Right-wingers -- for instance, the folks at the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- are looking at the shooting of a young Australian named Christopher Lane, allegedly by three teenagers who didn't know him, and are asking why the people who were outraged at the Trayvon Martin case aren't equally outraged now. Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald and Gawker's Tom Scocca make the obvious point: the cops made arrests in the killing of Lane, and there's no controversy about that. Scocca writes:
Here's what happened in Oklahoma: a young man was shot to death. The police investigated it as a crime, arrested suspects, and charged them with murder.I want to make an additional point here. It wasn't merely that George Zimmerman wasn't arrested at the scene -- it was that the decision not to arrest him was an implicit endorsement of what he did that night, a way of arguing that he'd been deputized by society to do what he did. It said that we have no problem with regarding a self-appointed para-cop as a person entitled to make life-or-death decisions -- or at least we don't have a problem if he shoots someone in a certain category of persons. And, of course, "stand your ground" laws exist precisely to deputize, as momentary citizen cops, large swaths of the population.
No one is on the other side of this case. No one is disputing the principle that people who murder other people should be arrested and tried for it.... everyone agrees that the killing of Christopher Lane was a terrible crime and that the perpetrators should be punished.
The reason the killing of Trayvon Martin became a national scandal was that even though an unarmed young man was shot to death, the local authorities decided not to treat it as a crime. That was why it was a major news story. It was not the fact that a person of one particular race killed a person of another particular race; it was how the police and the justice system decided to handle that killing after it happened.
Not everyone, of course -- there's a significant racial disparity in the treatment of white-on-black and black-on-white shootings in "stand your ground" states:
{According to] a study by John Roman of the Urban Institute ... [i]n states with stand-your-ground laws, the shooting of a black person by a white person is found justifiable 17 percent of the time, while the shooting of a white person by a black person is deemed justifiable just over 1 percent of the time....The initial refusal to arrest Zimmerman, and his ultimate acquittal, were endorsements of his self-appointment as an officer of the law. By contrast, no one is treating the young men chaged with Christopher Lane's death as pseudo-cops. If we get to the point where elected or appointed authorities are arguing that white people should be shot under circumstances like this, for the good of society, then we'll have a comparable situation to the Trayvon Martin case. But nothing even remotely like that is happening in this case. Everyone -- everyone -- accepts that this was an awful crime.
8 comments:
A white dog pulled the trigger. By his own admission - we were bored. That his partners in the crime are black is moot in the generally acepted venicular. A white dog pulled the trigger.
No fear.
The reason no-one was arrested by the investigating police was that they knew, from experience, that there was no case to answer and that a charge of murder would be kicked out of court - which was exactly what happened. You, and others, chose to believe various big-mouth agitators and your silly liberal MSM - and a Floridian flake of a prosecutor thought she could make her name. Well she succeeded but the name isn't quite what she hoped for!
Anyway, the result has left the liberal left looking dafter than a daft thing!
duffAndFullOfNONSENSE,
A usual, you don't know wtf you're talking about.
The case against Zimmerman was NOT kicked out of court!
Kicked out of court, means no trial, here in the USA.
Zimmerman was tried, and found by a jury, to be not-guilty. Not by the usual 12 people - but, still, he was found, not-guilty.
A lot of people didn't like the decision, and a lot did - but there WAS a decision.
And, there is NO Liberal media in America - silly, or serious.
You are repeating stupid talking points.
The only time any of the news elements of our MSM's may be considered "Liberal," is MSNBC from 4pm until 11pm weekday's - and on weekend mornings, from 8am until the afternoon.
The rest of the time, you silly git, MSNBC has a staunch Conservative on every weekday morning, to help the DC MSM Villagers un-learn anything, if the even watched it, the new network had presented the evening before.
And the rest of the time, it's pretty typical of our DC MSM Villagers 'he-said/she-said,' 'both sides do it,' meme's and talking points.
You are repeatedly wrong in your comments, so please don't comment here again until you have your facts straight.
So, I guess this is, "Goodbye."
Toodles!
Twit.
Er, a jury correctly agreed it was not a crime.
The locals had it right, the first time.
The did what local authorities do every day.
They investigate shootings and decide to prosecute some as crimes and not to prosecute others, depending on their assessment of the facts and the law.
But then endless, bullshit liberal race-baiting outrage wasted a whole lot of taxpayer money and, by no means incidentally, inflamed racial hatred of whites and shooed American blacks more compactly into the Democratic fold.
Mission accomplished.
Sort of like the orgy of "war on women" propaganda they went on, a year ago in the summertime contraception wars.
Well said, Philo, and I hope you're paying attention Victor!
There never would have been a trial but for the faux outrage whipped up by the 'usual suspects' which was swallowed wholesale by the usual and rather dim suckers.
Next time, Victor, and there will definitely be a next time, do try to engage the brain before putting the mouth (or keyboard) into action, there's a good chap!
I suspect that the comments that Martin got what was coming to him for looking 'like a thug' and 'being scary' drove a lot of minorities out of the GOP, rather than anything we said. So, thanks.
Regardless these fools pleabian attempts at obfuscation, the answer your question, Steve, is a white dog pulled the trigger. That's the difference. It's not a black on white crime it's a white on white crime, redardless that his compatriots were black. The white dog pulled the trigger, by his own admission, not the corporate media' supposition.
No fear.
duff,
And this goes for you too, Philo,
It was NOT FAUX outrage!
Perhaps if you were members of a minority - being idiots, is now part of the majority, so that doesn't count - perhaps you'd understand.
Reread what Steve wrote.
Here's the money quote:
"... states with stand-your-ground laws, the shooting of a black person by a white person is found justifiable 17 percent of the time, while the shooting of a white person by a black person is deemed justifiable just over 1 percent of the time...".
Let that rattle around for awhile in your empty craniums.
You two weary me.
I'm ignoring the two of you feckin' eedjits from now on - because you can't cure stupid, and you can't make people empathise, who don't already have a heart.
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