NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — One day after a South Carolina police officer was arrested in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, the victim’s family said Wednesday that no charges would have been filed if not for a video of the encounter — which showed the officer firing eight shots at the man as he ran away.
“It would have never come to light. They would have swept it under the rug, like they did with many others,” Walter Scott Sr., the father of the victim, said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” Show.A number of journalists have been making the point that without the fortuitous video, Scott would be dismissed as another lawbreaker who got, if not quite what he deserved, then at least no more than he had a right to expect, for reasons that I don't have to tell you. But none makes that point better on purpose than Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review does by accident.
Cooke admits that "the initial witness reports appear to have been wholly incorrect" in Scott's case and, based on the footage, "Scott's death at the hands of a police officer appears to be entirely unjustified." This, he says, is "an argument for more cameras," though he doesn't say how these would be put into practice; I can't imagine he wants the gummint to use precious taxpayer money on them; maybe he foresees Burkean "little platoons" of black folk recording cops, in shifts.
But one thing, Cooke makes clear, this case doesn't mean is that white cops are sometimes overeager to shoot and kill black people -- that's just gush from "those among us who are convinced that the United States is an irredeemably racist nation." And the apposite citation, for him, is a couple of dead black guys:
All in all, this seems to be the case that we have been hearing about for a long, long while now — that much-previewed-but-never-quite-forthcoming case in which the white cop unnecessarily guns down the unarmed black man who is trying in earnest to get away. This is that case in which the 80 percent white police force takes a life from the 47 percent black city; in which the small infraction leads to the fatal consequence; in which there are no wrinkles to complicate the complaint. This, in other words, is what the shootings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were not.Are you wondering why he's so sure about Brown and Martin, even though "witness reports" can be "wholly incorrect"? I'm not.
This, in other words, is what the shootings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were not.
ReplyDeleteUh, caught on camera?
in which there are no wrinkles to complicate the complaint
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the Keyboard Commandoes are busily trying to find any dirt on this man they can. "SEE? SEE? HE DESERVED IT!"
As much as a nightmare this move North has been (and still continues to be, viz, I'm still glad to be away from South Carolina.
I like that people are not taking shit from this cracker asshole mayor spewing his bullshit.
ReplyDeleteBack turned, don't shoot!
ReplyDeleteOf course they are. Why, Mr. Scott's arrest for assault 28 years ago is more than enough justification for his death.
ReplyDeleteImagine how relieved they are that this is in the news cycle now instead of the beating of Martese Johnson. Arguing that an honor student wouldn't have been brutalized if he pulled his pants up was probably a daunting proposition even for them.
ReplyDeleteHow did Trayvon Martin get into cette galere? He wasn't shot committing a crime, he wasn't shot by a police officer. He was killed by a vigilante who had overwhelming force. And what about Tamir Rice? What crime was he committing in the three seconds before he was shot? And what about all the mentally ill/homeless people who get shot? Did they just deserve it? Excuse me while I practice my various forms of Yogic Breathing or Zen Unconsciousness or whatever it takes to bring my blood pressure back down from the stratosphere.
ReplyDeleteI'm not "convinced that the United States is an irredeemably racist nation", but the actively racist cops and their more passively racist enablers make redemption unlikely.
ReplyDeleteYEAH BUT HE TOOK A SELFIE GIVING THE FINGER LIBTURDS
ReplyDeleteSchroedinger's Racist. Same as it ever was.
ReplyDeleteThere was video of a cop murdering a kid with a toy gun in Cleveland. There was video of a team of cops murdering a guy in New York for a scene that everyone gets wrong (he wasn't selling loose cigs at the time, the cops were there because there was a fight that he just broke up, they knew him from being the guy who sold loose cigs and then they choked him to death for no fucking reason). Michael Brown was killed for walking in the road. Trayvon Martin was murdered for walking home. The reality of their being was the only reason they were killed. This guy was pulled over for a "broken headlight"? That's classic pig harassment, like a cliche of lazy, douchebag authority. Scott was dead the minute the cop pulled him over.
ReplyDeleteI don't think they have any trouble saying it--he "shouldn't have been going to a party" he "shouldn't have been drinking." They don't say it about the various white riots of college sports fans, unless its politically convenient, but you can always find a reason why the victim brought it on himself.
ReplyDeleteI definitely saw lots of "scalp wounds bleed a lot so it was probably no big deal, and anyway, if he was hurt so bad why did he attend a protest the next day, HUH?????", from the same people who saw the photos of Darren Wilson after he claimed to have been punched twice in the face and said "seems legit."
ReplyDeleteHe specifically said he felt like he had to have the guy arrested for fear of "another Ferguson." Imagine thinking "My primary reason for having a guy arrested for committing murder on film is that people might get mad otherwise" sounds good in the press.
ReplyDeleteHe might've been trying to avoid wanton rioting and burning down of business establishments, not "get[ing] mad".
ReplyDeleteYes, that's why we have 17 million black people are routinely killed each year when they are pulled over. Because they are "dead the minute the cops pull them over."
ReplyDelete"...the initial witness reports appear to have been wholly incorrect"
ReplyDeleteThe use of the passive voice here really enrages me (then again, the whole thing enrages me and everything Cooke has written or will ever write will enrage me). These are the delicate flowers who cry Socialism when billionaires get a 2% tax hike. This is the asshole who blamed the cigarette tax on the murder of Eric Gardner (Cooke spent a good part of our Twitter exchange trying to parse it in increasingly stupid ways). The plain and obvious reality can't be said in direct and obvious ways. Witness reports were wrong because the witnesses were the racist cops.
He's not sure because the best available evidence indicates Michael Brown instigated an altercation and was struggling for the officer's gun, and Trayvon attacked George Zimmerman. I mean, even Eric Holder didn't indict. This isn't difficult.
ReplyDeleteNeat! No, this guy was dead the minute he got pulled over because the cop was obviously looking for some pretext to harass him and he was very nervous about some ancient problem with the law. If the cop didn't pull him over for some bullshit reason, he'd still be alive. But nice attempt at reading.
ReplyDeleteAnd since you brought it up, you might be familiar with the concept of "driving while black" -- it's the basic suspicion of most cops that blacks are up to no good. They get pulled over on the flimsiest pretext, get harassed, get tickets, get taken in. There's also, say, "Stop and Frisk", which exists to hassle minorities. The point of what I wrote was dead the minute you decided not to understand it.
Yeah, 'irredeemably' does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about all the mentally ill/homeless people who get shot?
ReplyDelete*tries to stay calm when I realize I now fit that criteria*
Is there a recent trend of white cops killing unarmed black men, or are we just more aware of it happening now?
ReplyDeleteI guess there's no way to really know, since there is no reliable national data on how many people are shot by police officers each year.
"...maybe he foresees Burkean "little platoons" of black folk recording cops, in shifts."
ReplyDeleteThey didn't have the easy video technology, but that's a lot of what the Black Panthers were doing. Conservatives didn't like that either.
...
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm sure Cooke would be the first to squeal "INTMIDATION!!!" if those "little platoons" came into being.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is someone has to be shot (& it all recorded) in the back while presenting no threat at all to anyone for it to rise to a murder charge. In any face-to-face or physical encounters, the cop is always the hero.
ReplyDeleteNor did they like the Panthers exercising their Second Amendment rights.
ReplyDeleteI'd want to run that box over with a steamroller just to make sure that whatever is inside is most certainly dead.
ReplyDelete"Said Einstein to Schroedinger, "Oy! Are you nuts?
God doesn't play dice with the Universe, putz!'"
I really hope the cop didn't see whoever filmed it.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt the finest minds of Conservatism are working hard right now to come up with a plausible explanation as to why this isn't what it seems. Until Jonah the Fail weighs in on this, I'm not taking any bets on whether this shooting will be universally condemned.
ReplyDeleteI thought Schroedinger's Racist was the guy who decides whether or not his racist joke was ironic based on how his audience reacts.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about this is that CCwC (the second and lesser CCC) doesn't bother to provide an explanation for why this is somehow different from the Brown and Martin cases because he's fully aware he's not required to. It's enough to state it, and that's all his readers want to hear- that this one is different and special, because the National Review told you it was.
ReplyDeleteWon't much matter. I'm sure the department's best detectives are looking into whoever recorded the shooting. They'll find something (he faked an illness in third grade to get out of gym!) that will be used to discredit or maybe even arrest him. Just like the guy who video'ed Garner's murder was subsequently arrested.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it begs attention when people constantly asserting their erudition and perspicacity suddenly u-turn onto the passive voice, all the while assuming no one will notice. There's an arrogance to it that's more than a little annoying.
ReplyDeleteAnd among conservative pundits, it's an expectation of theirs of their audience. "Please, insult my intelligence" is the contemporary conservative equivalent of "thank you, sir, may I have another?"
. . . the initial witness reports seem to have been wholly incorrect.
ReplyDeleteFor certain meanings of "witness" that do not include any actual witnesses beyond the cop who did the shooting and his compatriots to leaped to parrot his report until contradicted by the video.
"One lies, the other swears to it."
ReplyDeleteDon't start me!
ReplyDelete*sigh* almost like there was, you know, a conspiracy to cover up an illegal act...
ReplyDeleteNorth Charleston PD Bureau of Public Relations:
ReplyDelete"Black man gunned down for no reason by a police officer? <.a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Video+or+it+didn%27t+happen">Video, or it didn't happen!<./a> What? There is? Oh, OK. Never mind...
Oh, I just figured they'll probably kill him.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of Louis CK's bit about the guy who upset his girlfriend saying she "got her feelings hurt."
ReplyDeleteRoy's police brutality post brings all the Dennises to the yard.
ReplyDeleteAnd they're like "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY GO THROUGH."
ReplyDeleteHey, yeah, let's talk about what people go through.
ReplyDeleteTo even get into DSS downtown, you're required to empty out your pockets, take off your belt, go through a metal detector, then get a spreadeagled wave-down with a wand. THEN you can go into the waiting room, where you can put everything back and stop holding up your pants.
It's demeaning, and that's from the perspective of a 50-year-old white boy. Multiply that bullshit and humiliation a couple thousand times, and I'm sure that MIGHT get close to how it feels to deal with police for black kids.
I've wondered before if there is some kind of police initiation rite to join some special "Dirty Harry" club. It would help explain these totally gratuitous killings. Check out this story:
ReplyDeletehttp://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-reportedly-gang-tattoos-count-shooting-victims/
After watching the vid, it's hard to ignore the fact that the second officer on the scene is black. And witnesses the taser drop. I wonder how THAT testimony will go.
ReplyDeletePart of the bully-abuser psyche: She MADE me hit her!
ReplyDeleteThis is why I'd like to see some kind of legislation to the effect that, in the case of unwarranted shootings/beatings/others by police, if it is found that other cops covered for the one guilty of the offense, any civil judgement to the victim or surviving family be paid out of the police pension fund.
ReplyDeleteAs long as it costs cops nothing to cover up the corruption of their peers, it will continue. If it was coming out of their own pockets, they'd be the first to come forward with the truth.
"in which there are no wrinkles to complicate the complaint"
ReplyDeleteSo shorter CCWC: Shut up and go home unless you have conclusive proof your dead relatives did not deserve it.
Reductionist!
ReplyDeleteAnd without being too blunt about it, there's a fucking reason witnesses are cross-examined.
ReplyDeleteOf course you need a trial for that to happen, and of all the recent cases, the Michael Brown case was the one where this was most needed.
Depending on how exactly that went down, the shooter maybe isn't the only one who needs to be on trial. Cops lying to cover up a damn murder need to be punished for that.
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to assert that Charles C.W. Cooke is an irredeemable racist or at least willing to play one in print for a publication pitched to them, but I'm hopeful for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteThis latest incident finally meets the bar for an unjustified use of lethal force by a white cop against a black man? Not the child with a toy gun shot in the chest a couple of times and all the other horrible, totally unnecessary, blatantly racist police murders that happened in the recent and distant past?
ReplyDeleteTime to trot out a tired, but justified trope: Mr. Charles C. W. Cooke should be beaten with red-tipped staves, stuffed into a leather sack with a dog, a monkey, a poisonous snake, and a rooster, and thrown into the Hudson. But first, he should be given a chance to run for it and then shot a couple of times in the back.
Cum saeve indignatio.
"Darren Wilson after he claimed to have been punched twice in the face"
ReplyDeleteand by THE BLACK HULK HOGAN!!1!, at that
If you don't actually use the n-word, you can't be racist like that racist Chris Rock who used the n-word that time.
ReplyDeleteRacism doesn't exist and all liberals are racist.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you do use it it's only because you learned it from Richard Pryor/Chris Rock/Hip Hop etc.
ReplyDeleteCookie +2.5 hrs.:This dramatically ranging enthusiasm has always struck me as being rather odd. If the case for body cameras is good — and I think it really, really is — then we should institute cameras more broadly. If it isn’t, we shouldn’t. What we should absolutely not do is rush to judgment today, while we’re all upset; or abandon the idea next month if a dodgy looking killing fails to yield a widely coveted indictment. That way lies chaos.
ReplyDeleteWhere am I going to find a monkey this time of day?
ReplyDeleteYep. It has to be something that even Westerns considered heinous, shooting an unarmed man in the back. When he can't even reasonably remind you of Hulk Hogan. And on video. And lying about it afterwards.
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
++Vote up!
ReplyDeleteNot a case of the passive voice!
ReplyDeleteI wonder who he's going to blame when the inevitable acquittal occurs?
ReplyDeleteAfter all, just as the murder of 20 white toddlers didn't change our gun culture, no way video evidence of a cop committing murder is going to change our police culture.
It is when he could have easily and correctly said "The initial reports submitted by the police were incorrect (or better still, 'fraudulent'." He's hiding behind "appears to be wholly incorrect", which is a passive construction compared to a more direct statement. "The initial reports painted a different picture. They were wrong."
ReplyDeleteCooke is hiding behind it to avoid the facts that the whole world can see. The cops are lying.
I really, really wish you weren't right about this.
ReplyDeleteThe comments section over there is a skeptic's paradise. If only right wing nutjobs treated more events in our society with such careful deliberations and judicious analysis. The people could rationalize a lynching as done in self-defense....
ReplyDeletejust like their grandfather's did
There's no light, there, and intelligent expressions cannot escape it, either.
ReplyDeleteHmm.. much as the cop was wrong... the guy would most likely be alive if he had allowed the cop to arrest him on an outstanding child support warrant and haul his ass off to jail where he would get more fines and costs dumped on his head, spend time in jail and probably lose whatever job he had and then lose his apartment when he gets out of jail.
ReplyDeleteIf he had JUST allowed himself to be arrested and not run, he most likely would not have been shot. Beaten? Maybe...
Uh.. well.. he was kinda a banger..
ReplyDeleteAll other facts aside, Cooke is apparently unaware that George Zimmerman was not a cop.
ReplyDeleteI understand that if he swallows a police camera he can study their behavior right up inside his colon.
ReplyDeleteSo now running is a capital crime subject to summary execution? Eric Gardner stood still and wasn't doing ANYTHING, and they choked him to death. Maybe if cops gave blacks -- or anyone really -- a reason to trust them people would behave rationally around them.
ReplyDeleteAnd anyway, I'd fear the North Charleston Police too, especially if I were black.
"the initial witness reports appear to have been wholly incorrect"
ReplyDelete"Scott's death at the hands of a police officer appears to be entirely unjustified."
These people are light-years ahead of me. I tried to make the use of the passive voice into a science and they elevated it into an art form; and then when I tried to follow in their footsteps they transubstantiated it into a religion.
I am humbled and I bow my head in shame.
There's something about Cooke's formulation that makes me unconfortable, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hang on while I run those couple of passages through my handy subtext/text converter:
ReplyDelete"the initial witness reports appear to have been wholly incorrect, but ..."
"Scott's death at the hands of a police officer appears to be entirely unjustified. But ..."
Well, whaddaya know.
It's a less definite, hence more evasive, construction, but it is made so by 'appears', which is in the active voice. 'Passive voice' doesn't mean 'evasive'. It's possible to be deliberately vague and evasive in the active voice: 'Someone made mistakes' and perfectly forthright and clear in the passive voice: 'Mistakes were made by me'. It is because what would have been the subject in the corresponding active construction can be dropped entirely in the passive that the passive voice lends itself to purposes of evasion, e.g., in the classic 'Mistakes were made'. I don't deny that Cooke's way of putting things is meant to obscure the truth, but I think it's worth getting the diagnosis right.
ReplyDeleteOr like that famous racist LBJ, who used the n-word when talking to racist southern senators, which totally and completely proves the man was a vicious racist, no matter how many CRAs and VRAs he shepherded through the legislative process and signed into law.
ReplyDeleteI am very curious what happens to the second officer, who saw him toss the taser next to the body. Did that guy mention this to the boss, or note it in a report? What's the penalty there, in theory?
ReplyDeleteOhhh, very nice.
ReplyDeleteHis prose his full of handwringing today. He can't muster his usual, "We shall call a spade what it is -- a spade, centurions!"
ReplyDeleteThat seems kind of mean to the monkey.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between "appears" and "appeared", which is the distinction I think you are making between active and passive, I think is more of a letter versus the spirit of the law kind of grammar argument. The main complaint of those who criticize the passive voice is that it obscures rather than defines. I think this qualifies as the passive voice and it's certainly passive in spirit because it separates the action -- lying -- from what he was saying "appears to have been wholly incorrect". It's a layer of bullshit that achieves the same practical effect of why people advise writers not to use the passive voice.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between Cooke and a black hole is, information can escape from a black hole.
ReplyDeleteWhere's G.W. Bush's retirement community?
ReplyDelete"...there are no wrinkles to complicate..." Also describes Cooke's frontal lobes.
ReplyDeleteHe's a good guy with a gun who killed one of those pant sagging, sizzurp drinking, gold teeth wearing street thugs, that makes him an honorary cop.
ReplyDeleteWhat, racist? No I was picturing a white guy when I wrote that.
None of you cares about the rooster, I see. SJW misandry - clear and undeniable.
ReplyDeleteCan I be there when the little platoon follows Kevin Williamson into a theater to throw their phones at him?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the good guy with a gun kindly made a video only last month explaining that after the shooting Obama used racially charged comments to pit Americans against each other. Oh, THAT's what did it!
ReplyDeleteCuz he wouldn't want them to, y'know, turn their backs to him at their next festive, public gathering...
ReplyDeletePassive voice works well to focus attention on the object of a sentence. This can be useful as a transition or to point out that though the subject may be changing from sentence to sentence, the object remains the same. The latter is particularly true if the subject has to be stated with a slew of modifiers.
ReplyDeleteExample of a transition: After a paragraph about a company's various divisions, the next paragraph begins, "Each division is headed by a vice president, who is responsible for...." It let's the reader carry the concept of "division" forward.
Example of sentences with a constant object with changing subjects: "Inspections are performed by county personnel at prescribed intervals. Inspections may also be performed by contract personnel who have been certified by the county."
Either example could be recast in active voice, but might not lead the reader along as well.
What's never good, except in lyrics, poetry, and mordant jokes, is anonymous passive: "Lies appear to have been told." By whom? We shall not say, for we are gentleman and quite ofay!
For what it's worth, I don't think this guy's getting off.
ReplyDeleteYes, he did run. But thanks to police computers, they had already identified him from his license and , and even if he had managed to outrun the cop, they would know where to find him, and could bring him later. Alive, and able to make up some of those back child support payments. As is is, I think the city of North Charleston is going to be picking up the tab.
ReplyDeleteDice? Most of the time it feels like Three Card Monte...
ReplyDeleteJudging by that video, he couldn't have outrun my grandmother.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to that police work-to-rule that was supposed to have cut arrests in New York by 90% or whatever it was? Did something happen to end it, or did it just fizzle out, or was it all bullshit to start with?
ReplyDeleteTragically, there's an entire industry devoted to sowing doubt about the nature of our problems and a media which is all-too-happy to present the bullshit and the facts as having equal weight.
ReplyDeleteRush to judgement? How many more deaths would it take to make the case for him?
ReplyDeleteW'all, shit, it worked for Kindasleezza Rice.
ReplyDeleteBut, c'mon, I ask you, is it fair to expect someone sworn to uphold the law to turn in someone else sworn to uphold the law? After all, they're the default good guys, right?
Unfortunately, it's that attitude that inclines me to believe that the police will always be just the better-armed of all the street gangs.
In January the brass cracked down - no more vacation days or even sick days (except with a doctor's note) until summons writing picked back up. Is that better or worse?
ReplyDeleteShorter Charles CW Cooke: "Move it along now, laddie. Sure an' there's nothing to see here."
ReplyDeleteHe's since supplied the appropriate subject matter for our rapt attention: His indifference to the possible execution of Tsarnaev.
ReplyDeleteNow, don't be a hasty reader and think that means the subject matter is Tsarnaev. Or capital punishment. Nay, nay, the subject matter for our rapt attention is... Cooke. After all, if he can't think of anything else, how can we?
If it's not on camera, it can't be embarrassing, and even if it is on camera, who gives a fuck?
ReplyDelete47% of no one who matters.
But I fear that I am also something of a hypocrite on the matter,
ReplyDelete... and every other matter, for that matter.
I wonder if NYC cops are still as outraged at this statement:
ReplyDelete"I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, a law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him."
Nah. Not really wondering at all.
Pay no attention to that bullet-riddled corpse that's been on the ground for four hours.
ReplyDelete"... but I give up."
ReplyDeleteAs well you should. What distinguishes this particular use of the passive voice is that there is no human subject or object tied to the noted error; it's clearly passive in construction, and it also seeks to imply something inanimate or abstract as the agent of error.
Even William Safire (who may have been his time's preeminent grammatically informed conservative) referred to the construct as "passive-evasive." In fact, it's so commonly referred to as a passive voice rhetorical device because the sentence cannot make logical sense if expressed in an active voice, since there is nothing in the sentence capable of action. That is the intent behind it.
Now, the classic usage is "mistakes were made." If we take Cooke's little ditty, diagram it and strip out the non-essentials, we get "reports appear incorrect." It is what it is, and passive-evasive fits it nicely.
He knows his audience: authoritarians who think they're libertarians.
ReplyDeleteThx!
ReplyDeleteIt was foolish to have returned to this thread, but this is maddening. 'Reports' appear incorrect' may be evasive, but it is not in the passive voice.
ReplyDeleteWhat you say might be true if you said 'this particular use of the ACTIVE voice...'.
Please read TGuerrant's contribution, with actual examples of the passive voice and illuminating explanations of when the passive voice is preferable to the active and consult a real work of English grammar. The passive voice is a purely grammatical notion, not one defined with reference to sense or the speaker's intentions. Here is a brief explanation.
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/active-and-passive-voice
I intervened in this thread, because I thought the correction of an error would sharpen the original poster's point. I am bewildered by the tenacity with which some people want to cling to an entirely erroneous claim about a matter regarding which there is a simple fact of the matter.
William Safire wrote an amateurish column about usage that was not very good, and he was capable of serious blunders.
I'm sure he'll get his chance, because I'm sure they're coming. The results of the Scott shooting video almost guarantee it.
ReplyDeleteNot all by itself, but I'd be surprised if it didn't start a trend. If people--especial black folks--didn't already love their Obamapicturephones, seeing a racist cop get what's coming to him because of them may change their minds. In fact, this one may actually be evidence that it's already started. Thanks to the Tamir Rice video, the City of Cleveland's cheesy-ass attempt to blame Rice for his own death was met with massive derision. Not much, but it's a start. How many people in black America right now do you suppose are thinking, after what the Scott video accomplished, "if only there'd been someone with an iPhone on that street in Ferguson..."?
ReplyDeleteMore? To Cookie and his ilk, this is the first one.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he's a smooth character, all right...
ReplyDeleteBless your heart.
ReplyDeleteI had nuns - even though I wasn't Catholic. Safire, being from a Romanian Jewish family, maybe had fewer nuns. I had the kind of nuns who come with their own rulers. If anyone would like to discuss the use of the genitive with gerunds, I am ready.
ReplyDeleteWith that disclosure made, I'd like to note that we concur exuberantly on what montag is calling passive-evasive and what I'm calling anonymous passive -- sentences constructed to hide who did what.
It's not so bad when it's obvious from the context who took the stated action, though it feeds the reader only boring "to be" verbs and is harder to follow, but when it's done to obscure responsibility, the writer should expect a good crack across the palms.
Yeah but he would have had a better chance... like with a dog .. if you run, he chases you... cops shoot you.
ReplyDeleteWorth mentioning, because it always is, that U.S. cops killed more people in March than British police killed in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteTell me, are "reports" capable of action? They may be a result of actions, but a report is not an agent capable of action. Therefore, even if the verb ("appear") is present tense, the voice is passive. Inanimate objects, by definition, do not act, and there is no action, explicit or implicit or metaphorical, in the sentence. The statement reduced to its essence is a description of condition of an inanimate object, which is absent action, and is by definition in the passive voice, i.e., the subject is not an agent capable of acting, the verb is used passively (it's not like saying, "the magician suddenly appeared"), and there is no object, let alone one acted upon.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, the entire purpose of such construction is to obscure, and that is made even more obvious when Cooke uses the modifier "witness" to deviously suggest that outside observers to the actions of the police made incorrect statements when it was the police themselves who lied. A sentence in the active voice without the ambition to deceive would read something like, "Police likely [or "allegedly," if you wish] lied about the events, based on video taken of the shooting."
Fuck me to tears. This is not rocket science. The active voice is employed when there's some sort of action by the subject, and if there is none, or can be none (in a literal rather than figurative or metaphorical sense), the active voice isn't used. As precisely as I can put it, this is a passive construction intentionally used to obscure the facts and to hide from view specific action(s) taken by specific subject(s) by eliminating the action(s) and the actor(s) from the sentence.
Active voice: "The police lied in their reports."
Passive mendacious voice: "Witness reports appear incorrect."
Perhaps the new trend is in the number of failed coverups rather than in the number of murders.
ReplyDelete"The initial report served as a catalyst for further investigation."
ReplyDelete"The reports lent credence to the officer's actions."
"The report provided useful statistics."
"The report addressed a number of the disputed claims."
"The report on rocket science mocked the flat-earthers until they fucked each other to tears just to alleviate their chagrin."
But I still concur fully with your main point and always will.
The actual quote is "...reports appear to have been...", not 'Reports appear incorrect'. The presence of "have been" alone signifies the passive voice. Further, the subject "reports" is clearly acting on the verb, rather than the subject engaging in the action stated by the verb.
ReplyDeletePassive voice.
"I intervened in this thread..."
"intervened"? Really? You came "between so as to prevent or alter a result or course of events"? 'Interposed', in the sense of interrupting an exchange with a (pedantic and incorrect) comment, OK,
While I disagreed completely with him politically, dismissing William Safire as the author of an "amateurish column about usage that was not very good", aside from being transparently self-serving, is ridiculous, absurd on its face.
Perhaps when you have written a column in a daily like the NY Times for thirty years, or maybe just been cited maybe 1% of the times Safire's 'On Language' column has been, such dismissal won't be so laughable.
Irregardless of what you say, passive voice literally means evasive phrasing for all intensive purposes.
ReplyDeleteWell, as I noted as exceptions, all those usages are figurative or metaphorical. Reports in themselves, as inanimate objects, cannot act on their own. I hope that's understood on some intrinsic level. I acknowledge those usages as legitimate, if not entirely accurate. They're a form of shorthand for a more complex chain of events performed by entities capable of acting. It's a bit like saying "the White House took steps today to...." No one in his right mind will conceive that literally to mean that a building is walking around Washington, DC, but people will understand it to be, in context, a kind of figurative shorthand (which in its own way, isn't very descriptive or helpful, because it, too, disappears the real actors).
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Cooke's attempt at prestidigitation, he's using "appear" as a synonym for "seem to be," which is a usage precisely as I described--a passive construction which makes the object the subject and disappears the specific actors and their actions. In no way can his sentence be read as either figurative or metaphorical, nor does it employ an active voice.
Another tell-tale of this perverse usage is a simple test: it can't be converted to the active voice without straining logic, even when there's an attempt to make it seem figurative, precisely because the actor and the actions are missing in the original. I've been trying to think of a way to coherently rewrite "mistakes were made" in the active voice, and I'm not having much luck. "Bill killed Biff" makes logical sense in the active voice, and while a bit more unwieldy, in the passive voice, "Biff was
Ich bin nicht ein racialist. But, und this is a big but...
ReplyDeleteBut the cops have made it illegal to video them and have physically attacked witnesses. Places like ferguson need a preexisting neighborhood watch video surveillance system that can be used sll the time to monitor police activity.
ReplyDeleteWell trolled.
ReplyDelete"Anyone who runs is VC. Anyone who doesn't run is well-trained VC."
ReplyDeleteCooke? Is that you...
ReplyDelete#NotAllKillerCops
ReplyDeleteMistakes may have been made.
ReplyDeleteThe Titanic sinking caused the world's shipping lines toimmediately change their rules & regs. I doubt there was any pushback by the Owners/CEO's/Investors.
ReplyDeleteWell, rich people died aboard it.
'Reports appear incorrect' was Montag2's stripped down version, hence my citation of it.
ReplyDelete'The presence of "have been" alone signifies the passive voice.'
No it doesn't. Consider: 'I have been happy'. 'The Vikings have been here.'
William Safire once began a column (not one of his usage pieces in the magazine) 'Sarajevo delenda est', which he proceeded to translate 'Sarajevo has been destroyed'. I found it very hard to take his pronouncements about language seriously after that.
That said, the columns may have had merits. It's been decades since they appeared and I can't pretend to have a detailed memory of them. He was, however, a professional writer, not a grammarian. This is the kind of authority we should turn to if we want to resolve questions about the passive voice. And if you do, you will see that I am right regardless of how many or how few columns I've written for the NYT. (Please follow the link I posted elsewhere or consult a good grammar of English, German French, Latin or another related language). N.B that, at least in the remarks of his that were quoted, Safire does not speak of the 'passive voice', and is therefore quite possibly not guilty of the misunderstanding in support of which he has been cited.
Racists who are sure the people they despise are the real racists.
ReplyDelete~
So you are saying is he's right - irregardless is a double negative. The word you were searching for is regardless. The prefix ir means not
ReplyDeleteOur Kookie Cook Cookie (h/t Bozo the Clown): But I fear that I am also something of a hypocrite on the matter
ReplyDeleteMe: You mean, you are OK wiith your bloodthirstiness being displayed to the public; you just don't like being reminded that others can see it.
If I thought America were an irredeemably racist nation, I'd give up and join the KKK*. It's only because I think this shit can be fixed that I'm bothering to stand against it.
ReplyDelete*Not that they'd have Hershele Ostropoler. But you know what I mean.
This is all about ethics in shooting people in the back.
ReplyDeleteYou've shown commendable patience, more than I have. I'm at home, laid up with the flu, so it's good to have something to occupy the mind I suppose. It occurs to me that some commenters here are failing to distinguish between grammar (morphology and syntax) and usage or diction (with reference to which we can say things like 'though a grammatical sentence, it violates rules of good usage'). One way of stating the point that I've been trying to make without much much success would be to say that the distinction between the active and the passive voice is at home in the former, not the latter. What qualifies as an instance of the passive/active voice is a question for grammar; when and when not to use one or the other a question of diction.
ReplyDeleteThe small man shifted in his chair and lit yet another cigarette.
ReplyDelete"Ja," he said, "Der Fuehrer had... a big butt. It vas so hard to ignore, when I had to shtand with him for the shpeeches." He wiped his forehead with his red-and-black handkerchief. "I... I could not help myself to... look, out of the corner of my eye. Vat vas I to do? It vas Hitler! Could I mention zis to the Leader of the Thousand Year Reich? Und he knew I was looking! Once, just once, after a victory speech in Silesia... I... I could see it in his eyes..."
a camera inside C.W. McCookie's head/brain/mind would be really really good
ReplyDeleteI cast doubts that, even in today's modern world of the future, they can possibly make cameras that small.
Now, his ego? This would fit:
http://www.impactlab.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Giant-Camera-Device-272.jpg
If we get groups of black people carrying cameras, there will be camera control the same way Reagan supported gun control for Black Panthers.
ReplyDelete"DAAAAAADD! MAKE THOSE BLACK PEOPLE STOP LOOKING AT MEEEEE!"
ReplyDeleteI think he was joking, as "for all intensive purposes" is substituted for "all intents and purposes" and he sticks "literally" in there as well.
ReplyDeletePlease adjust the calibration on your irony detector array.
ReplyDelete"'Reports appear incorrect' was Montag2's stripped down version, hence my citation of it."
ReplyDeleteSooo, you didn't even read the original article, just "intervened" to try and give a grammar lesson? Hilarious.
"...'The presence of "have been" alone signifies the passive voice.' No it doesn't."
Yes it does.
"This is the kind of authority we should turn to if we want to resolve questions about the passive voice...(Please follow the link I posted elsewhere or consult a good grammar of English...)
Your link: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/active-and-passive-voice
From that link: "The passive forms are made up of the verb be with a past participle:"
'Have been' is the past participle of 'to be'. If a sentence contains both 'to be' in any form, and a past participle, even if they are the same phrase, you've met the text book definition of passive voice.
"Consider: 'I have been happy'. 'The Vikings have been here.'..."
Reconsider.
"Have been" is the past participle of "to be".
Because your example contains both a form of 'to be' and a past participle (even though they are the same phrase), it meets the definition of passive voice.
Active: 'The Vikings were here'.
The use of a predicate adjective confuses the issue, fuzzes meaning, but active: 'I was happy'.
"...regardless of how many or how few columns I've written for the NYT."
You call that argument? Wit? You've conflated my criticism of your erroneous grasp of the passive voice with your erroneous take on Safire. speaking of which...
"He was, however, a professional writer, not a grammarian."
Yeah, 'professional writer' and 'grammarian' are mutually exclusive. Common sense! More hilarity.
"William Safire once began a column (not one of his usage pieces in the magazine) 'Sarajevo delenda est', which he proceeded to translate 'Sarajevo has been destroyed'. "
Ahhh no. Wrong. In these days of the internet and Google, this qualifies as lazy and stupid wrong. The column was by Leslie Gelb, the sentence was " Sarajevo delenda est. Sarajevo is destroyed, "
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/07/opinion/foreign-affairs-sarajevo-dead-and-alive.html
"This is the kind of authority we should turn to if we want to resolve questions about the passive voice"
The kind of authority you are ignoring. Your own link does not support your claim. Nobody is going to confuse grammar with science, but this is pat, 101 level material.
"...you will see that I am right."
You are relentlessly, tirelessly (for you, tiresome for your readers) wrong, but you have revealed all I need to see.
Have a nice life.
could be - that's one of those trigger words for me - can't stand it when people use it irregardless of their reasons why :)
ReplyDeleteI think one can get a Raspberry Pi NoIR camera pretty cheap and read his colonic heat signatures
ReplyDeleteBetween you and I, I thought we might be in agreeance. But that might just be a boldface lie, just an allusion. In this doggy-dog world, there's no fullproof way to know if any one is taking theirselves seriously.
ReplyDeleteFYI, Cooke responds. Quite ably, I might add:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalreview.com/article/416717/walter-scotts-death-doesnt-mean-we-should-abandon-presumption-innocence-charles-c-w
And I have responded to his response! http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2015/04/friday-round-horn_10.html
ReplyDeleteHis death at the hands of a police officer appears to be entirely unjustified. There has been a murder in North Charleston, S.C. The victim was a 50-year-old black man named Walter Scott. The killer was a 33-year-old white police officer named Michael T. Slager. The story, as we know it, is harrowing. After Slager pulled Scott over for a broken taillight, the New York Times reports, Scott fled the scene on foot. In pursuit, Slager discharged his taser, which failed to work as intended. Undeterred, Scott continued to run away, which – for some inexplicable reason – provoked Slager into opening fire with his service pistol. Having been hit at least five times, Scott fell to the ground and died.
ReplyDeleteRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416645/camera-will-mean-justice-walter-scott-charles-c-w-cooke?target=author&tid=23105
Why post quotes that distort the author's actual intent? The picture that accompanied Cooke's prose, could have been more damning only if they photoshoped in animation of the bullets. "murder, victim, killer" named called out and identified. Why misdirect your readers just so you can continue the hate fest? He and Goldberg call for swift and terrible justice when bad cops are PROVEN to be lying murderers. Insults and deliberate obfuscation of your target's opinion is such a poor substitute for an actual argument, why bother trying to right at all?
ReplyDeleteVoice and tense have nothing to do with each other.
ReplyDeleteI am well aware of that. I mention this only because it is common for people to assume, incorrectly, the active voice when the verb is in the present tense.
ReplyDelete