The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In Case You Missed It, @MileyCyrus Got Super-Skanky on the VMAs Last Night

Posted on | August 26, 2013 | 217 Comments

Of course, I didn’t watch MTV’s Video Music Awards, but the morning news shows were running . . . er, highlights of her performance, from which I gather that the name of her latest hit song is, “Do Me in the Butt, Total Stranger, Because I Need Money to Get Me Some Meth.”

OK, I’m hat-tipping Ace of Spades for that joke, because that’s what Ace would have said circa 2006, before he got all “respectable” and stuff. The inspiration lives on. Anyway . . .

How skanky was Miley Cyrus last night? Mika Brzezinksi felt the need to condemn it as “disturbing,” because Mika would never let a total stranger do her in the butt, not even if she needed some meth.

Mika’s not working on a Masters degree in Gender Studies, however, and doesn’t understand how 21st-century pro-sex feminism regards this whole “do me in the butt” thing as empowerment.

Da Tech Guy has some relevant thoughts, none of which involve the phrase “do me in the butt,” for which I’m sure you’re grateful.

UPDATE: Can I pick ’em, or what?

Apparently, linking to the “about” page on @Andria_XX‘s blog constitutes harassment. The real problem, however, is that when you’re living inside an intellectual cocoon — and if a graduate program in Gender Studies doesn’t fit that description, what does? — you’re not accustomed to being directly criticized, let alone ridiculed as a nincompoop, and you may actually forget that the secondhand radical ideology you’re being spoon-fed is controversial out in the real world.

UPDATE II: Aannnnddd she just switched her account to protected status, an experience which I’m sure she’ll blame on the patriarchy.

UPDATE III: Blame where blame is due:

Hats off to SooperMexican, who spotted Andria’s Tweet, and to Zilla Stevenson who realized I needed to see it, and I think there was An Army of Heteropatriarchal Davids who spontaneously decided that Andria deserved Dumbest Person on Twitter recognition.

 

Category: Celebrities, Feminism

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.26.13

Posted on | August 26, 2013 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Karzai Arrives In Pakistan For Talks On Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrives in Islamabad

Karzai, US seeking Pakistani help in getting Taliban to negotiating table

Guilty Verdict Still Expected As Bo Xilai Trial Ends
Former Party boss’ refusal to admit guilt nixes chances for leniency

Russia Warns Against US Intervention In Syria
FM Lavrov tells Kerry statements expressing readiness to intervene “extremely alarming”



POLITICS
GOP Shapes Its Strategy For Fall Budget Fights

House Speaker John Boehner

Leadership pushing for continued resolutions, wants to avoid government shutdown

Justice Department Sues Louisiana Over School Vouchers


Thompson Within Striking Distance For NYC Mayor

March On Washington’s 50th Anniversary Draws Tens Of Thousands

Sentencing Phase Of Fort Hood Shooter’s Trial Begins Today

NY Attorney General Sues Trump University

Powell Finds Zimmerman Verdict “Questionable”, Wants Obama To Talk More About Race

Oberlin Student Claims Anti-Islamic Fliers, Racist Cards ” A Joke”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Jumps As US Housing Data Disappoint: NYMEX $106.78, Brent $111.13
Asia Stocks Rise As Fed Jitters Diminish
Muriel Siebert, First Woman Member Of NYSE, Dies At 80
Amgen Buying Drugmaker Onyx for $10.4 Billion
PRC Claims Economy Stabilizing After Long Slowdown
Signs Of “A Slow Recovery” In The Eurozone
Amazon’s Web Service Problems Wobble Airbnb, Vine
DOJ Wiggles On Apple E-Book Remedies But Not Oversight
Microsoft Releases Windows 8.1 To Manufacturers
The Pavlov Poke Shocks You When You Use Facebook Too Much
Tom Clancy’s “Splinter Cell:Blacklist”…Spy Harder



SPORTS
ESPN Analyst John Kruk Falls Ill At Dodgers Stadium

For once, not drinking enough

Former Phillie taken out on stretcher after becoming dehydrated

Peavy Goes The Distance As BoSox Blow Out Dodgers 8-1

O’s Rout A’s 10-3, Draw Within Two Of Wild Card Lead


Jays Rally Late, Edge Astros 2-1, Snap 7-Game Skid

Halladay Holds Off Snakes In Return As Phillies Win 9-5

Giants Blank Pirates 4-0

Yankees Top Rays 3-2 In 11, Avoid Sweep

Shaky Nats Defense Hands Win To Slumping Royals



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Katy Perry “Roar”s Under Brooklyn Bridge

Taking it to the river

Does first live performance of new hit to close MTV VMAs

 Music Producer Dr. Luke Joins “American Idol” As Third Judge

Taylor Armstrong Engaged To John Bluher

Duke Of York Finds Love Again…With His Ex, The Duchess Of York

Linda Ronstadt Has Parkinson’s Disease, Can’t Sing Any More

Lindsay Lohan: Danny McBride Wants You!

Chris Brown – Repping The Bloods In Hawaii

Unspeakable Armenian’s Sis Kicks Hubby Lamar Odom Out For Being Hardcore Druggie

Apollo Benefit Rocks & Rolls

Al Pacino Helped By Therapy, Dad

HBO Exec Turns Ambassador

Dr. Oz, Meet Dr. Ruth

Paula Deen Dropped From Cooking Expo Ads Even Though She’s Headlining

White Castle Offers Liam Hemsworth  $20K For Charity After Burger Puke Story



FOREIGNERS
Britain, Turkey Say Syria Action Possible Even Without UN
As Violence Worsens, Iraq Turns Again To Sunni Tribes
China’s Billionaire Blogger Detained On Sex Charges
Palestinians Killed In Israeli Raid On Refugee Camp
At Least Five Dead, 18 Injured In Mexican Train Crash
Mugabe Rants Against West, Gays At Inauguration
Zurich Begins Experiment With Drive-In “Sex Boxes”
Thousands Turn Out To Protest Philippines Corruption
Mandela Still Not Dead



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Leftists Looking To Galvanize New Generation Of Cultists
American Thinker: Is There Anything About Race We Can Agree On?
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Nice Deal – Jesse jackson Jr. Gets Disability Payments, Congressional Pension In Prison
Don Surber: Weekend Scoreboard, August 23-25
Jammie Wearing Fools: Shocker – Delbert Belton’s Teenage Killers Have History of Violent Crime
JustOneMinute: Fifty Shades Of Red
Pat Dollard: Egyptians Reject MuBros’ Scapegoating Of Christians, Support Military
Protein Wisdom: Establishment Repubs Promise To Fight Next Battle If Only The Visigothic Hobbits Back Off This One
Shot In The Dark: We Keep Warning You
The jawa Report: Wait, An Imam Aided The Taliban? That’s Unpossible!
Chicks On The Right: Doesn’t This Make You Feel So Safe?
Megan McArdle: Return Of The Nazi Hunters


Category: Live at Five

Hunt Family Values: #FreeKate’s Underage Sister ‘Went Out and Drank’?

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 80 Comments

This March 17 Twitter message sent by Kaitlyn Hunt’s little sister is something that was called to my attention nearly three months ago. At the same time I received a copy of the message in which the sister, 16, boasted about her mother, Kelley Hunt Smith, being a “f–king badass.” As I wrote on May 30:

 I had to think whether it was fair to post this. After all, Emily is a minor and not really competent to . . . Oh, wait.

At the heart of the “Free Kate” argument is the claim that Kaitlyn’s 14-year-old victim was competent to consent to sex with an adult, and if one buys that argument — in effect invalidating the legal age of consent — then who is to say that Kaitlyn’s sister’s public boasts about her going out to drink are off-limits? In fact, one Hunt family acquaintance claims that nothing has been off limits for these girls:

[Kelley Hunt Smith] has always allowed her daughters to do as they please. I know for a fact that the 2nd oldest dated a 20 year old when she was only 14! The mother would allow these things. The girls [were allowed] to have boys over for parties, that would turn into a sleepover, where there would be drug and alcohol use. This was a few years ago, but the kids at that time ranged from 13-15.

Hmmm. Permitting her minor daughters to have sleepovers with boys “where there would be drug and alcohol use“?

And then, in March 2013 — a month after Kaitlyn was arrested on felony charges of having sex with a 14-year-old — the younger sister is bragging on social media that she’s about to go out drinking?

Do you see where this might be relevant to the case, especially when the mother who allegedly permitted this behavior, Kelley Hunt Smith, was the original character witness for Kaitlyn Hunt, writing a 1,500-word Facebook post to praise Kaitlyn as “exemplary . . . wonderful . . . she truly is the model student and child”?

Considering the description of Kaitlyn’s behavior, and considering what has been said about Kelley Hunt Smith’s parenting, don’t these dots form a pattern? Also, remember that two-on-one beatdown?

“Beat her f**king ass, Emily! Beat her ass! Get that bitch!”

Twin terrors of the Treasure Coast, the Hunt sisters beat up a girl at the beach — an assault on a juvenile captured on video by a Sebastian River High School classmate who said of Kaitlyn:

“She is known as a whore throughout the school . . .
my whole school knows she’s not a good person.”

Kaitlyn Hunt’s character as “the model student and child” was central to Kelley Hunt Smith’s May 17 Facebook post that began the “Free Kate” movement. But who is Kelley Hunt Smith to judge anyone’s character, considering what hooligans she has raised? And remember what prosecutors said in their petition to revoke Kaitlyn’s bond?

In addition to the contact by the defendant, the state is in possession of text messages from the defendant’s mother, Kelley Hunt Smith, sent to the child victim on March 26, 2013. These messages were sent after the court issued the “no contact” order. . . . In the messages, the defendant’s mother tampered with the child victim. She solicited the child victim to obstruct the judicial process, instructing her to destroy the evidence of unlawful contact. Specifically, Kelly Hunt Smith texted the child victim, “Destroy EVERYTHING . . . My # is 512-924-4145 my email is [email protected] PLEASE destroy everything and make sure NO ONE finds out you’ve spoken to Kate at all.”

Oops. When this was presented to the court last week, Judge Robert Pegg declared that the “evidence is overwhelming” Kaitlyn violated the no-contact order and sent her to jail, with a new felony charge against her for her own communications with the minor victim:

Hunt sent more than 20,000 text messages to the younger girl after the no-contact order was issued, and also sent the victim “lewd” photos and an explicit video of herself “masturbating by rubbing her vagina with her fingers while moaning.”

Yeah, that’s a felony in Florida, and her mother allegedly also “tampered with the child victim . . . to obstruct the judicial process,” so that Kelley Hunt Smith is now also in jeopardy of felony charges.

No more plea bargain for Kaitlyn, and her mother’s whining that Kaitlyn’s in real jail with real criminals. Kaitlyn’s father Steven Hunt is a disgraced ex-cop who once “pressured a victim not to file a battery charge,” and now it seems the Hunt gang wants to shut down this blog.

Maybe this makes the behavior of @MLE_Bitchess kind of relevant.

You stay classy, Hunt family . . .




 

Category: Kaitlyn Hunt

Potius Mori Quam Foedari

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 50 Comments

Loosely translated, “Death before dishonor.”

Brand-new blogger Brad the Bastard paid me this high compliment:

When Stacy dies his wife should save herself some money and put just one word on his tombstone — RELENTLESS.

Did anyone think that when I caught the whiff of bovine excrement around the “Free Kate” narrative, and realized those trashy grifters were trying to use gay rights to undermine age-of-consent laws, that I was going to stop fighting before the foe was vanquished?

Hell to the no.

A principle was at stake. Liars should never triumph over the honest, nor should the virtuous fear the evildoer, and whatever you think about lesbianism or teen sex, a respect for the rule of law is all that stands between us and the utmost savagery.

Having chosen this fight, it would have been dishonorable for me to have given up the fight, knowing how the Hunt family had lied and demonized those who stood on the side of law and decency.

“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion — to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism

Too often nowadays, we lose sight of our heritage and forget how our ancestors prevailed under circumstances far more daunting than anything we are likely to face today. The descendants of patriots and pioneers ought never forget how God preserved their ancestors in the struggle. We should strive to emulate that antique courage, to deserve the good name they have bequeathed us, and to pass along this invaluable patrimony that is ours by inheritance.

Each of us, as Americans, are heirs to this tradition, of the men who crossed the Delaware and marched in the snow that bitter December night to surprise the Hessian troops at Trenton. Likewise every patriot gets choked up with pride to think how, in another bitter December, the commander of those G.I.s surrounded at Bastogne received the German demand for surrender and replied with one word: “Nuts.”

Knowing what miracles were wrought in our history to deliver to us this republic, are we to be cheated of our rightful inheritance by thugs and liars and their dishonest enablers in the intellectual elite?

Hell to the no.

Courage is contagious. Stand up and fight, and if you can withstand the enemy’s ferocious attacks, other good and decent people will be inspired by your example and rally to your standard.

Most of all, make up your mind at the outset of the fight:

Success in any endeavor starts with the resolute determination to succeed. No matter how formidable the competition, hold your head up high. They’re no better than you, and victory begins with the decision to rule out the possibility of defeat. “Can’t never could.”

Hit ’em as hard as you can, and keep hitting until you win.

Death before dishonor!

 

Category: Culture, History, Kaitlyn Hunt

‘Puerile … Progressive Hackery’: @BrianBeutler and Our Moral Superiors

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 63 Comments

Donald Douglas at American Power:

Brian Beutler’s more recent piece on “the right’s black crime obsession” is one of the most puerile pieces of progressive hackery I’ve ever read. Beutler’s simply yapping incoherently in the mode of holier-than-thou leftist claptrap.

Please read the whole thing, because Dr. Douglas is not just a blogger but an honest-to-God Ph.D. and yet, to borrow a phrase from Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man,” he came up hard, babe.

He did not travel the smooth path, and has an appreciation of exactly how wrong this “holier-than-thou leftist claptrap” is. The mentality of the Left is an obstacle to achievement and upward mobility. If any man wishes to overcome hardship, he must reject bad doctrine.

Also, “puerile” is one of my favorite words. Having been taught Latin diction in the classic manner, I know that the word puer (“boy”) is pronounced poo-air or pwehr. When I subsequently encountered the word “puerile” (boyish, immature, juvenile) in written text, it seemed to me it should be prounounced poo-air-ile or pwehr-ile. So then I pronounced it that way in a discussion and had someone correct me, saying it was pronounce pure-ile.

To hell with that. Miss Dismer taught me Latin, and I am her student still. You don’t get to tell me how to pronounce that word, son.

As for Beutler, certainly his “argument” was childish nonsense. Here is the fool being made welcome on CNN:

Brian Beutler is hailed by his fellow liberals as a genius — a man of brilliant insight — for exactly one reason: He is a liberal.

And he expects us lowly mortals to be impressed.

 

Category: Liberals

VIDEO: @SenTedCruz Is A Breath Of Fresh, Post-Obama Air

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 28 Comments

by Smitty

What an awesome American:

Here’s the link to which he alludes: “Don’t Fund It”

I mostly don’t care about who the GOP nominates in 2016, as long as they have Cruz’s good humor, enthusiasm, and capacity to make a 45 minute speech seem a brief word. What a genius.

via Breitbart

Category: Health Care, Tea Party, Texas

FMJRA 2.0: Sunday Edition

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Shocking: #FreeKate’s Father Conspires to Shut Down This Blog: ‘Media Blackout’

Another God-Hating Anti-American Democrat Exposed as a Criminal Liar

Kaitlyn Hunt Back in Jail

Is Obstruction of Justice, Like Dildo Sex With 14-Year-Olds, ‘Healthy and Normal’?

Rule 5 Monday

UPDATE: Kaitlyn Hunt’s Bond Revoked; Evidence ‘Overwhelming,’ Judge Says

Shocking Claim: #FreeKate’s Mother Is ‘Cool Mom,’ in the Very Worst Way

Mystery in #FreeKate Case: What Does Kaitlyn Hunt’s BFF Julia Gilmore Know?

You’re Accused: ‘Vengeance, Spite, Fear, Denial, Sadness, Insecurity, Whatever’

Mama: #FreeKate Is Being Treated Like a Real Criminal at Indian River County Jail!

Listen: McCain and Akbar Speak on #FreeKate, Michael Hastings, Barrett Brown, the NSA and Power…

FMJRA 2.0: Totem

Is Your Child’s Public School Teacher Cruising Online for a ‘Sugar Daddy’?

Barrett Brown’s Overblown Ego

Florida: The Rape State

Twitter: Foreign Policy Clarity

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.19.13

Conrad Black’s FDR Idolatry

But Their Football Team Still Sucks

Barrett Brown Inspires a Bizarre Campaign for Douchebag Rights

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.20.13

Poster for #FreeKate Movie: Revealed!

Medicare Expansion Set To Dilate A Budget Near You

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.21.13

Kaitlyn Hunt’s Lawyer, Having Failed Her Client, Now Scapegoats the Prosecution

More #FreeKate Arguments: Want to Let Heather Wirth-Dalager Babysit Your Kids?

Media Covers for #FreeKate While Her Supporters Attack the Victim’s Parents

Congratulations On The Little Hammer!

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 08.22.13

Bradley Manning Declares Himself ‘Chelsea’

‘The Powers That Be’: Lawful Authority, Honorable Service and a Cursed Traitor

#FreeKate Comic Interlude

Reminder: #FreeKate’s Father ‘Pressured a Victim Not to File a Battery Charge’?

New Concept of ‘Rights’ in America: If You’re Not Gay, You Don’t Have Any

LIVE: @RSMcCain and @Ali Talk #FreeKate and #ChelseaManning

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 08.23.13

#FreeKate? Local Teen Says Kaitlyn Hunt Was ‘Bully … Calling Me an Ugly Dyke’

Space Opera

That Psycho-style Imagery In The Anti-Cuccinelli Ad Was Surely A Tribute To Anthony Perkins, Not An Attack

The Foul Stench of @BrianBeutler’s Truthlessness Has Become Intolerable

Top linkers this week:

  1. EvilBloggerLady (22 +18 Batshit Crazy News = 40)
  2. Rick’s Crazed World 35
  3. Regular Right Guy 28
  4. DaleyGator 7
  5. Da Tech Guy 5

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Submit your links for next week’s FMJRA no later than midnight Friday, August 30.


Category: FMJRA Award

The Fisking of @BrianBeutler: Obsessed Obsessive Obsessions and Stuff Like That

Posted on | August 25, 2013 | 90 Comments

A troll showed up in the comments of the previous post about Brian Beutler to say that the reason I didn’t do a full fisking is that I “have no argument more advanced than ‘Nuh-uh!'”

OK, fine then — we’ll do it from start to finish:

The right’s black crime obsession
Conservative media’s total fixation on black-on-black
and black-on-white crime isn’t going to end. Here’s why

(We may derive the intent from the headline: “The right” is conflated with “Conservative media,” because everyone who votes Republican does so because Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have told them to. This is therefore the umpteenth journalistic reiteration of the Media Matters daily mantra about the illegitimacy of conservative media.)

BY BRIAN BEUTLER

(Prepare for deliberate dishonesty.)

There are a few black people up to no good in this country and Fox News is on it! So is Drudge Report. Vigilantly on the lookout, 24 hours a day, for stories about black youths behaving badly.

(Didn’t I warn you? Beutler starts lying right off the bat, assuming a liberal readership who never actually watch Fox News and who are too lazy even to bother checking the Drudge Report.)

This isn’t a particularly new phenomenon, but it’s intensified noticeably in the past year for at least two reasons. Conservatives, particularly white conservatives, feel a burning urgency to find a racial counterweight to the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s shooting (including President Obama’s public comments about the incident), a logical response to the argument that things like background checks and an assault weapons ban are appropriate ways to reduce the likelihood of another Sandy Hook-style massacre, and anecdotal justifications for indiscriminate policing of dangerous neighborhoods.

(This has “intensified noticeably in the past year,” which means since August 2012. Is it true that “white conservatives” actually do feel the “burning urgency” Beutler attributes to them? Or is this just another tendentious assertion he pulled out of his ass? Certainly I feel no such urgency, but maybe someone else does.)

But these are hopeless pursuits. The incidents they draw attention to fail by definition to underscore the things they believe. They all require projecting motives or details or both into tragic events, to create false dichotomies between shootings perpetrated by whites and blacks. They have the unhealthy effect of creating dueling tallies of white-on-black and black-on-white crime. And ironically they all tend to underscore the argument that more “stand your ground” laws and more racial profiling are off-point responses to these incidents.

(Do you see how this is going to go? Brian Beutler asserts that conservatives hold certain beliefs, and then asserts that facts don’t support those beliefs. And notice Brian Beutler says conservatives are “projecting motives,” which Brian Beutler never does!)

The latest conservative cri de coeur is over the tragic shooting death of Chris Lane, a 22-year-old Australian attending East Central University in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship. Two teen boys spotted Lane on a jog last week, trailed him in a car, and allegedly shot him fatally in the back (a third teen reportedly served as their driver). One of the suspects said the boys committed the murder out of boredom.

(This is merely the “latest” such incident — i.e., in which conservatives are alleged to have done what Brian Beutler says they do — but what was the one before Chris Lane? I don’t remember it, but maybe Brian Beutler could, if he chose, rattle off a long list of incidents like this which, so he says, “conservative media” have hyped for the reasons that he says they’re hyping such incidents. He doesn’t actually provide a list, however, so readers are supposed to take Brian Beutler’s word that this is actually a phenomenon.)

Word of the shooting spread quickly. And that’s when the right clumsily revealed that its obsession with gun violence reflects an obsession with racial score settling rather than with averting further tragedies. The conservative media, including Fox News, repeated the claim that the Oklahoma suspects were all black. But this turned out to be a toxic mix of racial bias and wishful thinking. You almost wonder whether the people whose ulterior motives led them into error like this actually lamented the fact that one of the suspects happened to be white. It would be so much more convenient if that weren’t the case.

(When did Fox News, or anyone else, do what Brian Beutler says they did, claiming that the “suspects were all black”? I mean, maybe they did — I haven’t paid any attention to this story — although I don’t see Beutler linking to a source, or quoting anyone. But once again, Beutler assumes a liberal readership that never watches Fox News, so he could say anything about the network’s programming and his ignorant readers would have no choice but to accept his assertions.)

But let’s pretend for a minute that the suspects had all fit the stereotype the hosts at Fox and Friends wanted. Then the idea is that Chris Lane’s death should somehow offset Trayvon Martin’s, or that the people who sought to turn George Zimmerman’s actions into a national referendum on “stand your ground” laws are somehow hypocritical for having little to say when the races of the culprits and innocent victims are reversed. For reactionary Obama foes like former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., the obvious question is, “Whom will POTUS identify w/this time?”

(The link to the Tweet by Allen West is THE ONLY LINK IN THIS ENTIRE COLUMN. Isn’t Salon.com, y’know, one of those Internet kind of things, where political bloggers routinely link to their sources, so as not to give the appearance that they’re just pulling stuff out of their ass or, as some call it, “doing a Beutler”?)

I’ll give West, et al., this: If you ignore motive, circumstance, history and (likely ) outcome, then liberals, particularly black liberals, sure seem craven. By that standard, though, Jean Valjean and John, King of England are moral equals — just a couple of guy s with similar names taking other people’s property.

(Does that paragraph mean anything? Anything at all?)

So let’s review: George Zimmerman wouldn’t have shot Trayvon Martin if he hadn’t been profiling by race. And even if he had been, the shooting feasibly wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been legally allowed to carry a handgun and didn’t think he was empowered by law to take matters into his own hands. The monstrous killing of Chris Lane has no such back story. The killers apparently had no motive whatsoever, were armed illegally, and certainly weren’t trailing Lane because they believed, based on his race, that he might be a criminal. They are, however, likely to face serious prison time for their crimes. Zimmerman walked.

(And here, evidently too stoned to realize it, Beutler actually proves a point — a conservative point — about crime: People get shot to death all the time, for all kinds of reasons, or for no reason at all, and no policy advocated by liberals is going to prevent this from happening. Zimmerman shooting Trayvon? You can call that “racial profiling” or you can call it a tragic misunderstanding, but exactly how do you propose to prevent it from happening? “Zimmerman walked” because he had a claim of self-defense sufficiently plausible to constitute “reasonable doubt.” Also, notice that, while admitting that the teenagers in the Chris Lane shooting were illegally armed, Brian Beutler assumes that if Zimmerman “hadn’t been legally allowed to carry a handgun,” Zimmerman would not have also illegally armed himself. Why assume that? And what about Trayvon’s “whoop-ass” beating of Zimmerman, which Zimmerman said he thought might end in his own death? Would Brian Beutler have been happy to have Trayvon beat Zimmerman to death?)

Put that all together, and it turns out these stories aren’t counter-parallel at all. And more to the point, the events don’t even anecdotally augur for policies the right supports. The kids in Oklahoma weren’t “standing their ground,” and a “stand your ground” law wouldn’t have saved Chris Lane. Neither would a stop-and-frisk regime — the killers were trailing him in a car. By contrast, a “stand your ground” environment and a stop-and-frisk mentality were instrumental in Trayvon Martin’s death. Take either away , and there’s a good chance he’d be alive today. Martin in fact personified the statistical folly of stop-and-frisk. If Zimmerman had yielded to real police, they would have, in absence of any suspicious behavior, stopped Martin, frisked him and found only the skittles and iced tea that made his death that much more tragically poignant.

(Again, it is only Brian Beutler’s assertion that the Chris Lane murder is being reported because “conservative media” believe the story supports a policy argument. My own guess is that after the incessant 24/7 media drumbeat about the Zimmerman trial, which liberals claimed was an event fraught with political significance, some “conservative media” basically decided, “Hey, we’re going to stop downplaying or ignoring black-on-white crime, just to make a point.” But that’s merely my guess. Unlike Brian Beutler, I don’t possess any clairvoyant mind-reading powers that enable me to know why Fox News producers or Matt Drudge do what they do.)

You could twist that into a claim that stop-and-frisk might have saved Martin’s life. But that gets the onus backward. Proponents of profiling policies need to do better than argue we have to violate the civil rights of minorities in order to protect them from hair-triggered vigilantes.

(The “stop-and-frisk” thing is strictly an issue in New York, because of an NYPD policy that was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. It has nothing to do with Oklahoma and even less to do with Sanford, Florida. Why Brian Beutler keeps bringing it up, I don’t know. Has the “stop-and-frisk” issue has been discussed by anyone at Fox News in the context of the Chris Lane murder? If it has, then why doesn’t he quote that discussion? In general, why are there no links or quotes in this column? Why can’t Brian Beutler be bothered to provide actual evidence of the phenomenon he presumes to critique? Why do liberals think it’s acceptable to assert controversial claims that they don’t bother to prove? How many bong-hits does Brian Beutler usually do before writing his columns? Seven. That’s  now an established fact — because I just asserted it, see?)

What might well have stopped both killings, though, is making it harder for people, legally or illegally, to come into possession of handguns. That’s a conversation the right is less obsessed with.

(Again with the assertion: People who Brian Beutler doesn’t like are “obsessed,” or they ” feel a burning urgency,” or have an “obsession with gun violence” and “an obsession with racial score settling,” or are motivated by “racial bias and wishful thinking.” Over and over again — pausing only to take another bong hit — Beutler attributes irrational motives to antagonists for doing what he asserts they are doing, although he merely asserts this without providing any actual evidence of it. There are no quotes from Fox News broadcasts in Brian Beutler’s column, no links to transcripts. It’s just a straight-up rant that was written only because Brian Beutler is supposed to write a certain number of columns per week for Salon and, because he never does any reporting or, for that matter, much of anything that could be called “research,” he just sat down, toked up a few bowls of sinsemilla and let it rip, right off the top of his head.)

Brian Beutler is Salon’s political writer. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @brianbeutler.

(Or you could also block him on Twitter. Or say rude things about him on Twitter. Certainly there’s no reason to follow him, unless you want him to hook you up with some weed.)

Copyright © 2011 Salon.com. All rights reserved.

Fuck you. Fair use. Sue me, you bastards, I double-dog dare you.

 

Category: Media Bias
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