Lots of excess material here: In the section about rightbloggers claiming Ferguson has something to do with Second Amendment rights -- as if America would tolerate black citizens open-carrying en masse; forbid it almighty Reagan! -- I'd hoped to include this Tim Cavanaugh rant at National Review, in which Cavanaugh is so enraged that Tom Toles alluded in a disparaging manner to the NRA in a Ferguson cartoon that he starts emitting stank from every hole -- calling Toles "The Worst Cartoonist In America," snarling about "cheap and half-baked premises" and "barnacle-encrusted clichés," comparing Toles to "monstrous dictators," saying he "keeps his finger right on the pulse of 1979," calling his draftsmanship "visually repulsive" (not aurally repulsive, I guess)... it's so unhinged that Cavanaugh's lack of a coherent point doesn't explain it. Maybe it's a Nast/Tweed or a Goebbels/revolver thing?
UPDATE. If you want some idea of how the Ooga-Booga Squad is whipping the Lipstick Libertarians among conservatives, look at The Corner at National Review this morning. Samples:
- "Ferguson Protester to Cop: ‘F*** You, N*****’." (The protester is black and the cop is white, so you can imagine how this will enrage your typical NatRev reader.)
- Victor Davis Hanson: "The gratuitous looting and street violence, the almost instantaneous rush to blast the police by soon to be presidential candidate Rand Paul; the arrival of the usual demagogues — Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson ('state execution'), and the New Black Panther Party... so reminiscent of the Trayvon Martin Case..." If you're playing the Racist Pundit Talking Point Drinking Game, that's four stiff shots right there.
- Jay Nordlinger: "Black person kills white person. Zzzzz. White person kills black person — the world stops." Once again white people get the short end of the stick! Also: "Michael Brown’s life or Trayvon Martin’s life would be just as valuable if a person of a different color had done the shooting" -- which is to say, from Nordlinger's perspective, not at all.
"You can't draw" is the battle cry of your average shirt-tuckin' would-be critic when it comes to art that angers and frightens him. This is why Chris Muir continues to believe he has talent.
ReplyDeleteC'mon, "keeps his finger right on the pulse of 1979" is kinda funny.
Dear God, every time I go to click on the link I hear the sound of 1,000 neoCons peeing their pants in unison and chicken out faster than Capt. Johnson at a Black Panther rally.
ReplyDeleteSomeone else get out of the boat first.
calling Toles "The Worst Cartoonist In America,"
ReplyDeleteJebus. Toles is such a good cartoonist, if he were a Republican half of us Ds would still say he's one of the best. The other half would still say he's *the* best.
Also too, not that Conservatarians aren't up for the occasional waste of time, but you gotta admit, going postal on a cartoonist who really *is* an unreadable hack would be one of the biggest...
This presents such a great opportunity for libertarians to flip a significant fraction of blacks from big government to limited government.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how some conservatives seem to genuinely think token gestures toward minorities will get their vote. As if black people are reasoning: "Hey, Democrats are better on all issues of race and worse on none, but I'm going to vote Republican because a couple of them are no longer as terrible as they all have been, and most still are, on police violence."
This presents such a great opportunity for libertarians to flip a significant fraction of blacks from big government to limited
ReplyDeletegovernment.
Gibbertarians seek the black vote - An allegory*
Scene - A forest glade in late autumn.
Dramatis Personae:
6 point buck
4 point buck
Doe
Fawn
Hunter 1
Hunter 2
Brown bear
The curtain lifts on the 4 Deer, grazing peacefully. Suddenly the silence is broken by the sound of two people moving clumsily through the forest. The 4 Deer look up and then go back to grazing
From offstage -
Hunter 1: WOW I SURE CAN'T WAIT TO BAG A DEER!
Hunter 2: YOU SAID IT!
6 pt buck: Can you believe these assholes?
Doe: Every year it is the same thing.
4 pt buck: I still say we oughta -
Doe: Shhh! Not in front of the f-a-w-n.
Fawn: I can spell you know.
The hunters continue to blunder noisily through the woods, discussing how eager they are to bag a deer and how great it is that deer are so much dumber than humans and how easy they are to catch.
Fawn: O for opposable thumbs.
4 pt: Or at least something to sharpen our antlers...
6 pt: Come on, we'll miss the best part.
The deer leap over a deep, narrow gully and run up hill.
Hunter 1: Look! There they go! Those bastards are running away!
Hunter 2: How'd they know we were coming! It must be low animal cunning!
Hunter 1: I'll get 'em - Aaaaak! [Falls into gully]
Hunter 2: Shiiii! - [Also]
Hunter 1: Damn now we're in trouble.
Hunter 2: Trouble! Better shoot it with our guns!
[Bang, pow, and so on]
On the hillside a large brown bear ambles up to the small herd.
4 pt buck: Hello large brown bear.
Bear: Hello 4 Point Buck. 6 Point Buck. Doe. Tasty - er - Fawn.
Hunter 1: Well, shooting the trouble with our guns didn't work.
Hunter 2: I'm all out of bullets.
Bear: Evening folks.
The bear ambles down the hill and into the gully. There are screams for a bit. Then silence. Then the sound of a bear sleeping off a heavy meal.
Doe: Every year.
6 pt: The damn thing.
*Not to be taken as negative commentary about hunting or hunters, but if this sounds like something you'd do, please go hunt with Dick Cheney.)
Toles in reality is as funny and incisive as Maureen Dowd is in her head.
ReplyDeleteEspecially since the token gestures come after they shout "Hey! Let's make some token gestures to get the black vote!" And is always followed by a gutload of racist sneering when it doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of a MRA who can't understand why tossing a 7-11 bought rose at his intended doesn't result in limitless nookie. Sure he'd like sex, but he's just as happy to have yet another reason to call women demanding bitches.
Well, token gestures to white people have worked for them. They're just being not-racist.
ReplyDeleteIt will, I hope, come as news to most readers that there are still print newspapers, and that they are still putting out editorial cartoons.
ReplyDeleteSays the man who writes for a magazine that can't seem to come within screaming distance of break-even.
Cavanaugh would do well to pick up one of those old-fashioned newspaper thingies once in a while. He might learn that the NRA's standard response to gun violence is always MOAR GUNZ!!11!!! Whether we're talking about White ranchers calling for armed insurrection, or mentally ill people gunning down elementary schools full of kindergartners, the NRA ALWAYS says the problem is too few guns, and the answer is MOAR GUNZ for EVERYONES!!!
Mallard Fillmore
ReplyDeleteDay by Day
Truesbury
Drawing--how the fuck does that work?
Humor--how does that work?
For most conservatives, it's as mysterious as the workings of the tides: "You can't explain that!"
Ah, well, after the recent "we're all libertarians now" routines, there was no doubt that events in Ferguson were going to create considerable confusion among the brethren, which, of course, translates to no small amount of hilarity among the onlookers.
ReplyDelete"Give `em all guns and watch the state... umm, uh, wait a minute, uh, oh, shit...."
Did Hunter1 get a broken allegory when he fell in the gully?
ReplyDeleteAs funny and incisive as a hole in Maureen Dowd's head.
ReplyDeleteGood grief, he can't even do dumbass spiteful hauteur right. Mocking the supposed relevance of print newspapers could be done wittingly, heaven knows there are some deserving tolerance. But suggesting that most readers wouldn't actually know that print newspapers still exist is just weird; it makes you sound like you haven't left your house in some time.
ReplyDeleteAll those guns you guys have don't seem to be helping the situation much.
ReplyDelete"This presents such a great opportunity for libertarians to
ReplyDeleteflip a significant fraction of blacks from big government to limited
government. If Rand Paul wants to do outreach to the black community,
get there now."
Jeezus, Glenn... this isn't about the Feds or the State (although the newest media star, Ron Johnson, is a captain in the state Highway Patrol), this is about the local police abusing their own citizens. I know that Libertoonians blather endlessly about devolving gubmint down th the local level, but it doesn't get any more local that this, and the town of Ferguson has shown impressive creativity in finding new ways to fuck up law enforcement. I'd really like to ask one of these geniuses just how small and local IS the ideal governing body. I'm guessing the reply would be something along the lines of "a heavily armed household".
Tim Cavanaugh:
ReplyDelete"Hah RUMPH... That Toles fella isn't fit to clean Thomas Nast's ink pens, I'll tell you what..."
Seems the Ol' Perfesser has forgotten that Rand Paul already tried his idea of "outreach to the black community," namely dissing the NAACP to their faces at their convention, even as his complaints about the Civil Rights Act were still echoing in everyone's ears.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, Rand Paul will be the right wing's emissary to the black community, probably because he's the best they can do.
This is sort of like the wingers saying that Clarence Thomas was a sop to the black community after the appointment of the minority-hatin', vote-suppressin' Rehnquist as chief justice.
Cavanaugh has certainly given that one Toles cartoon a lot of thought, if "thought" is the right word and I'm pretty sure it isn't.
ReplyDelete"But these sorts of flare-ups over controversial shootings by police have been a part of American life for a very long time."
ReplyDeleteThey've been part of American life for a very long time, so much so that many Americans have become not habituated to them but sick of them. That's the part of the equation the righties are missing. What they do grasp is that they've stumbled into a situation they're going to have a hard time turning to their advantage. I can't say that I wish them good luck.
Making fun of the NRA seems to excite the voices in some schizophrenics' heads. That's what it sounds like to me.
ReplyDeleteThe question is why they choose to frame the comments about the "flare-ups."
ReplyDeleteConsider this, instead: "Butthese sorts of flare-ups over controversial shootings by police have been a part of American life for a very long time."
Equally true, and even more explanatory, I'd think.
Don't hurt your incisors!
ReplyDelete"These rampaging thugs and criminals are neither white nor Asian nor Eskimo nor American Indian. They are, as far as one can discern from news footage, roughly 100 percent black."
ReplyDeleteIf Ross Kaminsky ever transitions to writing op-eds for a SCLM paper like the NYTimes or the WaPo - something that's been known to happen with Spectator alumni - I hope everyone remembers this assholish bit of math geekery.
But the important thing is that Rich Lowry just finds it all so boring. Nude pix of SP or GTFO.
ReplyDelete"Somebody has to say it," declared Ross Kaminsky at The American Spectator:
ReplyDeletePlease proceed, Klavernor Governor. . .
'This presents such a great opportunity for libertarians to flip a
ReplyDeletesignificant fraction of blacks from big government to limited
government.
Because African-Americans were so poorly served by big government during the Civil War, the "Brown vs. Board of Ed" era, and the 1960's Civil Rights movement. Why be beholden to big government when they can be subject to the tender mercies of Bull Connor's local government and George Wallace's state government?
Seriously, trust Boss Rand, he has your best interests at heart... HONEST!
Just saw a picture of him on the Kudlow Report. I bow to your superior judgment.
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan also has ambitions to spread the Word of Love to the black community. Given his inability to sell himself as a living human being with a pulse, this should be grimly hilarious.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/U0fIY9z8eP0
ReplyDeleteOther interesting info:
ReplyDeleteAutopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times
None in the back though.
Until a black guy isn't gunned down at Walmart for carrying a toy gun (and when he's on the cellphone and can't immediately respond to the sudden presence of cops, who didn't seem to notice that no one except for the husband and wife who called 911 was threatened or alarmed), we're not going to see open carry and more guns for black people.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the Daily Show sketch on 2nd amendment etiquette: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/14muzr/2nd-amendment-manners-do-s-and-don-ts
Props to Ms. Cracker for "tribble-topped."
ReplyDelete(The best version of this was probably that of Ace of Spades who, fresh from defending the cops, scoffed that "Dumb Lefties Who Don't Read" and "Leftists Who Live in a Bubble" didn't know about all the libertarian push-back -- while adding, way far down, that "to clarify, I'm actually skeptical of the Libertarian take on this issue, at least in its Strong Form. In a Weak Form, I buy it. Strong Form, no. So I don't want to suggest that I am one of the Libertarians who's been pounding this issue. I haven't." It's the thought that counts!)Weak Form/Strong Form? Has Ace (it's news to this bubble-dwelling reader that he still exists) developed some sort of Quantum Idea Mechanics?
ReplyDeleteSad and pissed off. Autopsy results come in; at least several shots fired into Brown. This info could have been released days ago. Police jerking people around - a community that witnessed someone shot unarmed and left on the street for four hours. Info withheld, who knows what evidence has disappeared from the scene. No incident report released. Then the brutal way the protests have been handled…
ReplyDeleteAnd now on Twitter I see people bending over backwards to talk about how "at least 6 shots" is vastly different from the 9 shots witnesses reported (no, it's not vastly different numerically, linguistically, or when you take into account that the officer might have missed a few times). Also people trying to justify why six shots needed to bring an unarmed person down under any circumstances, especially when they appear not to be at close range…
Then clueless pro-Wilson supporters at that little protest in St. Louis saying that black people need to be patient with the investigation and don't understand the system… how out of touch and clueless do you need to be to say that they don't understand the system?
Good luck with trying to convince members of the already worst-paid segment of society that getting rid of minimum-wage law is in their interest.
ReplyDeleteBut, then, utter futility has never stopped Ryan before.
There is a Putz Prize? Damn, have I got some nominations, then.
ReplyDeleteAlso, looking at autopsy details - shots hit his inner right palm and inner arms. This matches up with someone with their hands and arms up, much more than someone just charging at a cop… unless they were somehow charging either with their arms up or with their arms down and palms turned out, which doesn't really make sense when you run aggressively towards someone.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Ace has ever been all that competent about defining terms. It's been pretty much proven, over and over again, that even he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, so I wouldn't worry. He's probably been watching old Nova episodes out of boredom, and something got stuck on its way in one ear and out the other.
ReplyDeleteHe ran suck.com? Wow. I read that back in the wild west of the 90s. At the time it struck me as a good landmark on the largely amorphous frontier that was the interweb, pointing the way to how things might develop. I mean it was only intermittently interesting, but it was its own thing, ya know? I read it mostly for Heather Havrilesky's Tiny Little Penis, and its pioneering snarkiness fit nicely between rudimentary news sites and BBS games and geocities shrines built by lunatics using magenta fonts on burgundy backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I had no idea the interweb would become as delineated and, uh, as civilized as it is here in Modern Times. I thought it would always be a mess populated by weirdos with obsessions, plus poorly constructed corporate sites that us hip kids would laugh at and be angry at. I'll give Cavanaugh credit -- he was one of the people who had a vision for the web's potential, before most people even had email.
THAT SAID, oof, man, I could not get past his opening paragraph in that NRO piece. His style at suck was always a mist of obscure references and implications by association instead of coherent, linear argument. At its best, it suggested a coherent worldview and it affected a nice above-it-all wisdom -- but even then it could be tiresome, and until now I had no idea he wasn't kidding.
They can defend the cop all they like, but anyone believing that jaywalking, or dissing a cop, or even petty theft warrants summary execution in the middle of the street has got a serious thinking disorder. Period.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I forced myself to read the whole Cavanaugh rant, and look:
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of unexamined assumptions encoded in this panel. In
fact, there’s really nothing but unexamined assumptions. Obviously, that
Toles seems to think the National Rifle Association has a damn thing to
do with how much military surplus equipment a podunk police department
receives is far more revealing of Toles’s own mind than of anything
going on in these here United States.
File this under It's Always Projection because nowhere in his panel does Toles suggest the NRA has a thing to do with militarization of police. A newscaster notes the police have been militarized and a viewer says "I bet the NRA will have some interesting solutions." How Cavanaugh sees that and decides Toles (and by extension all libtards) are railing against an imagined NRA role in arming police, well, who knows; it is something that is going on entirely in Cavanaugh's mind, not in the cartoon.
It also irked me that he refers to the news-watchers in Tole's panel as "John and Jane Q. Public," because I doubt Toles thought "And now I will draw John and Jane Q. Public." Imagining what an average person thinks and then using your media platform to parrot that is a conservapundit move, and the hackiest, least useful thing an opinion shaper can try. Toles, who is objectively good, is more likely to draw a man and think something like, "Here's a man," not "Here's Everyman." That Cavanaugh doesn't grasp this is in a nutshell is why all these conservative stabs at culture fail.
Of course at no point does Cavanaugh notice Toles asks a real question: What is the appropriate "second amendment" response to militarized authorities? Is it bigger weaponry for citizens? If you think the 2A exists so that the citizenry can keep the govt in check, and the govt deploys APCs, doesn't the citizenry by 2A definition NEED bazookas n shit capable of taking out APCs? It would be very damn interesting to hear the NRA's solution to this.
You know it would be worth the price of admission as it were to see several hundred african americans open carry down some major thoroughfare (obeying all laws while doing so) then watch the right freak out - it would be Black Panthers this and reparations through retribution freak out city.that.
ReplyDeleteI expected to read/hear outright racist comments on this shooting and the events after, and some people definitely haven't disappointed. But what gets under my skin most are the smirking insincere people who just treat this whole thing as a game. For instance, the ones on Twitter will hang around taking potshots at people in Ferguson who are frantically providing updates. They sneer, nitpick, pretend they're "scoring points." They treat this like some game or competition.
ReplyDelete"This presents such a great opportunity for libertarians to flip a significant fraction of blacks from big government to limited government."
ReplyDeleteThe death of a black american is good news to some self-centered arseholes far removed from the carnage.
News at 11.
.
And, at this early hour, the latest news is that Gov. Nixon has called in the national guard because of "continuing violence" perpetrated by "people from outside."
ReplyDeleteAt this point, who knows, but the "outside agitators" claim has worn pretty thin over the last few decades. I suspect this has more to do with complete indifference of the locals to the curfew imposed, which doesn't sit too well with the authorities.
Ah, well, back to the traditional means of putting down angry citizens insurrections.
It's the South Park model: if you're commenting on a situation and you don't have anything intelligent or informed to say about it, just act like everyone who gives a shit is an over-emotional idiot and people will mistake it for a superior perspective.
ReplyDeleteThey'll get around to trying to sell eliminating the minimum wage right after they explain once again how Black people are stuck on the Democratic plantation, and how Robert Byrd was once in the KKK.
ReplyDeleteLecturing students at Howard U. on the history of the civil rights movement is also a winning strategy.
ReplyDeleteBut that's what happens when you see yourself as a master and the people you're addressing as servants. rebRAND PAUL (TM) and the rest of the "Let's go get us the black vote" sewer logs still think that if they tell the dumb darkies a thing is so, they'll have to believe it. And even if they don't, they'll nod and smile and do whatever master says, because they have to.
One of the especially gross habits of these tools is to look at injustice, shrug and start singing TRADITION!
ReplyDeleteMaybe they think token gestures will work because token gestures work so well for the conservative base. Republicans have been running on outlawing abortion for decades, and when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they . . . did nothing about abortion except continue to talk about it. Yet, the party faithful continue to vote Republican because only the GOP will do something about abortion.
ReplyDeleteOr tax cuts, their other favorite hobby horse. They handed out massive tax cuts to the top 1%, and token tax reductions to everyone else. And millions of people living in trailer parks are staunch Republicans because the GOP cuts taxes.
So why not figure that token gestures toward minorities will work magic?
That's a biting reply.
ReplyDeleteAnd the coroner who did the autopsy can't precisely gauge how close Wilson was to Brown because he didn't have access to his clothes. Hmm.
ReplyDeleteBut I expect the usual rejects to pivot and announce that the new, new, law for killing jaywalkers is if you don't score a hit on a fleeing subject's back, it's not murder.
Um yeah. If someone is arguing 6 bullets holes in a victim means the shooter only squeezed the trigger 6 times, they're dumbfucks and you should laugh at them.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing this is missing is the quadrennial scene where the hunters invite the selves to a deer meeting and then insult them and disparage them as vermin not worthy to be eaten. And then the hunters go home and explain to their family and freinds that the deer are useless parasites and ungulate hustlers and that its no use appealing to finer feelings they dont have.
ReplyDeleteI note that Texas Open Carry cancelled an open-carry march through a Black neighborhood last week. Truly, nothing says racism has ended like a group of heavily armed White yahoos walking the streets of a Black neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteIts not as good as the Schmuck but its an honour just to be nominated.
ReplyDeleteAlso confiscating the cops gun and treating the scene as a murder scene would have gone a long way to answering these questions.
ReplyDeleteI thought we were supposed to be against politicizing the death? Oh . Maybe that applies only to black people politics?
ReplyDeleteAn eyewitness said that one of the rounds hit a nearby house, and that the cops came and removed the bullet.
ReplyDeleteWhich, at this point, probably convinces many of the residents that they're hiding evidence.
"You may ask yourself, why do we do this?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you--I don't know.
But it's a Kochcheck tradition!"
Well, they take pot shots at the reporting because they're at war with reality.
ReplyDeleteAnd being able to go Tiananmen Square on Black Americans protesting? Even better.
ReplyDeleteEver since he got his chiffarobe barbecue grill busted up, Ace has conducted a mini-war on logic.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, where were all the Bundyites during this little flame-up? Talk about a no-brainer: oppressive governmental police mechanism menaces an unarmed populace who have legitimate grievances; it's right in their wheelhouse. Definitely a missed opportunity.
ReplyDeleteWell, according to Libertarians, you can have "Opportunity", or you can have a minimum wage, but God knows, you can't have both.
ReplyDeleteAs Don Henly noted,
ReplyDelete"Because there is no wrong, there is no right
And I sleep very well at night
No shame, no solution, no remorse, no retribution
Just people selling T-shirts,
Just opportunity to participate in the pathetic little circus
And winning, winning, winning'"
It was pretty big year for predators
The marketplace was on a roll
And the land of opportunity
Spawned a whole new breed of men without souls"
And he didn't even seem to get the joke after putting all that thought into it!
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what I thought too.
ReplyDeleteHere ARE the "jack-booted thugs" from the government that the Right has been warning us about. No need to simply imagine them anymore; they were literally marching down the street in Ferguson.
And yet, no action from the Right. If anything, the Rightwingers were on the side of the Ferguson police. How can they explain that?
Sadly, the Pulitzer Prize in cartooning has lost most of its luster due to the loathsome Michael Ramirez having gotten it twice. (See also: Dowd, M.)
ReplyDeleteFAUX Nooze freaked out over 50 times thanks to three or so "New Black Panthers."
ReplyDeleteOne of them even had a stick!
~
What? Next you'll tell us there's an established procedure for when an officer fires his weapon!
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, there are "outside agitators"... but they're white Black Bloc anarchists who are using the protests as an excuse to have some window-smashing fun. The community organizers are trying to push them out too and protect locals from them.
ReplyDelete"Hey you ni- black folks there. Yo. We want to show our ... solidarity with our ni - black brothers by walking down your streets with our guns out. Purely for solidarity reasons."
ReplyDelete"No, we're really don't need that sort of "solidarity." Stay away."
"But we just want to walk down your streets holding our rifles and guns and things. While you watch. Because we're all brothers under the gun!"
"Fine, we'll be out with our guns too."
"Waaaah! We wuz intimidated!"
Well, apparently in Ferguson at least up until 4 years ago the established procedure was for the officer himself to file his own report, which would then be deep sixed and filed "somewhere" but never in his own personell file. So maybe they were following tradition.
ReplyDeleteI gotta tell ya, as a white middle aged man, it's my 'gut feeling' that telling The Blacks they're stuck on the Democrat plantation and Robert Byrd was in the KKK in 1948 is just like Colt 45...it works every time. I mean, I think it does, I never much cared for it myself and my local wine shoppe doesn't carry it, wait, do they still make Colt 45? Anyway, having no minimum wage can only help The Blacks, I'm sure of that!
ReplyDeleteI think that was the other erstwhile Sadly, No! target, "Confederate Yankee" Bob Owens. Ace of Spades is the "vaginas remind me of bacon and Play-Doh" guy.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute... You mean protests sometimes get hijacked by extremists with an agenda? Has anyone told the Benghazi committee about this?
ReplyDeleteUpvote for "grimly hilarious." Kind of captures the Zeitgeist in a two-word phrase. Irony is not only not dead, it has fucking becomespirit of these times.
ReplyDeleteCool kids never have the time.
ReplyDeleteIt's porn for people who don't like actual genitals.
ReplyDeleteWhenever wingers refer to statistics it's pretty much guaranteed that their purpose is pure propaganda, and not truth. Another lesson:
ReplyDeleteMichelle Malkin's screaming headline A Cop Is Killed Every 58 Hours comes directly from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund who tracks these things. This being Malkin, the headline and everything that follows is clearly designed to give readers the impression that officers are being slaughtered in the streets by you know who. However, here are a few things she left out:
- The stat she quotes is an average over the last 10 years.
From that organization's latest research bulletin about 2013:
Law Enforcement Fatalities Dip To Lowest Level In Six Decades [since 1944]
31 officers killed in firearms-related incidents is fewest since 1887
- 100 officers died in the line of duty in 2013. Of those, 43 are traffic fatalities, and 13 are job-related illnesses such as heart attacks.
Of course, 31 officer killed by firearms is 31 too many. (The proliferation of guns in this country might have something to do with this number but that's another topic they don't want to talk about.)
But 31 wouldn't leave the impression she wants to impart.
One last omission: It's estimated that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 or more people are shot and killed every year by police. This has to be estimated because no one in government gives enough of a shit to keep track of it.
And if those were ululating ungulates we could get in a little anti-Arab feeling, too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, now the doctor who did the autopsy (Dr. Baden) said in a press conference that one of the bullet wounds on the arm could have come from behind.
ReplyDeleteThose are not schizophrenics; those are voters.
ReplyDeletePoint / Counterpoint:
ReplyDeleteTHEFREDFONG
"Martin Luther King Jr....would be disgusted how the black community has ruined any progress and respect he achieved for them."
37
"I am tired of the misrepresentation of MLK. He was a womanizing false witness to God, by many accounts. Jackie O said he showed up to JFK's funeral drunk and was making fun of the situation, There are also recently released recordings of LBJ hitting on her, just after JFK's murder, and she DOES seem really scared on the recording. These power brokers are all trash. Jackie O had more class than all of them put together and a normal human mind can pick up on that and see that in REAL class, there is often truth and a sense of fair play. I am not saying she was and angel, but her story is much more believable than most of the lies that have been forced fed to us. MLK was just another Sharpton."
What makes this incident all the more tragic is that a nurse who was shopping in the store with her kids died while running with other customers from the violent chaos caused by the cops shooting. That couple caused the deaths of two innocent people.
ReplyDeleteI want to take this comment to the Curdled Spitefulness Cafe and share a cup of Toles Won the Pulitzer Prize And Nobody Even Knows Your Name, Jerkoff.
ReplyDeleteMah charcoal greeeyull!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was Owens.
What I've noticed beyond racial profiling is just the absence of common sense and the tendency of some police officers to go from 0 to 90 immediately. Swift, brutal escalation. You'd think the police would've asked themselves, "If this guy was walking around waving a gun, why are the store employees and shoppers going around like nothing is happening? Why weren't there more 911 calls beyond the husband/wife?" which you expect in a situation with a threat of imminent mass shooting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a potential NRO Cruise panel!
ReplyDeleteGlenn McCoy is a good cartoonist, albeit a racist, homophobic, trolling one.
ReplyDeleteHis brother Gary, though, is terrible.
Yet MLK is no longer with us, thanks to a high-powered rifle in the hands of James Earl Crow Ray.
ReplyDelete"Black person kills white person. Zzzzz. White person kills black person — the world stops."
ReplyDeleteYep, it's that old murder privilege at work again. Why, just last year when a black police officer shot a white man for jaywalking and then the his entire force backed him up by refusing to release his name and trampling on the rights of people who just wanted - Oh wait, that never happened.
VDH: "Why, this is almost as bad as chainsaw theft."
ReplyDelete"Somebody has to say it," declared Ross Kaminsky at The American Spectator: "These rampaging thugs and criminals are neither white nor Asian nor Eskimo nor American Indian. They are, as far as one can discern from news footage, roughly 100 percent black."
ReplyDeleteWell, it was inevitable that SOMEONE was going to say it, I'll grant you, but that doesn't mean that any one individual person was required. You could instead have thought, no, it doesn't have to be me. I'll try being a decent human being just this once, to see if I like it. But, you didn't. So here we are.
SHTSI is for people who are too lazy for "Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are [group speaker is about to insult]"
ReplyDeleteThere is no "New Black Panther Party" --- just a few nutjobs purloining the name.
ReplyDeleteRe. Steve King said the same thing, although he said they all have the same "continental origin" ---
ReplyDelete"Black person kills white person. Zzzzz. White person kills black person — the world stops."
ReplyDeleteIs it that they just don't get what the problem is with "under color of authority," or do they figure their readers are just too stupid to get it?
A Cop Is Killed Every 58 Hours
ReplyDeleteHow many of those are by white supremacists?
No need to simply imagine them anymore; they were literally marching down the street in Ferguson. And yet, no action from the Right. If anything, the Rightwingers were on the side of the Ferguson police. How can they explain that?
ReplyDeleteOh, oh, I know the answer to this one. You see they really are concerned about JBT's but because liberal writers and internet commenters pointed and laughed at their use of the phrase to describe imaginary ones, they will now show us by refusing to acknowledge the real ones. It's all Liberals' fault for mocking the phrase beyond all meaning.
God Damn America.
ReplyDeleteYeah, seems about right. "But… but I got here so early! I should be more important."
ReplyDeleteThere's probably never going to be a written history of the internet that will successfully track all the courtiers and note their relevance to how things turned out. But know-it-all snarking was enormously important, 1997-2001; we still owe it quite a debt.
Uh, or maybe that's just me.
There's a number of conservative editorial cartoonists who don't suck -- and not from lack of wingnuttiness, either. Ramirez, for instance, is an excellent artist who also has depicted Iran as a vermin-infested drain. Glenn McCoy has a dynamic, heavily caricaturized style which he
ReplyDeletebut they're white Black Bloc anarchists who are using the protests as an excuse to have some window-smashing fun
ReplyDeletelink?
More than likely Nordlinger, in his own mind, does get it. He's paid to not get it in public and for people who are actually too stupid to get it.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, he's corrupt.
Seriously, where were all the Bundyites during this little flame-up? Talk about a no-brainer
ReplyDelete<COPY EDITOR>
"No-brainer" should be plural to agree with "Bundyites."
</COPY EDITOR>
Antler Ackbar!
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, the Second Amendment is silent on the subject of sticks.
ReplyDeleteYes. This. It seems that there are a lot more officers who are huge fucking cowards and/or snorking their way through the supplies of confiscated methamphetamine and/or now being trained to shoot first.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe it is this has always been the norm, but it makes the news and gets national coverage.
Now of course to the average GlibCon, you just went Postal--fuck, Nookular--on all of those fine artistes, because any criticism at all is the same as 12 Hitlers raping a schoolbus full of novitiate nuns on their way to Orientation at the convent.
ReplyDeleteCavanaugh's reaction to our reaction to his throwing Toles into Sarah's turkey grinder would be something like "Jeez, can't you take a little constructive criticism?"
"LEAVE JACKIE ALONE, YOU B... wait, what am I upset about again?"
ReplyDeleteBut they're jack-booted thugs from county government. You know, 'jes folks.
ReplyDeleteReally. For a bunch of (mostly men) who pride themselves on having role models like John Wayne, Dirty Harry, and other manly men, they squall like toddlers when anybody gives them anything less than fulsome praise and complete obedience.
ReplyDeleteI'd buck the police for this comment.
ReplyDeleteNow the procedure seems to be that the officer doesn't write a report, and is deep sixed and filed somewhere out of town.
ReplyDeleteWhile people are getting new leadership, I would like to put in a request for better leadership in the white community. Tired of damn race pimps like Bill O'Reilly.
ReplyDeleteI saw that on TPM and someone commented "They're North American."
ReplyDeleteA couple of months ago I came home to find a heavy storm had mortally wounded a neighbor's grill.
ReplyDeleteI immediately thought of TIDOS Yankee's "Buy me a new grill so I can fight terrorists with non-Halal meats" campaign and had a giggle fit.
Oh right... my mistake.
ReplyDeleteI forgot that it's only a concern if they come from the Federal Government.
As painful as it is to write this, we as a society don't actually give a shit about ANYONE who has been killed by gunfire. We're very catholic in that respect. Dead Black people, dead White people, dead First People, dead toddlers and infants, dead teenagers, dead gang-bangers, dead valedictorians, dead scientists, dead hobos As long as they were killed by guns, we most emphatically DO NOT GIVE A SHIT.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, given the history of the last 10 years, a very, very strong case can be made that Americans actually applaud, encourage, and celebrate gun killings. After all, our official reaction to 20 dead school children was to loosen gun laws and make it even easier for such a thing to happen again.
I would like to enter one Phillip Kaplan and his Web site, FuckedCompany dot Com as exhibit A in your defense.
ReplyDeleteKaplan still owns the domain name, but the site is just a shell now.
In my book, the response to the sputtering "But - but ... but black-on-black violence!" is simply "When a black man kills a black teenager BECAUSE he's a black teenager, I'm sure there wil be plenty of media coverage." I then try to work in a comparison with how Cliven Bundy and his thugs were treated when they actually pulled guns on law enforcement, and by then if not sooner the subject gets changed real quick.
ReplyDeleteOr sovereign citizens?
ReplyDeleteThat is exceedingly strange. "People always get so testy when yet another unarmed black kid gets shot and nothing happens to the perpetrator" Well no shit. Jesus.
ReplyDeleteBut who do dig scoliosis.
ReplyDeleteWas gonna say that.
ReplyDeletePlus the Ferguson protesters weren't pastel-clad, hoverround-riding, AR15-brandishing, god-fearing real Americans who only want to take back their country.
Re Tom Tomorrow: You obviously didn't grow up with Classics Illustrated.
ReplyDeleteI may be wrong about the reasons, but there was a brief while in the late '90s when internet advertising apparently overpaid what it was really worth, and there were a lot of little one-man snark sites that were pretty fun. I gathered that what happened is there was a big readjustment in the advertising rates and nobody could afford the time to run sites like that.
ReplyDeleteHey now, don't bring poor Tevye into this. Given his experience with pogroms, I think we know whose side he'd be on.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone told the Benghazi committee about this?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't matter. Obama should have been able to control the makeup of the crowd. With those drones overhead.
I think it's been obvious for a long while now that "thug" is a socially acceptable substitute for "nigger." Nobody ever calls a white guy a thug.
ReplyDelete"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
ReplyDeleteUpton Sinclair
And an interesting spin-off from suck.com was Plastic.com, a discussion board on which some had great pleasure simply mucking about.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I have used that quote a number of times. People like Nordlinger aren't stupid, insane, etc. They are saying what they are saying fully aware that it is false. And for that, they get paid. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
ReplyDeleteThey're schizophrenics AND voters!
ReplyDeleteI've witnessed this blinded, alarmist, racial profiling firsthand, albeit on a much smaller, non-violent scale. But I can see how it works. I was in a book store with my 3-year-old daughter (I'm white, she's black), and I noticed a lady with two kids of her own causing a commotion. She was racing frantically up and down aisles with her stroller and kids in tow, exclaiming, "Where's the mother?! Where's the mother?!"
ReplyDeleteI thought to myself, Oh, one of those kids must not be hers. But nope. She was talking about my kid. Once I figured this out (it took a while), I helpfully explained that she was mine, but I just got a blank stare, and I could tell that she couldn't process the information.
Maybe ten minutes later, a cop came out of nowhere and grabbed by daughter by the shoulders. He asked her for her name, and then the frantic lady materialized again, yelling about bad parents.
This entire time, my daughter was never more than a few feet from me. It took forever to convince the cop that she was my daughter. And I don't think the lady who instigated the whole thing was ever convinced. Then her husband came in late to the party to stir things up to a boil with blatantly racist comments about "blacks not supervising their kids."
It made me feel entirely out of control of an ever-escalating situation. My wife later "joked" that if I were black and my daughter were white, then I probably would have been arrested or just shot. It really made me see how quickly these things can spiral out of control.
They would have assumed you were the nanny.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, the "New Black Panthers" were working to prevent violence & looting in Ferguson. They were the "good guys".
ReplyDelete"the arrival of the usual demagogues"
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate that this kind of thing happens so frequently that there is a squad of demagogues on call to respond to it.
"Black person kills white person. Zzzzz. White person kills black person — the world stops."
ReplyDeleteIns so few words, Nordlinger efficiently confirms his wilful ignorance that:
1. the identity of the cop was withheld for quite some time after the public reaction to the killing;
2. the reaction was about a cop killing yet another unarmed person, and the cops then scrambling to cover their arses about it;
3. that he's a silly, racist, shit-weasel.
The fact that the cop's victim was, as is all too often the case, a black kid, was just the distressing, bloody, icing on an already-ghastly cake.
.
Holy shit! There's a point beyond which ignorance isn't excusable, never mind an excuse. This couple was past that point.
ReplyDeleteSo. "Somebody has to say it ..." is the new "I'm not a racist, but ..." At least we have have idiomatic continuity.
ReplyDeleteI've seen Michael Ramirez's work. Pulitzer? Is he backing trucks full of cash into somebody's driveway?
ReplyDeleteMemo to Rep. King: They've cracked your code, subtle as it is.
ReplyDeleteSilly String Theory predicts this, too...
ReplyDeleteProbably what all the shouting was for.
ReplyDeleteIt was found in the next county...
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that Cavanaugh didn't create Suck.com, or even its second incarnation as part of Hotwired. As I recall he became the de facto editor after Carl Steadman left, Joey Anuff lost interest, and Ana Marie Cox and Owen Thomas moved on.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the original reasons for the second amendment - a well-regulated militia to put down slave revolts. The southern delegates insisted.
ReplyDeleteI was rather astounded to see that New Mexico (state pop. 1.9 million) led the nation in used MRAPs (40). That's one for every 47,500 people. And most counties in NM have just a few thousand people in them, at most.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet the local cops think they'll be great at busting up meth labs. Until they get the repair bills.
Yep. Anyone remember how the participants in the Occupy protests or the WTO demonstrations... largely white... were beaten, gassed, and mass-arrested by cops? If you're black, you can be harassed and/or shot for almost anything, while if you're white the bar is somewhat higher... like protesting the actions of banks or corporations, or a war.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, a number of other cartoonists have gotten two awards, and a handful have gotten three. On the other hand, Garry Trudeau? Just once.
ReplyDeleteIt just got better - http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/22/black-panther-inspired-dallas-gun-club-invokes-right-to-open-carry-images/
ReplyDeleteNice! We'll see how long that lasts before White fear overcomes Second Amendment luv.
ReplyDelete