Ferguson

Ferguson Follies, Part 2

Truth Gunner Uncategorized , , ,

I watched the events of Fergusson, Missouri tonight with the kind of morbid fascination one watches an oncoming tsunami or imminent train wreck.  I was ashamed that I was a junkie to the 24 hour news cycle, but somehow I couldn’t look away.  Like watching a Miley Cyrus video or listening to country music, I was not enjoying what I was seeing but I was more amazed that such a thing could happen in a civilized, seemingly intelligent society.  Greg Gutfeld described the situation in Ferguson quite aptly as a ‘bug lite’ that ‘demands spectacle’.  Indeed.

Start with the decision to hold a press conference of the grand jury findings at 21:00 local time, even though the decision was returned before noon on Monday.  What was the district attorney thinking?  The governor had already called in the National Guard in expectation of riotous behavior, so how can you pretend that lighting the fuse at 9:00 pm at night wouldn’t ignite public passions?  Witness the events in Los Angeles after the Kings won the Stanley Cup, or San Francisco after the Giants won the World Series.  Cars overturned, fires started, windows smashed… and that was to celebrate a sporting team’s victory!  How could you expect less after 3 months of race-fueled fomentation in Ferguson?

Yet that’s exactly what Saint Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said in a Monday night interview.  “We weren’t prepared for what we encountered tonight”.  Golly, what were you prepared for, Chief – some harsh words?  “We decided to let it play out like a festival”, said the chief as we watched fires burn unattended in Ferguson.  OK, I understand not sending firemen into a hail of bullets to save a couple cars.  But the point should have been to anticipate the response and head it off before it gets out of control.

The Chief went on to explain that they were outnumbered and outgunned. “It doesn’t take very long to throw some gasoline on a building and set a fire”.  True.  First week on the job, Chief?  How about a curfew?  How about making those National Guard troops visible before the fires broke out? How about the DA announcing the verdict at 9:00 am instead of 9:00 pm, when at least some of the protesters have to be at jobs or school, or at least can’t benefit from a shroud of darkness?  Blatant incompetence comes to mind as a defense.

Some of the interviews inspired a strange combination of both incredulity and profundity.  I kept switching between CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC.  (In situations like this you need to triangulate to find objectivity.)  It was shocking to see so-called journalists discredit the grand jury process as a charade that was an ‘obvious miscarriage of justice’.  These weren’t uneducated, drunken, unemployed delinquents living under bridges, there were accredited journalists and pundits paid for their informed opinions.  I heard one say “this case should have been brought to a real jury”, an obvious dismissal of both the prosecutor’s office and the grand jury who spent months deliberating over the evidence.   I heard an interview with a cousin of Michael Brown (the deceased) in which he declared “There is no doubt in my mind that the officer reacted out of anger” when he shot and killed the young black man.  He had no more insight than any of us into the event, but he clearly had a narrative in his mind about how events unfolded last August, and nobody was going to convince him otherwise.

Then we had President Obama weighing in.  Why?  Was this really something that the office of the President of the United States needed to comment on?  Part of his comments included challenging the police in Ferguson to ‘exercise restraint’ and ‘work with the community, not against the community’.  He went on to rationalize the response in Ferguson with this tidbit:

“But what is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. Separating that from this particular decision, there are issues in which the law too often feels as if it is being applied in a discriminatory fashion. I don’t think that’s the norm. I don’t think that’s true for the majority of communities or the vast majority of law enforcement officials.”

If we are ‘separating that from this particular decision’, why even bring it up?  The only reason for being on the air is to address the issues in Ferguson.  Obama could have pointed out that due process was followed in Ferguson, and that insufficient evidence was found to indict Officer Darren Wilson (who, BTW, now faces a lifetime of threats and hatred for defending himself in the line of duty).  But he didn’t.  Instead, he found a left-handed way to throw this officer to the wolves as if he got off on some kind of technicality rather than being acquitted of wrongdoing.

Is it really so hard to believe the officer’s story after watching the security camera footage of Michael Brown robbing a convenience store and intimidating the store clerk just moments before his encounter with Officer Wilson? Also disturbing was how ready white commentators were to jump on the bandwagon to throw support behind the outrage, without any defensible evidence to suggest why due process wasn’t followed.  Shelby Steele writes most eloquently about white guilt and how powerful it can be to motivate white people to cater to the sentiments of black outrage as if it will somehow ease their conscience about slavery, class warfare, or some other injustice that makes them feel they ‘owe’ something to non-whites.  I’ve not seen it displayed so blatantly since the Travon Martin case, but even then it wasn’t even a white-on-black case because George Zimmerman was Hispanic.

Thinking people recognize that looting, burning and destroying property does not legitimize frustration over perceived racial inequalities.  But outrage still gets a nod of approval from those who are supposed to be society’s leaders, desperate to fill the shoes of Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks.  Problem is, this isn’t 1960 anymore.

The Ferguson, Missouri’s Media Non Sequitur-Fest

Truth Gunner Uncategorized , , , , , ,

Webster defines a non sequitur as” a statement that is not connected in a logical or clear way to anything said before it”.  Witness just about any statement coming out of Ferguson, Missouri over the past week.

A young black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a Ferguson, MO police officer on August 9.  Angry black mob leaders have been rushing to the nearest cameras and microphones to declare this a cold-blooded execution, premeditated criminal act, murder, and any other vile act they can pile on.

Certainly an investigation is in order, but the prevailing mob mentality is to forgo this formality and hang the white officer (and most of the rest of the Ferguson police force) from a flag pole in the town square.  It’s amazing to witness the media frenzy in action.  They hope for violence and chaos, which is really good for ratings.  They sprinkle in ‘experts’ for commentary, as if they can somehow rationalize the looting of local minimarts as class warfare or the racial frustrations of otherwise really good citizens that are representative of the US populace.

Today’s show included press conferences from a medical examiner who conducted an independent autopsy of Michael Brown and concluded (spoiler alert) – Michael Brown died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Well that clinches it!!  Now we have proof that he was executed in cold blood by a racist, power-abusing, neo-Nazi storm trooper who hates black people and children!   Oh, wait, we already knew that Michel Brown was killed by a bullet.  And we already knew who pulled the trigger.  So what, exactly did this autopsy reveal?  The only thing I can see is that of the 6 wounds, some were caused by the same bullet reentering multiple times.  And yet, the headlines of all the media websites flash that “Independent Autopsy reveals that Michael Brown was shot at least 6 times”.  No, actually the examiner said there were multiple wounds caused by the same bullet, and that the fatal bullet entered in the top of his head. Lost in all the loaded questions was one that asked if any of the findings were inconsistent with the explanation of self-defense by the police officer. (Thanks for pouring cold water on that flaming press conference, pal!) Declaring “the victim was shot at least 6 times” has more of the wink-and-a-nudge flavor of excess that we need to keep this thing going.  Maybe this is enough to get something burned down or blown up tonight!  The networks can only hope.

The press conference was championed by a phalanx of  black attorneys and ‘anger translators’ who promptly concluded that this was conclusive proof that Michael Brown was executed in cold blood, completely innocent, and the officer involved should immediately be arrested.  Enter the blizzard of ‘Non Sequiturs.  CNN followed the press conference with a panel discussion of ‘experts’.  A well dressed, well-spoken black woman was re-offered the softball setup question that came out during the autopsy conference “Do we have enough evidence to make an arrest”?

“OF COURSE WE HAVE ENOUGH EVIDENCE!! She snorted indignantly.  “WE HAD ENOUGH EVIDENCE ON DAY ONE!  WHEN SOMEONE GETS SHOT, WE MAKE AN ARREST AND HOLD THOSE PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE. THAT’S HOW OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM WORKS IN THIS COUNTRY!!”

A surprisingly calm medical examiner corrected her and pointed out that this is actually not how things work, police are not arrested for discharging the weapons they are obligated to carry.  We have investigations, we gather facts, and then we make determinations.

BUT WE HAVE AN INDEPENDENT AUTOPSY FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!! Any day now, we will get DNA EVIDENCE that PROVES, BEYOND ALL DOUBT, that the person who was shot was Michael Brown.  That should slam the door for good!!!  Perhaps if we pile up enough non sequiturs we get a relevant fact?  Wishful thinking.

This is sad evidence of a public that has grown fat on a diet of TV Crime investigation shows.  CSI, NCIS, The Closer, Rizzoli and Isles, Forensic Files…  not that those shows aren’t entertaining, but the common climax of all shows is the clang of the steel-trap of scientific evidence slamming shut on the guilty and eliminating off all possible alternatives.  In a Hollywood script, that satisfying closure can be created for the ending viewers crave.  In the real world, medical examiners and lab results don’t always tell us what happened, and we need to follow well established procedures that include a presumption of innocence. If the mob and the mob leaders believe that law enforcement AND the criminal justice system are both corrupt and cannot be trusted, then they are really advocating revolution.  A responsible media would do some diligence to determine if corruption is really rampant and whether the appropriate corrective action has been taken.

The script for the rest of this investigation is likely already set.  Any evidence that exonerates the shooting officer will be branded as contrived, falsified, and the police protecting their own.   Even the release of photos from the surveillance camera that showed Michael Brown apparently strong-arming another much smaller person is being met with angry accusations of character assassination.

CNN also showed EXCLUSIVE EYEWITNESS CELLPHONE VIDEO (capital letters to convey breathless shouting, accompanied with heavy disclaimers of viewer discretion just to get our attention) that showed nothing other than Michel Brown lying in the street.  It showed absolutely nothing that we didn’t already know, but the media is trying fiercely to flame the passions to keep this in the spotlight as long as possible.  And it appears to be working, because now we are seeing camera time for figure heads like Al Sharpton, Malik Shabazz (national chairman of the New Black Panther Party and founder of Black Lawyers for Justice, just to distinguish them from all the white lawyers who don’t want justice), Trayvon Martin’s civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, Martin Luther King III, and hoards of other civil rights wannabe’s.

The facts of the case in the tragic shooting of Michael Brown have become a minor detail; a footnote in ‘serving a larger purpose’.

Google Tawana Brawley.

Or the Duke Lacrosse team rape case.

Conclusions are already being made, looting and violence are characterized as just passionate responses from victims of systematic oppression.  Any verdict short of emphatic guilt and public execution for a heinous act of racially motivated cruelty will not satisfy the bloodthirsty mob that the media has so irresponsibly whipped into their frenzy.  Little do they care that their incessant coverage will make impossible for Officer Darren Wilson to live a normal life, much less continue his career in law enforcement, should he be found guilty of doing nothing more than defending himself.  But hey, this way they can create another news frenzy any time he applies for a security job, gets a hunting license, has a fender bender (was it a black driver he hit???), or- god forbid- has any kind of domestic dispute with his family or neighbors.

Convenient to create your own ratings makers. All you need is a faux naivete for your power to incite civil unrest, a callous disregard for destroying innocent lives, an an opportunistic greed that fuels an irresponsible mob mentality that refuses to accept the consequences of their own choices. In the infamous words of TV’s J.R Ewing: “One you lose your integrity, the rest is easy”.