Decent, good person speaks up in the Post!

MONDAY, JULY 13, 2020

That said, is this part of a pattern?:
Of all the relevant articles we've read since the day George Floyd was killed, the person we've probably thought of most is that 7-year-old boy who lives in California.

That 7-year-old is terrified; he wants to leave the country. We read about him in an essay written by his mother, an essay republished by Slate.

In part, we'd say that 7-year-old is terrified because his mother is very scared. As you may recall, her essay started like this:
MCDONALD (6/15/20): I was 14 when Rodney King was brutally beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers. I had no thoughts of kids, or how a parent protects them. But in households around the country, Black parents were having “The Talk” with their children: an intense, high-stakes training on the realities of racism designed to inoculate them against disproportionate police targeting and brutality.

My oldest child is now 7. A few nights ago, I was the one giving The Talk. We discussed George Floyd’s death. Even with my high-level, simplistic explanation, he understood and was brought to tears. He thought at first that I was speaking of the past, and I could see the fear on his face when I explained that this wasn’t “back then.” He asked a lot of tough questions about hate and racism, and ended by telling me he wants to leave the United States. He was terrified.
That's how the essay began. Of all the work we've read since George Floyd died, we've probably thought of that scared little boy the most.

Our question would be this:

Should that child be terrified? Also, should his mother be as scared as she seems to be?

Over here, within our own blue-voting tribe, that fear has almost become a sacrament by now. As Colbert King suggested last Saturday, guilt-stricken/algorithm driven mainstream journalists have perhaps been pushing that fear along hard.

That said:

Is it possible that this fear, and this terror, are perhaps being felt too deeply? Is it possible that many people are misassessing the likelihood that they, or one of their children, will be shot and killed by police?

Is it possible that six years of journalism—we're dating this to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin—have created a world in which people are making a misassessment? This is a question that's heavily fraught, but if you consider the interests of a 7-year-old who's terrified, we'll suggest that you should consider giving that question a bit of your time.

We thought of that 7-year-old early this morning when we read an essay from the Outlook section of yesterday's Washington Post. The essay was written by a very good, very decent person who is curretly working long shifts as a doctor trying to save people who are sick with the coronavirus.

In our assessment, the likelihood is zero that this young doctor is trying to mislead anyone. Still, we thought of that terrified 7-year-old when we read the passage posted below.

The writer is an especially good, decent person, but we're not sure that the highlighted passage should have appeared in this form:
HOLMES (7/12/20): No single incident compelled me to wear scrubs everywhere. However, one night in the spring of 2019 after a long day at the hospital stands out...On my way home, around 2 a.m., I found myself behind a black car with tinted windows traveling less than 10 mph on a deserted two-way street. After this continued for a couple of blocks, I decided to pass the car. As soon as I did, blue lights came on, and I pulled over. The car pulled alongside me. Both passenger windows rolled down.

I immediately thought of Stephon Clark, who had been shot one year earlier in his grandmother’s backyard.
We'll strongly suggest that you read the whole thing. The writer's story continues from there.

We assume that the writer's story is completely accurate. That includes his account of what he immediately thought when he was pulled over, for no apparent reason, by New York City police that night.

We're sure that is what the writer "immediately thought." We aren't sure that the Washington Post should have published that truncated account of Stephon Clark's death.

Here's why:

From that account, a reader might think that Clark was sitting in his grandmother's yard when Sacramento police appeared on the scene and shot him for no reason. A reader might get that impression because that account omits the basic facts which surround that unfortunate death.

We don't believe that the writer of this essay was trying to mislead anyone at all. But this "elimination of surrounding detail in the case of police shooting death" has become a whole new literary form in the past six years—a literary form which may be leading many people to misassess the likelihood that they will be shot and killed by police officers for no earthly reason.

The essay was written by Arturo Holmes Jr. He sounds like the kind of person others should get to admire.

But when we read that truncated account of that shooting death, we thought of that terrified little boy, and we thought of his mother, who seems to be very scared.

Misassessments of danger are common. In the years since Trayvon Martin's death, has this new literary form terrified 7-year-old children so much that they want to leave the country?

We plan to explore this topic further. It's an extremely painful topic, that's true. But should that little boy be that scared?

More ruminations to come.

Also deemed very important at Slate: Breaking news on another key topic has just been published by Slate:
RICH JUZWIAK / JULY 13, 2020 / 3:24 P.M.
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I’m horny constantly.
People, we're just asking! Does anyone ever get tired of the bad faith, the limited judgment and the cheap thrills of various kinds promulgated by the people who are hanging on, however they can, at bad-faith "news sites" like Slate?

38 comments:

  1. 'Does anyone ever get tired of the bad faith, the limited judgment and the cheap thrills of various kinds promulgated by the people who are hanging on, however they can, at bad-faith "news sites" like Slate?'

    Haven't read slate in years, so I can't comment on it, but all sites publish some fluff. Nothing wrong with it. It's certainly orders of magnitude preferable to malevolent Trumptards who defend DJT, AG Barr, Roy Moore, Zimmerman, Ron Johnson ewtc.

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  2. "Misassessments of danger are common."

    Except that these are not misstatements, dear Bob (if that's the word you were trying to type).

    They are goebbelsian lies and hate-mongering, propagated by your liberal-hitlerian cult, for the purpose of instigating a race war.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Speaking of cults:

      https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/21/for-this-russian-messianic-cult-coronavirus-isolation-is-a-blessing-a70330

      Delete
    2. Speaking of cults:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

      Delete
  3. It has always been a staple that conservatives are more fearful than liberals. Here, Somerby wants to turn that around, implying that liberals who are worried about the impact of cop violence on their kids are being overly fearful (due to sensationalist stories in the press).

    Has Somerby ever spent time telling conservatives that their fears that marriage will be undermined by gays are misplaced? Has he ever spent any time here telling conservatives that antifa isn't coming to their small town?

    Here's another example -- did Somerby spend the time after the mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas telling those people that their fears of further violence were unrealistic, exaggerated by the press? They were there, and many were traumatized. Is it wrong for them to have been afraid? Is it wrong for black people to feel frightened when they see a video of a black man killed by police for no good reason, and wish to make their child safe?

    This strikes me as another instance where Somerby is unable to put himself into the shoes of that mother, witnessing such a video, and instead uses this as a political excuse to berate the media, which has done nothing more than report these events. It isn't as though they were making up that video of Floyd's execution. It is real and more frightening because we can all see what happened. No imagination or empathy required. Unlike the circumstances of how a black mother can protect her child when the world allows such things to happen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "I’m a Conservative Woman Who Doesn’t Believe in Casual Sex"

    Somerby doesn't have any close friends or he would know that even conservatives talk to their friends about sex these days.

    Slate didn't invent advice columns. People read them because they have similar problems (or they like to feel superior to the people with such problems). They sometimes do some good -- showing people that their problems are universal and that having problems doesn't make you a freak, even if you are a conservative.

    Somerby is no doubt upset because all that column space could have been used to show more covid graphs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know perfectly well that this is clickbait for liberal men who fantasize about getting it on with women in MAGA hats; converting them to liberalism via their woke willy.

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    2. "Woke Willy" I'd like to see that on a t-shirt.

      Delete
    3. You’d have to go to Buzzfeed for those.

      Delete
    4. Cecilia: all true, except we don't care about converting them. Just getting it on.

      Delete
    5. I’m sure Bob does think conservatives are stupid. Thinking that about people who don’t share your political views is a proud American tradition and far more benign than our current politics. You can love and coexist with people you think are none too bright. Current day sentiments toward political contrarians are downright baleful. Bob’s a mensch.

      Bob’s right in what he’s saying about the influence of the media upon minorities. You can’t say the media is essential and consequential in its mission and then dismiss any notion that it has influence over the public and the power to alarm us.

      I don’t think the media needs censoring, its narratives need to be identified and countered.

      Delete
    6. “Cecilia: all true, except we don't care about converting them. Just getting it on.”

      Saves time and energy.

      Delete
    7. The media is essential and consequential because it INFORMS the populace, not because it propagandizes us. To exercise your vote, you need to know what is happening. You don't need to know what other people think about events. Opinion sections are entertainment, in my opinion.

      Delete
    8. Anonymouse 7:43pm, yes, why would the news industry need editorials when we have news stories that are that.

      Delete
    9. You know that isn't what I said. Why be like that?

      Delete
    10. Oh, I wasn’t putting words into your mouth, I was expressing my opinion about today’s journalism.

      Delete
    11. All I can say, Cecelia, is that you are part of the problem if you watch Fox or listen to right wing bullshit. They are at least as damaging to our discourse as CNN or MSNBC or any of the ones Somerby criticizes. I’d love to visit a blog by a right winger who hates conservatives and right wing media as much as Somerby hates liberals and left wing/mainstream media, but I can’t find one. You probably wouldn’t be here if Somerby weren’t bashing liberals and what you call “the media”, but is really only a fraction of the media, consisting of liberal and so-called “mainstream” outlets. I think the topics Somerby raises are often important, but he often misrepresents the liberal position. Even if I am frequently critical of Somerby, I am here trying to read him in good faith, because heaven knows liberals and the MSM need criticism. It just needs to be fair. I certainly hope you spend as much time being critical of right wing media, because God knows they deserve it.

      Delete
    12. All I can say, mh, is that your assertions are self- referential and my answers would to them would be less so, but still pretty subjective.

      I don’t like links in lieu of arguments, but this report is what I find alarming about the inclinations of our Best and Brightest media types these days.

      https://www.mediaite.com/print/opinion-editor-bari-weiss-leaving-the-new-york-times-paper-announces/




      Delete
    13. Cecelia I could take you seriously if you ever said anything that was accurate, correct, or relevant. As it is, you are merely a curiously smug clown, a poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect. Tell me how it hurts baby.

      Delete
  5. "Decent, good person speaks up in the Post!"

    When you continually find yourself in opposition to good, decent people, shouldn't that be a clue that you are on the wrong side of these matters? Somerby...

    ReplyDelete
  6. “We aren't sure that the Washington Post should have published that truncated account of Stephon Clark's death.”

    Holmes’ opinion piece was not an account of the Stephon Clark incident, not was it meant to be.

    I suppose the editors could have linked to a story that detailed the Clark incident. They did not. But that full set of details was not what flashed into Holmes’ mind that night. So why would those details be relevant to Holmes’ opinion piece?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm. How about this: 'I saw Hillary Clinton reaching into her pocket, and immediately thought of Seth Rich who had been shot four years earlier.'

      Delete
    2. By Hillary? Because Seth had become aware of her pederasty pizza joint?

      Delete
    3. What are toppings come with that?

      Delete
    4. Yeah, thanks, pizzeria is even better.

      'While driving I saw a pizzeria, and immediately thought of Hillary's pedophilia ring with satanic rituals'

      If you were a WaPo editor, you would've just okayed it, right, mh?

      Delete
    5. David,
      You should tell Trump that suppressing the votes of blacks is counter-productive, if his plan is getting more black votes than he did in 2016.

      Please, let us know how hard he laughs at you, when you bring it up.

      Delete
  7. Slate a “news site”?

    “Slate, which is updated throughout the day, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. According to its former editor-in-chief Julia Turner, the magazine is "not fundamentally a breaking news source", but rather aimed at helping readers to "analyze and understand and interpret the world" with witty and entertaining writing. As of mid-2015, it publishes about 1,500 stories per month.”

    ReplyDelete
  8. “Is it possible that six years of journalism—we're dating this to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin—have created a world in which people are making a misassessment?”

    It’s unlikely that journalism has caused black people to make an assessment about something that they or their friends or their families have experienced first-hand, for decades. In other words, journalism isn’t highly relevant to them.

    At the same time, “journalism”, for much of its existence, has by and large ignored this.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm binge-watching 30 Rock and there is an episode where Jack Donaghy is working for Homeland Security because Don Geiss is in a coma. He is in a meeting and wants pens for his department so he says that with pens, they can make America great again! Everyone applauds and he gets his pens. And this was back in 2008 (Season 2, Episode 15). So now we know where the inspiration came from. Also, it is amazing how prescient that episode is about how the administration works. What the writers considered irony and humor has turned out to be real.

    ReplyDelete
  10. mh wrote: It’s unlikely that journalism has caused black people to make an assessment about something that they or their friends or their families have experienced first-hand, for decades.

    That's why Trump is hoping to get a bigger black vote than in 2016. Inner city blacks know that shootings by other blacks are their big problem, not police shootings. They know that they need more police protection, not less.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In Wake Of Continued Gun Violence, Prominent Members Of Black Community Call On NYPD To Bring Back Anti-Crime Unit

      https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/07/13/new-york-city-shootings-nypd-anti-crime-unit-eric-adams-tony-herbert/

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    2. There is a crucial difference between black shootings and police shootings -- black criminals who shoot others have not taken an oath to defend and serve the public. Police officers have. And because police officers work for the public, their behavior can be examined and changed, which is considerably more difficult with criminals, black or white.

      Delete
  11. On Slate then, if Michael Kinsley was dead, he would be spinning in his grave (or urn)

    ReplyDelete
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