Double standard
In the same week national media was giving wide exposure to the penalty phase of a racist, white South Carolina man’s trial for killing Bible study attendees in a Charleston church in 2015, the same media was falling all over itself to excuse or explain away the recent kidnapping and torture by four black teens of a mentally challenged young white man in Chicago.
CNN panelist Don Lemon said the act wasn’t “evil” but simply young people acting out because of “bad home training.”
Another CNN panelist, Symone Sanders, a former spokeswoman for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the incident clearly wasn’t a hate crime and blamed the incident on President-elect Donald Trump, whose pronouncements brought “out the worst of the worst in people.”
Meanwhile, Washington Post writer Callum Borchers, in a blog column, said one of the worst aspects of the attack is that it gives credence to a “pro-Trump narrative” that whites face rampant discrimination in America.
Black justice writer Shaun King said he didn’t need to speak out on the event “because nobody in this country is held more responsible for the crimes they commit, and even the crimes they don’t commit, than black folk in America.”
Curiously, an NBC News correspondent wondered aloud on MSNBC why the four suspects “made so many errors” and broadcast their crime on Facebook Live “if they were truly trying to be criminal.” He also opined that “kids can make some really poor decisions from time to time.”
Poor decisions? Kidnapping and torture? Of a mentally challenged young man?
The perpetrators, while kicking the tied-up victim, said “F- Donald Trump, n–” and “F- white people.” They also made him drink toilet water.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest wasn’t sure about the incident’s brutality, either. He said last week it was “too early to tell” if it was a hate crime, but he allowed that the perpetrators “do demonstrate a level of depravity.”
The suspects, three of whom are 18 and one 24, were charged eventually with a hate crime along with committing a slew of other offenses.
Not numbers people
The Obama administration is trying to put a happy face on national and world events it touched before it exits the stage this month, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest tried a little too hard.
Early last week, he told reporters the administration had created 900,000 manufacturing jobs. Two days later, Fox News’ Kevin Corke called him on it, saying “we were doing some number crunching, and [your number] seems to be a little bit higher than that which we have come up with,” which he said was around 807,000 or about 100,000 different from what Earnest said.
Earnest made the excuse that he didn’t have the numbers in front of him and was “working off of memory” when he overshot “the mark a little bit.”
In truth, he overshot the mark by quite a lot. Since Obama took office in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States actually has lost an aggregate 301,000 manufacturing jobs.
Depends on the speaker
“Make America Great Again” has been President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign theme since he declared his candidacy for the office more than 18 months ago.
But two months after his Electoral College landslide win, NPR’s Michele Norris is still beating the drum that says within the phrase is a threat to people of color because it talks about “white prosperity.”
“Because you’re talking about going back to a time that was not very comfortable for people of color,” the former ABC news reporter said last week. “They did not have opportunities, they were relegated to the back of the line.”
However, she may not know or may have conveniently forgotten that former President Bill Clinton used the phrase not only in his 1992 campaign but also repeatedly in his wife Hillary’s ill-fated attempt to get the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.
“It’s time for another comeback,” he often told crowds that year. “Time to make America great again.”
This year, some found the phrase to be racist.
Horsing around
A planned high school in the horse country of Lexington, Ky., has lost its horse-themed mascot even before its building was completed.
Planners for Frederick Douglass High School, named after the late male civil rights leader, had decided to use the mascot of a stallion, but a local citizen, Diane Cahill, didn’t like the mascot’s male symbolism.
The Fayette County schools superintendent, who caved on the issue of the mascot, said “stallions” had never referred to male sexual prowess but to the local Madden family, which bred 14 champion race horses. Indeed, he said one of the famed stallions had been buried on the property where the school was being built.
Cahill drew up a petition in the hopes of getting 500 signatures in order to change the mascot. However, she got fewer than half of the amount she wanted – a few calling the name “sexist” – but still achieved her political victory.
She said she wanted something more “gender neutral” and indicative of Douglass’ “brilliant mind, successful career and vision for equality,” and to tell all students “they are respected and valued.”
The Douglass Mindful Participation Trophy Winners, anyone?