts and says the wrong things. Sometimes the entire truth doesn't serve the greater good. Showing the big picture using imperfect examples made perfect by skillful turns of phrase by our social warriors in journalism is the objective but it can only work if everyone cooperates.

    Even if there is no big picture and thus too few perfect examples, the possibility of a big picture happening again as it did earlier in our history is always there, and hopefully will be there again. Therefore we must continue to find serviceable examples that, with enough tweaking, can be made into perfect examples in the minds of enough uncritical rubes who want to believe awful things still happen in the awful ways they do in movies about slavery and the pre-civil rights years.

    This blog makes this difficult for us to enjoy sharing in the pain others experienced in those times, or cause more of it now, and should be criticized for its obsessive attention to realities that serve no purpose.

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  4. Ho hum. How predictable. White Cop/cop wannabe - dead black man is purely orgasmic for blogger.

    Here he is - slouching, slouching, slouching towards an outright defense of the cop:

    '

    “I have to doubt that Slager initiated the encounter with an Officer Friendly approach?” By the time this column appeared, the dash cam video showed that this was exactly what Slager had done.

    That doesn’t change what happened later, of course.

    '

    By the way its quite likely that his officer is going to get away scot free - somebody cited some precedents, And don't forget its going to be a whiet jury from South Carolina.

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    1. Just as Zimmerman's initial acts that night are irrelevant to determining whether he was justified in killing Martin in the moment he did, an initially friendly traffic stop is not relevant to the legality of the subsequent shooting of Scott. But Scott and Brown would be alive if Sharpton had been telling people they are required to cooperate with police.

      This example could have been so perfect if Scott had not run. For this reason, no one should introduce the fact that fewer tragic outcomes would occur if "cooperate with cops" were stressed instead of "cops are out to murder you."

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    2. But Zimmerman's initial acts that night are completely relevant to determining whether Martin was justified in killing Zimmerman.

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    3. The fact that the officer was courteous and professional does contradict the image of cops as racist bullies targeting black men out of hate.

      Hard to see how Scott was "targeted" when the car did have a defective tail light and hard to see how the cop frightened him, beyond his own knowledge of what the cop would find up when he ran the license check. This was not bullying behavior up to the point when Scott left the car.

      I think that undermines this as a "perfect case" because it is hard to see why Slager shot him. Did he perhaps learn something while in his police car that caused him to see Scott as a danger to the public? Will we find out that the car had just been used in a violent crime (or was carjacked)? The behavior of the family in seeking to avoid public attention suggests there is more to this case than we currently know. There may be information that explains a shooting that currently makes very little sense.

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    4. Whether Martin would have been judged justified in killing Zimmerman had he killed him is also irrelevant to whether Zimmerman was justified in killing Martin.

      The same facts that were unexplainable in any other way except that Martin unnecessarily attacked Zimmerman (particularly the four minute lapse) would have likely convicted Martin of murder had he killed Zimmerman.

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    5. There may be other facts that justify the shooting of Scott. If there are not, it's hard to imagine Slager walking. It's also hard to imagine Slager ultimately shooting Scott if not for a chase that would provoke an entirely different psychology. Kids, do what the cops tell you to do.

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    6. "Kids, do what the cops tell you to do."
      Now read the other DOJ report, and try to make that same argument.

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    7. I did read it and concluded one should tell their kid to do what the cops tell you to do. Others will prefer to tell their kid he would be justified to attack cops in their cars because racism, and you know how useful that is.

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  5. Slager dropped the taser by the body, and the second cop didn't even flinch.
    Standard operating procedure.
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    I'm old enough to remember when "Michael Brown ran 35 feet , then turned and charged Officer Wilson" was the story everyone was told to believe.

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    1. It is by no means clear what Slager dropped or what he picked up. Some suggest that it looks like two different objects in the video.

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  6. Here's the thing that Bob's viewpoint runs up against - the "progressive" advocates in the press copy the methods of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity because it looks like those methods work, at least with half the country.
    The problem, however, is that those propaganda tactics work only to reinforce views that are already held - so Mark Levin doesn't recruit converts to his side, but rather gives his side ammunition to bolster their own beliefs and to inoculate them from the arguments made by the other side. The "pseudo-liberals" that Bob discusses do the same, but of course from the opposite viewpoint.
    I like Bob's prescription that we need to talk with the other side rather than past them if we want to persuade them to change opinions. I agree with him that it's especially important to do so because as long as we're divided on these sorts of issues, the 1% continue to control the finances and the 99% get screwed, both left and right.
    Unfortunately, persuasion is a process that involves hard work in getting the facts and presenting them in an intelligible manner, and then engaging the other side's responses. It often doesn't work, and even when it does it takes a long time. Accusing the conservatives of being racist, ignorant or hateful brings an immediate payoff, even if it does nothing to change opinions.

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    1. One problem with persuasion is that it takes repeated exposure to arguments and the resulting change may occur when you aren't around to see it. People DO change opinions, but when it happens after reflective thought or at some later date those trying to do the persuading get discouraged and think their efforts aren't working.

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  7. "Finally, the Justice Department seemed to say that the shooting of Michael Brown had been fully justified."

    Yes, they said it was "fully justified" if "fully justified" means that since they didn't have consistent evidence to dispute Wilson's story of Super Negro beating him up. And as long as you believe the discredited eye witness who said he "bull-rushed" Wilson, which of course means that the eye witnesses who said he was giving up are obviously lying.

    Then again, Michael Brown also "falls apart" as a "perfect example" when you completely ignore the second DOJ report released that day -- the one that showed strong evidence of systematic abuse and racism against African-Americans in a city that saw them only has human ATMs.

    That second report will come as a complete shock to the true fans of Somerby, since he seems to have disappeared that one.



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    1. Except he did mention it. He didn't have any quarrel with it (or the way people were discussing it) so he didn't talk about it at length. That isn't the same as "disappearing" it.

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    2. The use of phrases like "Super Negro" do nothing to bolster the argument that Officer Wilson was not justified in shooting Michael Brown. The use of these devices serves to replace argument and usually indicates no credible argument exists.

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    3. Officer Wilson was the one who described Brown as someone who seemingly could run through bullets, had the strength of Hulk Hogan, and could kill him with one punch. Of course those descriptions sway opinion.
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      I'm still not sure if we had just left it with the facts we know, Wilson is a shitty cop who is far too immature to be handling a gun, Bob would have been okay with it.

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    4. 3:42, do you possess, or know of, any support at all for any portion of that comment?

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    5. Yes. I read Officer Wilson's testimony.

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    6. 1:56 PM,
      Of course he ignored it. Unwritten in all police shootings is that there must have been a reason to shoot the victim. After all, the Police don't just treat black males as second class citizens, do they?

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    7. majneb,
      I know. It seems unbelievable that Wilson could actually think that stuff, yet was entrusted in carrying a gun. Some would say there are two sets of rules for how white men and black men are treated by society. Both those Ferguson reports seem to back-up that theory.

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    8. Hulk Hogan is white. Where are all the cultural references to the legendary "Super Negro" spoken of here? There are numerous well-known black stereotypes, and there is no such thing as a "Super-Negro" stereotype. It's an invention designed to suggest a racist overreaction to explain perfectly justified shootings.

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    9. There is no evidence Wilson or Zimmerman viewed blacks as second class citizens, but it wouldn't matter if they did. One can simultaneously view blacks as second class citizens and be justified in shooting a black person in a particular circumstance.

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    10. Why don't the defenders of violent criminals cut to the chase and admit your argument boils down to "We can't prove it but we just KNOW they were thinking the wrong thoughts." Granted, it sounds stupid but it's all you have.

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    11. "There is no evidence Wilson or Zimmerman viewed blacks as second class citizens..."
      Yes. One can make the argument Wilson was eventually fired from his police job because he bucked the system.

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    12. "Where are all the cultural references to the legendary "Super Negro" spoken of here? "

      It's in Wilson's testimony (read it, it's unbelievable. Literally), when he describes a 17-year old seemingly being able to run through a barrage of bullets.

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    13. There is no evidence Wilson ever viewed blacks as second class citizens while a member of a police force that was disbanded (by a City Council) because of race relations. But the association and the City Council's action are good enough for you, eh 4:35?

      Do you often view individuals as automatically guilty of character defects due to their membership in certain larger groups, such as a police force or a race?

      Wilson, who was raised in Texas, was among the officers given the chance to reapply for their jobs, but he left Jennings for the nearby Ferguson Police Department.

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    14. 4:39, Wilson describes Brown as a "Super Negro"? Was there any reference to a super anything other than a super white pro wrestler?

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    15. 4:47 PM,
      4:35 PM, here. Not at all. BTW, you are agreeing with me. I suggested he was probably fired by the Ferguson Police because he isn't the racist they want on their force. (i.e. he bucked the system and lost his job).
      Obviously, reading, like police work is difficult for some people.

      However, I view Wilson's character defect in the fact he thinks a kid can run through a barrage of bullets. I'm not saying he's a racist, i'm saying he is immature. Too immature too be entrusted with a gun.

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    16. I think you tend to think of someone differently after they have just punched you in the face. It is natural to feel scared of an assailant after having been hit like that.

      When you need to stop someone coming at you, you keep firing until he goes down. If he keeps coming despite your shots, as Brown did, it leads to the way Wilson described his feelings. Remember that he was describing his state of mind as he fired, not objective facts about stopping power of weapons or Brown's bullet-proof persona.

      It is not immature to be frightened of someone who has attacked you. A good example is provided by the movie "As good as it gets" in which Greg Kinnear's character is beaten up. Notice how different his demeanor was and how his ability to cope with events was changed after being attacked. Being hit in the face unexpectedly has an emotional impact -- it would have that impact on anyone. George Foreman talks about his recovery after being beaten by Ali, and he was a champion boxer. Being hit is damaging and creates fear. It is not surprising he would have felt the threat posed by Brown more acutely right after being hit in the face.

      He wasn't fired -- he quit. The most racist emails were circulated by a female administrator, not cops. But don't let the facts get in your way.

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    17. "The most racist emails were circulated by a female administrator, not cops. But don't let the facts get in your way."
      Nice. You read the report and came away with the only racism being in emails? Read it again. You missed how the police treated blacks as second class citizens and ATMs.
      I do not know if it is a fact you're an idiot. You might just be making believe you missed it to bolster your point.

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    18. Everyone was being treated as ATMs but because the majority of the population of Ferguson is black and because most of the people driving through Ferguson are black, the report concluded that blacks were being targeted. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the race-related disparities are greater in cities like Santa Monica CA (a bastion of liberal racial correctness) than in Ferguson. Those racist emails were largely political, aimed at Obama. I was surprised that there wasn't more evidence of racial animosity against citizens of Ferguson. But then, I grew up in a time when overt racism was widespread and know what it looks like when people truly exercise no restraint.

      I think poverty heightened the impact of Ferguson's money-raising policies because it compounded the injury of the stops and tickets. They went to fines and fees because people couldn't pay the original tickets. That isn't racism but it has a disproportionate effect on people who are poor, who are more likely to be black. That is unfair but I don't see it as intentional targeting of black people.

      When you starve local government, you get behavior like this because municipalities don't want to go bankrupt. The same thing happened in San Bernardino, which did go bankrupt, but also funded itself by giving out an unusual number of tickets. People in that area aren't black -- they are poor and it hurt a lot of people before the city went under. This happens all over the country and it is hard to see it as a racially motivated form of harassment. It is related to our economic downturn and the cry for austerity in the public sector.

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    19. Those pimping the report either cannot understand it or know that most people cannot parse statistics and so by virtue if the dumbness of a large enough proportion of the population, an agenda based in victimhood can be advanced.

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    20. Is a perception that a large person could power through bullets a character flaw of immaturity, a lack of education about physics and biology, an assumption about the relative chance of stopping a larger target founded in training, or a reaction to fear? None of the above. It's a sign someone harbors a belief about the ubiquitous "Super Negro" myth.

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    21. 6:04 PM,
      All shitty roads lead to Ronald Reagan. Easily the worst President in the history of the nation.

      As Charlie Pierce called it, "This is Kafka rewritten by Grover Norquist and Bozo The Clown."

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    22. "...it has a disproportionate effect on people who are poor, who are more likely to be black. That is unfair but I don't see it as intentional targeting of black people."

      Are you looking through Chief Justice Roberts' glasses?

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    23. I consider class disparities a bigger problem than racial attitudes. I doubt that is true of Roberts.

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  8. Bob wants us to believe that since the other DOJ report was released after the incident, neither Wilson nor Brown would know what was in it was true.
    Bob's trolling.

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  9. If any good can be said to have come from the attempted mob lynching of Wilson and Zimmerman it is that when we hear stories like the one involving the shooting in SC, we are now less likely to leap to as yet unproven conclusions about the justification of the shooting. The mindset we all should share in a society that values justice.

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    1. The attempted "mob lynching" of Zimmerman? What? The demand that he be charged and tried for the homicide he committed with a loaded gun he carried with him when deciding on his own to follow a kid on foot he suspected might be up to no good because he was black? That lynching?

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    2. Not all homicides are charged or should be charged. The correct decision was made initially and the correct verdict rendered after Obama intervened on behalf of his "son." There is no evidence Zimmerman is a racist and there is evidence Martin provoked his suspicion by his actions. Your tale you pulled out of nowhere would represent such a perfect example if not for evidence.

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    3. "...there is evidence Martin provoked his suspicion by his actions."
      Walking home from a store while talking to his girlfriend on the phone. And only that, since there is no evidence Zimmerman is racist, per 4:33 PM.

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    4. Cutting across yards, standing on lawns, looking in windows, standing on porches of houses he didn't live in, getting soaked by the rain instead of trying to get out of it. None of that seems suspicious?

      If he were only walking home (on the sidewalk) and talking to his girlfriend, I don't think Zimmerman would have looked twice at him.

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    5. That's a nice story Zimmerman told, however, as 5:51 PM below says, "everyone lies".
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      "I don't think Zimmerman would have looked twice at him."
      Cool, but the reality is you have no idea.

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    6. That Zimmerman is a clever one. Plotting to murder Trayvon while telling the dispatcher in "real time" how he was circling his vehicle with his hands in his pants, like he had a gun. Clever man, that Zimmy.

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    7. "Cutting across yards, standing on lawns, looking in windows, standing on porches of houses he didn't live in, getting soaked by the rain instead of trying to get out of it. None of that seems suspicious?"

      Suspicious? Maybe if it were a crime infested neighborhood but there were only a few home invasions in recent weeks there, and only 400 calls to 911 in the preceding year.

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    8. If it were my family's neighborhood and an individual I didn't recognize, you better believe that sort of behavior is further-investigation-worthy.

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    9. majneb,
      Bring your loaded gun, and whatever you do make sure you confront them after you're told not to.

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    10. PC says we're supposed to pretend that we don't know that young black men commit crimes at a much higher rate than average. Yet, it's just common sense to be more suspicious of an unknown young black men. We all know this.

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    11. DinC, regardless of that, an unknown white kid wearing a hoodie and exhibiting the same behavior would provoke a high degree of suspicion. And, if he attacked and began grounding and pounding me, he'd be risking the same potentially deadly force in response.

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  10. It's cherry-picking when the media focus on the deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Walter Scott. Police kill more whites than blacks, but you don't see nationwide news when they kill a white person.

    Then, there are the many heinous attacks by blacks that don't receive nationwide publicity. E.g., just today,
    Mob of high school students attacks man at gas station

    Note that the article never mentions the race of the attackers or the victims.

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    1. I agree. The police in this nation are out of control. The sooner we do something about it, the better.

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    2. Defense lawyers are objective? Everyone lies.

      I suppose there are no Internal Affairs departments, no citizen review boards, no system for making complaints against police, no elected police commissioners (or elected mayors supervising police administrators), no lawsuits filed, no way to hold police accountable at all. We must live in Russia!

      Getting hysterical and making ridiculous statements doesn't help anything.

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    3. "Everyone lies. "

      Thanks for agreeing that taking the word of the police because they are the "authority" isn't helping this nation.

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    4. Police are doing a job no one else stepped up to do and no one except criminals want their hands tied in doing it. So we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt over criminals they deal with, and they usually deserve it. If it reaches the level of a legal proceeding, we take their word for it until there is proof otherwise, as we are required to do as a just society.

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    5. It's a hard job (Thanks NRA), and I couldn't do it.
      Unlike these cops, I didn't take a job I couldn't do.

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    6. "So we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt..."
      Yup. Even if they "mistake" 150+ feet for 35.

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    7. " Even if they "mistake" 150+ feet for 35."

      Never happened. The 35 feet was a reference to the distance between the two after a chase of some distance from the police vehicle. Starts on pg 14 of DOJ report where the distance is given as 20-30 feet.

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    8. If you're afraid an unarmed kid can kill you with one punch (particularly, if they have the strength of Hulk Hogan), try to get within arms length of him. It's only common sense.

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    9. More evidence of racial cherry-picking by the media.
      Third Student Charged in Gang-Rape on Panama City, Florida, Beach

      If the alleged assailants had been Asian or white, this would be national news.

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    10. David your link is to an NBC Nightly News story. If you display less intelligence it wouldn't be national news or a surprise.

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  11. My current theory is that Scott's shooting was politically motivated to create another racial incident. It has the effect of uniting conservatives (much like Hillary hate does) while dividing Democrats. It drives a wedge between black and white Democrats, especially if Hillary makes a statement other than expressing sympathy for Scott's family. It is a way of unraveling Obama's coalition while solidifying Republicans. So my theory is that the cop is a Republican doing what he did under orders. The more progressives argue about this the more we hurt progressive interests.

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