Wow, good thing the 2016 Olympics didn't go to crime-ridden, gang-dominated Chicago, hunh?
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Just over two weeks ago, this striking city landed the 2016 Olympic Games, the first ever in South America....
Then over the weekend, in a chilling outburst of violence, drug traffickers wielding what the police say they believe was a large-caliber weapon shot down a police helicopter just one mile from Maracana stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics will be held and the World Cup final will be played two years before the Olympics....
The police said the weekend's violence started after a trafficker in prison ordered his followers to invade a rival's territory. The attack set off clashes between the police and drug bandits in several favelas, leaving at least 26 people dead, including three policemen and three bystanders....
Rio has one of the world's highest murder rates, with 4,631 homicides in the metropolitan area last year; that number represented a decline from 5,143 murders in 2006, government figures show. There were 523 murders in New York City last year....
(Chicago, by the way, had 509. Admittedly, the Rio metropolitan area has a population about four times the size of Chicago's -- but the murder rate was about nine times the size.)
Recall the right-wing reaction to the notion of a Chicago Olympics:
[Glenn] Beck: "... Oh, Chicago is good at community organizing, and organized labor, and organized Mafi-- oops. Did I say that out loud?"
... [Sean] Hannity: ... "[E]arly this morning a 14-year-old boy was chased down a Chicago street and beaten with a pipe. ... This event occurs on the heels of the murder of Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old honor student who was beaten to death in a gang fight, and at the same time the president is lobbying to bring the Olympics to Chicago, which begs the question: Is this a city where we want the Olympics taking place?"
... Fox News contributor Kimberly Guilfoyle [asserted] that Chicago has "pressing problems" such as "lawlessness, violence on the street, innocent bystanders being killed, children beaten and unable to go to schools" ...
Weekly Standard newsroom, your thoughts?
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