RED AND BLUE TOGETHER: Watching the story-line change!

THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2015

Part 3—A move toward massive resistance:
In this morning’s New York Times, a single letter chides Roxane Gay for the way she cuffed the victims’ families aside in yesterday's op-ed column.

Click here, scroll down to third letter.

Just a guess, and it may not be accurate—the Times may have received other such letters. If so, they chose to publish the gentlest one.

On the New York Times’ front page, the attitudes of those Charleston families is admiringly profiled today by Lizette Alvarez.

The profile begins as shown below. Presumably, Deray McKesson—a good, decent person—might regard what follows as the latest “sensationalized message of forgiveness” (see yesterday’s afternoon post).

This is the way the profile begins. Hard-copy headlines included:
ALZAREZ (6/25/15): Charleston Families Hope Words Endure Past Shooting/
Taking Stock on Eve of Charleston Funerals


On the day that Dylann Roof peered into a camera and spoke his first words in court last week, Alana Simmons, whose grandfather was killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was not prepared to stand up and talk. Her presence, she thought, would be enough.

But then she heard Nadine Collier, in a startling moment of anguish and grace, address Mr. Roof, the man accused of shooting nine church members to death. “I forgive you and have mercy on your soul,” said Ms. Collier, whose mother, Ethel Lance, was one of the victims.

At that moment, Ms. Simmons said, her own path became clear, and she joined other relatives of the dead in expressing both their pain and forgiveness to the man charged with causing such despair. “We are here to combat hate-filled actions with love-filled actions,” Ms. Simmons said. “And that is what we want to get out to the world.”

As the first of the funerals begin Thursday, the nine families are still pondering the effect their words—allowing love and forgiveness to crowd out hate and vengeance—have had on the nation.
We strongly recommend that profile. Beyond that, we assume it’s true:

We assume the behavior of those families is, in fact, having “an effect on the nation”—a deeply wide-ranging effect.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss those families’ values in a bit more detail. As we do, we’ll discuss the way a wide range of Southern white Republican men have described their colleague and friend, the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered last week.

For today, we’ll note two points:

The greatest achievers of the last century were people who expressed the values those families are expressing. Also this:

All across the “progressive” world, voices are urging liberals and progressives to adopt a different point of view. We’re being urged to adopt an angrier, less ecumenical, profoundly crabbed approach.

Some of those voices are plainly well-intentioned. Some strike us as perhaps a tiny bit less evolved. But it seems to us that those voices are urging liberals to make the less constructive play.

Those values were good enough for Dr. King and Mandela. Are we somehow tougher than them?

Oof! We were embarrassed to watch David Corn and Jonathan Capehart on last night’s Hardball. In this morning’s Washington Post, Harold Meyerson presents as such an over-inflated moral balloon that he’s about to explode.

In this morning’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof’s lofty column made three of the analysts gnash their remaining teeth. We’ll discuss their reactions in this afternoon’s post.

Atop the front page of the New York Times, Alvarez lets members of the Charleston families discuss the values which have been affecting the nation—that were affecting the nation before last week, through Reverend Pinckney’s life.

Elsewhere, though, the children are railing. In the process, it seems to us that they have been changing some basic story-lines.

There have, of course, been many ways to view last week’s events. Early on, we were struck, in various ways, by the extent to which the nation has changed.

Consider what happened when a pitiful fellow with a big gun decided to start a “race war.” When he decided to start a race war in South Carolina.

According to the New York Times, this is part of what happened. We’ll add to the story below:
CORASANITI, PEREZ-PENA AND ALVAREZ (6/19/15): The police said it was a tip from a commuter that led to the arrest.

Deborah Dills was traveling along Highway 74 on Thursday morning from her home in Gastonia, N.C., to her part-time job at a florist
in Kings Mountain, N.C., when she spotted a dark Hyundai Elantra with South Carolina plates. The car—and its driver, Ms. Dills, 51, soon thought—matched the descriptions in the police alert she had heard on the morning news.

“I thought oh no, Debbie, you're just paranoid, you've had this on your mind so strong. This is not happening here. What would he be doing here?” Ms. Dills said in an interview.

Unsure of what to do, she called Todd Frady, the owner of the florist shop.

“She got kind of nervous and pulled off,” Mr. Frady said. He insisted she follow the car, while he called the Kings Mountain police.

Ms. Dills rushed back onto the highway, lined with stores and fast-food restaurants in a chain of suburbs west of Charlotte, in pursuit of the Hyundai. Finally at a stoplight near a Walmart in Shelby, N.C., she pulled up behind the car and read its license plate number to Mr. Frady, who relayed it to the police.

“That's it,” he told her. “That's him.”

A short time later, at 10:43 a.m., the police in Shelby, 250 miles north of Charleston, pulled over the Hyundai and arrested Mr. Roof. He waived extradition and was flown to South Carolina on Thursday evening and, amid extraordinary security, walked into the jail in Charleston County at 7:25 p.m.

As Mr. Roof, who was wearing a striped jail jumpsuit, entered the jail through a secured entrance, a police dog barked, cameras clicked and one woman muttered, “The bastard’s here.”
As Roof appeared in a striped jail jumpsuit, a police dog barked and one woman muttered, “The bastard’s here?”

Try not to be angry about that. That was just the New York Times trying to humanize Roof!

Just to be clear, Deborah Dills isn’t a visiting professor from Oberlin. In her broadcast interviews, it’s clear that she is a very southern woman who is also very “white.”

She’s also very “churchy.” Gloriously, she did the right things last week.

In her TV interviews, she told the story in a bit more detail. She described the fear she felt when her boss told her to get back on the road and follow the suspect’s car.

“I’m not brave,” we saw her say on videotape. But she continued to follow the car until she saw it pulled over.

Dills has largely disappeared from the press as story lines have evolved. We think that’s too bad. We haven’t seen a lot of attention paid to some of the ways things have changed.

Imagine! A pitiful fellow with a big gun wanted to start a race war. What happened when he did?

A southern white woman saw his car and called her southern white boss. Her southern white boss told her to follow the car while he called the southern white police force.

The southern white police proceeded to make the arrest. We think that’s an excellent story, a story that’s well worth considering.

We think that’s a story of moral improvement. We think there are several such stories involved in last week’s events.

Tomorrow, we’ll touch on some of those stories. But as we’ve watched the northern “progressive” world this week, we’ve seen those stories ignored, even denigrated.

Again and again, we’ve almost thought that we were seeing a different story line emerging. We've almost thought that we were seeing an act of massive resistance.

On the front page of the New York Times, we’re told today that the values of those Charleston families are having an effect on the nation. We would assume that’s true.

We would assume that that is occurring despite the progressive world’s massive resistance. On balance, we think that resistance is small, reactionary, unhelpful, unhealthy, unwise.

In our view, the Charleston families are much, much wiser than our reliably awful professors. We’re glad that their values are getting discussed.

More on this story tomorrow.

Tomorrow: At long last, what James Clyburn said

31 comments:

  1. Dylann Roof photo shows him wearing a Gold's Gym tank top. Amazon, ebay, Walmart, Target, and QuiBids will no longer sell this apparel.

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    1. Ka-ching, take fifteen cents out of the petty cash account and go crazy troll.

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    2. @ Brian

      Bernie Sanders would like to tax that petty cash at 90%.

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  2. The contrast between South Carolina and the angry self-absorbed progressive left couldn't be more stark. As someone who didn't care one way or the other about the Confederate flag I supported its removal as a gesture for the victims' families. No amount of browbeating from the freshman feminist studies C student harridans of the left has ever changed a mind.

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  3. We know those stories are not true. Churchy southern white women, probably fat ones who eat meat, would never aid their enemy in the war against black people, the war they are born part of. The fat white and Uncle Tom Stockholm syndromed black police fed Root Burger King after his arrest which my African-American studies professor told me could only represent a subtle endorsement of his goal. Coded behavior all white people in the south understand in spite of their low IQ that causes them to believe in sky fairies and shop at Walmart, and fail to become evolved on issues at the very moment the electorate shifts.

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    1. You have generated a lot of grammar, but no coherent ideas.

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  4. It was those damn liberals marching in the streets and pissing off their betters by demanding equality for all during the 1960s, which delayed the passing of the Civil Rights Act two or three decades earlier.

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    1. You clearly missed the point of today's post, if you even read it.

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    2. Northern progressives suck?

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    3. No, it is that anger is one stage in making progress but must be followed by constructive problem solving arising out of common ground. He argues against getting stuck in anger.

      Trolls suck.

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    4. How are we going to feel special and superior if we are not allowed to make use of black people as pawns for our righteous justice warrioring?

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    5. Good topic for discussion for you and your VDARE buddies, 5:28.

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  5. Kristof mistakes correlation for causation, when he writes, "In 2015, so many children still don’t have an equal shot at life because of the color of their skin."

    He asserts that more money is spent to educate the average white student than the average black student. I don't know if that's true, since he offers no evidence. Nor does he say how large the alleged disparity is. In fact, a Heritage Foundation study found that, "Per pupil spending on non-White students eclipsed spending on White students in the early 1980s and has remained slightly higher ever since." http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2011/04/20/black-run-america-the-myth-of-racial-disparities-in-public-school-funding/

    But, even if less money, on average, were spent on black students, that wouldn't prove that the disparity was because of racial discrimination. E.g., there's a huge disparity in spending between Idaho and New York State. Average annual per pupil spending is less than $8,000 in Idaho and greater than $16,000 in NY. But that doesn't mean that the country is permeated with discrimination against Idahoans. Paraphrasing our President, I don't think "Idahoism" is in our DNA. (For spending by state, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/05/23/heres-how-much-each-state-spends-on-public-school-students/ )

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    1. Average spending on Catholic school students is $7000 per year, far less than public school spending, sometimes not even half. 62% of Catholic school students graduate college compared to 31% of public school students. Spending isn't the problem. Libs who encourage lousy parenting and perpetuate poverty are.

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    2. This is nonsense spoken by someone who doesn't understand the realities of our education system. For example, how many hearing or visually impaired students do Catholic schools educate? Do they even screen for learning disabilities? Or don't the kids with such problems matter? What do they do when there are more kids seeking admission than seats? They turn kids away. Can public schools do that? How much do parents of Catholic schools pay compared to parents of public school kids? What differences might that introduce?

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    3. "Libs who encourage lousy parenting and perpetuate poverty [are the problem]."

      Couldn't have said it any better if I were alive.

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    4. Sovereign nation budgets should be run exactly like household budgets.
      Government leaders should treat their citizens exactly the way strict daddies treat their children.
      To do otherwise violates natural law.

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  6. So what exacter did Meyerson say in the Post about the History of the South that wasn't true, or hasn't been whited out over the years for people who can't handle the truth? Nothing, actually, and poor Bob embarrasses himself by being touchy about it. Big surprise and whatever.

    Again, I'm not sure I buy that this current technique of forgiveness is consistent with the way Dr. King operated. To be sure, he would have welcomed and embraced any sincere gesture of remorse, but he didn't lead with forgiving people who had no interest in reversing there cruel ways. The "I Have a Dream" speech has a pointed attack on the then wretched George Wallace, he does not forgive him.

    There has always been the sort of blue dog ready to quickly forgive the worst crimes of the south and berate those wise guy Yankees. Bob is part of this tiresome, dying tradition. One of the families representatives declined to offer forgiveness to this wretched creep. We don't even really know where he picked up his garbage yet, or why his seemingly moronic father would give this obvious basket case a gun. I honer the feelings of the non forgiving family too.

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    1. We do know where he picked up his garbage. The coverage of the Trayvon Martin case which he knew was an attempted race-based persecution, which caused him to study statistics involving relative crime rates for races vs each other. The insistence of the left to view himself through race caused him to view himself through race, and he found enough justification for a belief that he as a white person was a victim. He didn't buy the only argument explaining the crime disparity, "slavery." Nor does any intelligent person in 2015. HIs remedy was insane, but as for what inspired his mindset, we already know that.

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    2. @5:24 PM - yet another bigoted Karnac the Magnificent standing at the end of a very long line here at the "wave the bloody shirt" blog.

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    3. 5:34, Roof wrote in exacting detail about what motivated him.

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    4. Roof is not a very reliable witness, being a four sheets to the wind nutcase and all. The critical matter of what possessed his father to give him a firearm has not been explained at all. Many of these cases, particuairly Columbine, should have taught us to take early reportage with several grains of salt.

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    5. Last week Roof was a crazy, lone wolf gunmen. Today he's a spokesman for modern conservatives.

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    6. Bill Maher's underpantsJune 25, 2015 at 11:56 PM

      Tomorrow he disappears with the mists of time while the poo-poo behind the Stars & Bars backlashes, flailing away at preceived "progs" with the media's complicity, until the next bloodbath du jour .... Bob waves another bloody shirt and the poo-poo is sanctified once again.

      It's this blogger's version of the news cycle.

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  7. “The company about me on the clouds varies greatly with the mood of the vision, but always it is in some way, if not always a very obvious way, beautiful. One frequent presence is G.K. Chesterton, a joyous whirl of brush work, appropriately garmented and crowned. When he is there, I remark, the whole ceiling is by a sort of radiation convivial. We drink limitless old October from handsome flagons, and we argue mightily about Pride (his weak point) and the nature of Deity. A hygienic, attentive, and essentially anesthetic Eagle checks, in the absence of exercise, any undue enlargement of our Promethean livers. Chesterton often–but never by any chance Belloc. Belloc I admire beyond measure, but there is a sort of partisan viciousness about Belloc that bars him from my celestial dreams. He never figures, no, not even in the remotest corner, on my ceiling.” --HG Wells

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  8. "In this morning’s New York Times, a single letter chides Roxane Gay for the way she cuffed the victims’ families aside in yesterday's op-ed column."

    The letter writer didn't chide Roxanne Gay. But then, Gay did not cuff the victim's families aside.

    Both are part of the narrative of a blogger who long ago cuffed reality aside and sees things that are not there. And never seems to forgive a single real or imagined transgression himself.

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