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11/25/14, "The New York Times and Other Members of the Ferguson Hall of Shame," Roger L. Simon, PJ Media
"That the photograph of Walter Duranty--the New York Times
Moscow correspondent who deliberately whitewashed Stalin’s 1930s forced
starvation of millions of Ukrainians and won the Pulitzer for it--still
is on the newspaper’s wall of fame with their other prize winners is
apparently no aberration. The New York Times has no moral center. In fact, it’s despicable. On November 24, they published the home address of Officer Darren Wilson.
By now most of America knows who Wilson is--the Ferguson, Missouri,
police officer exonerated for the murder of Michael Brown, the supposed
6′ 6″, three-hundred-pound “gentle giant” who was reportedly on his way
to college, but it turns out was holding up convenience stores and
trying to grab Wilson’s gun and bashing him in the face all while the
officer was sitting in his police car. We also all know the reaction of
some of the angrier members of the Ferguson community and those
omnipresent “outside agitator” dime-store anarchists to the grand jury
announcement — cars torched, minority businesses burned down, looting,
gunfire, freeways blocked, etc., etc. A lot of out-of-control mayhem
from L.A. to NY with racial hatred fanned at every turn. The NYT
apparently doesn’t give a shit (excuse the French, but it’s merited). In
the midst of all this, they print Wilson’s address. It was to them “all
the news that’s fit to print.” Who cares what might happen to the cop
and his family? He’s just a cop, after all, and a white one at that.
Definitely not a member of the elite — not bon type, bon genre. (Maybe someone should do a country song — “Two thousand miles from Zabar’s.”)
So much for that newspaper. They’re cancer.
Not quite cancer but pretty bad is Jay Nixon, the governor of
Missouri. Not only did he attempt to prejudge the case, calling for
Wilson’s head like some minor league Robespierre months before there was
any evidence, but then, on the night of the grand jury announcement,
after having brought in the National Guard, he goes completely AWOL and
doesn’t use the Guards at all, leaving the poor store owners of Ferguson
to fend for themselves, not to mention the police. Everyone got to
watch the results on TV.
Peter Kinder, the vice governor of Missouri, wants to know what
happened. Why no Guards, when they were all set to go? Did the word come
down from the White House or the Department of Justice to keep the
Guards out? Nixon didn’t answer, just accused Kinder of playing
politics. (At least he didn’t play the race card, but that would be
hard, white man to white man…. although it’s possible.)
So we don’t
know…yet.
And then there’s Brown’s stepfather who looks about five years older than Brown himself and exhorted the crowds to “Burn the bitch down.” Geraldo wants him indicted, which says a lot. To me he’s a minor player.
And finally there’s the Revered Al, a character straight out of the pages of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man.
A demagogue with the ear of the president and attorney general, he’s no
minor player.
No wonder he hasn’t been collared for the 4.5 million in
back taxes his various organizations are said to owe. O’Reilly thinks
he’s the most hated man in America right now and he may be right. He’s
certainly in competition with the KKK of old for outright race
incitement, although he hasn’t gone as far as lynching, unless you count
the Tawana Brawley case, which was pretty close to that....
When it comes to civil rights, more than most of them, I
have been there and done that. I was there in the sixties and I was, to
my shame, a financial supporter of the Black Panthers. I’m not
a young guy and I have seen a lot. And nothing I have seen, after all
this time, is sadder than Ferguson."
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