I’m going to unload one more downer post here, and then I promise that I’m going to respect the spirit of Memorial Day (rather than Meme-orial Day) by focusing on the positive. Because the men and women who have given their lives in the service of this country didn’t do so that we could sit around on our glum asses saying woe is me, and those who have been or are now off abroad spending their time away from their loved ones so that we can safely enjoy our time with ours, and their loved ones who have been or are apart from them now did not and are not sacrificing so that we can stew in pessimism and in bitterness.
Tomorrow, everyone who wishes gets their chance to take their best shot at declaiming what their freedom means to them, either in posts or in comments. Please make it an apt dedication, and representative of the best that we have to offer, in spirit, if not in composition. If you haven’t got posting privileges, and you wish to post here, please email me, and I will post it for you. I hope that some who have graced this site in the past, such as ahem and Karl and Darlene, McGehee and cranky-d, Melissa, BRD and everyone else, will have something to say, because, insofar as we can make it so, tomorrow will see this site a shrine–and that doesn’t exclude humor, so long as it is accompanied by the grace that I, for example, often jettison in the midst of heated rhetoric.
I want for the moment, though, to take you to an article on the Christian-Newsom murders that is mentioned by and mentions Glenn Reynolds, to examine its epistemology for the sake of Orwellians such as Andrew Sullivan, who will not find it compelling enough to treat. Here is Glenn’s run-down:
THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL OFFERS FACTS VS. FICTION in the Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom murders. Excerpt:
# Fiction: Christian was held captive four days.
# Fact: Christian was dead within 24 hours of the kidnapping.# Fiction: Christian’s breasts were cut off and Newsom’s penis severed.
# Fact: Neither Christian nor Newsom was mutilated, although both suffered tearing injuries from being repeatedly raped.# Fiction: Christian was dismembered and placed in five separate trash bags.
# Fact: Christian’s intact body was wrapped in trash bags and dumped in a large garbage can.# Fiction: Acid was poured down Christian’s throat.
# Fact: A cleaning solution was poured in Christian’s mouth in an apparent attempt to wash away DNA evidence.# Fiction: The slaying suspects allegedly targeted white people.
# Fact: The slaying suspects have told authorities they targeted Christian’s Toyota 4Runner.The truth seems bad enough.
Out off this, though I could make more observations, I’ll limit myself to two. 1) In fact, I believe, bleach is a very powerful base. 2) As far as I know, the 4Runner shows no signs of vaginal or anal tearing from the ordeal.
UPDATE: Orwell Boy says that Bush is an al-Qaeda enabler, which is exactly what al-Qaeda want him to say
Oh, that slippery slope from opposing gay marriage to involving us in an unwinnable quagmire that plays into the designs of Islamofascists.
Here’s the headline:
Murder victims lost in the furor
Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom’s slayings have become the subject of racial tension, falsehoods
In the blogosphere, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom are an indictment of mainstream media.
On the Internet, they are a Wikipedia entry. Among white separatists, they are a tool. Within a racially divided America, they are a cause.That they are murder victims in a horrific Knoxville crime has gotten lost in all that noise.
Here is the mainstream media denouncing the internet, again, which sometimes choses to profile stories that the mainstream media, in its wisdom, has decided aren’t worthy of large-scale promotion. Though surely this story is of greater social significance than, say, Lindsay Lohan’s DUI cum drug bust, right? Is there a de facto racial component? Yes. But what the media fails to recognize is that its consumers are well aware of the difference in its treatment of this story, based on the fact that the murders are black-on-white. That is to say, it is a cause celebre precisely because of the fact that other crimes of this description, were the racial tags reversed, would be treated as hate crimes. Imagine the difference in degree of treatment of Tawana Brawley on false charges, compared with the utter vicious murderousness presented here. Where are those leaders of the black civil rights community? Are these not human beings? If you rape them, do they not tear? If you pour bleach down their throats, do they not burn?
Both repeatedly were raped, according to authorities. Within a few hours, Newsom was shot, his body wrapped in bedding, set afire and dumped alongside nearby railroad tracks.
Christian remained alive for several more hours. She was raped and strangled, and her body was discarded in a trashcan, according to investigators.
All five suspects, including the four accused in the slayings, have given statements about the killings, most implicating each other. Authorities have amassed a mound of evidence, from fingerprints to DNA.
They have unearthed nothing to suggest Christian and Newsom were targeted because of their race, according to law enforcers.
“There’s nothing whatsoever that indicates any hate crime,” said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols. “There are things that really, coincidentally, would prove just the opposite.”
Targeted for what? For theft, grand auto? For abduction? For rape? For murder? What things are those, Mr. District Attorney? And how could they possibly “prove” a crime with depends on the determination of an imputed state of mind?
Mind you, I am not arguing, and I am sure Jeff would not argue, that this ought to be treated as a “hate crime,” because both of us believe that such penalty enhancers are merely a tendentious weapon of the PC police insofar as all crimes of this type should be regarded as hate crimes. The District Attorney’s position seems to suggest that things just got a little out of hand. But I ask you to compare the coverage, as many have done, with what was imputed to the Duke Lacrosse Team in the wake of another false accusation fiasco. I suppose it is fortunate for these people that they’re not middle-class jocks, eh?
The story then cites White Supremacist organizations that, predictably, have tried to make hay of the episode.
The case has tapped into themes of racial tension and media liberalism, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds noted.
Reynolds operates http://www.instapundit.com, one of the country’s most popular blogs.
“You’ve got three things going on here,” he said. “First, not that much information has come out, which always fuels speculation. Second, you’ve got plenty of public places for people to speculate. Third, you do have some people who are trying to milk it politically, and you have suspicion of the media.”
Okay, nothing disagreeable about anything that Glenn says. But once again, look at the contrast with Nifong (not that there’s anything wrong with that), if you want some suggestion of why people might be hypersensitized to the difference in treatment.
Reynolds said those who complain that the national media would have reported on the case sooner had the victims been black and the assailants white could be right.
“I think it would have gotten a lot of national play faster if it had been a black couple kidnapped and killed by five white people,” he said.
That’s because the national media has a “template” for covering white-on-black crime but not the reverse, he said.
But Steele said he doesn’t think it’s that simple, citing a mix of factors that fuel media coverage.
“The uniqueness of the crime, the brutality of the crime, what the police and prosecutors say or don’t say can significantly drive what’s being published,” he said.
Well, uniqueness: Doesn’t it rather indict blacks to say that it’s not unique enough? Brutality: It appears that this story has that in abundance. As far as the last component goes–that seems to me at the heart of the controversy, insofar as people perceive that that is ideologically motivated.
“Why is this (case) worthy of national news coverage?” Stephens asked. “Unfortunately, this probably happens in major metropolitan areas every month.”
The Rev. Ezra Maize, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the case has been hijacked by agenda-driven outsiders with no regard for the survivors of the slain couple.
“The NAACP wants equality and justice for everybody,” he said. “If these families reached out (for help, support or advocacy), we would be just as eager, just as demanding to see that equality reigns. It’s about equality and justice for everybody. We stand behind the Christian and Newsom families 100 percent.”
Does it, Mr. Stephens? There is an actual hijacking involved in this case: very poor, very poor choice of words. The difference, Rev. Maize, is that YOU would have reached out had the situation been reversed. And Jesse Jackson. And Al Sharpton.
“I haven’t seen any evidence to indicate this is a hate crime, and I interviewed two of these suspects,” Jones said. “I don’t believe if they’d been Mexican, Chinese or Japanese it would have mattered. I believe these people were evil. I believe it was a plan.
“These two kids just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the sheriff said. “The only worry I have is to be able to secure a fair and capable jury in Knox County.”
For veteran civil-rights leader and local minister Dr. Harold Middlebrook, the race-baiting dialogue is sad proof that although strides in race relations have been made, America remains a country divided.
“People have not yet learned to live together as fellow human beings,” Middlebrook said. “I really hope in my lifetime to see the day when people will really look at trying to build a community where people can love and share in brotherhood.” [Emphasis mine]
First, if the accusation of a hate crime is not an accusation of some kind of special evil in the design of a perpetrator, then what is it? Or is evil now some category apart from incorrectness that oughtn’t be treated as quite as dire in degree? And if this DA is so concerned about empanelling an unbiased jury in Knox County, then why in the world is he stating outright that he believes it was part of a plan?
Finally, the only sense that I can make of Dr. Middlebrook’s pronouncement is that unfortunately, despite all the struggles of the black Civil Rights movement, there are blacks who cannot regard whites as humans, just as is true reciprocally. Your thoughts?
Unless they’re lacrosse players at Duke, in which case local NAACP officials declare their guilt immediately, and continue to do so after the charges are all dropped and the accused declared innocent.
Because anyone that pack of animals caught would have been raped, tortured, and murdered.
What would the opposite of a hate crime be? And what would indicate such a thing?
At least there wasn’t any ham left about. That would be just awful.
This confuses my head. If Channon and Christoper are “murder victims lost in the furor,” what are “hate crime” victims for whom the laws are not prosecuted based on the harm done to them as individuals but as representatives of a protected class?
Without commenting on the particulars of the Newsome case, I’ve been wodering if the term “hate-crime” doesn’t really mean race-crime in New-Speak.
Instead, the racial aspect gets couched In post-modern double-talk. “Hate,” not “race.” Huh?
This begs the question, why the evasion? Why not just call a spade a spade?
If we name our social issues properly, don’t we stand a better chance of solving them? You know, like we’d name a myofibril infarctions.
Duh?
If you call it a “race crime” aren’t you kind of suggesting that, all-in-all, it woulda been better if they had raped and murdered someone of their own race?
You so did that on purpose.
We all know what is going on here. Only white heterosexual males can commit “hate crimes,” which are actually race and/or sexual orientation crimes. The Other, be they non-white or non-straight, are incapable of such things. I’m not sure if it is a direct result of their protected/victim status, or some inherent knowledge they somehow posess as a protected/victim class. The Other are apparently incapable of the kind of thinking which brings on the accusation of a hate crime.
I have been against the hate crime legislation from the beginning. A crime is a crime and that’s that. There is no need to dress up “special” crimes, which are a direct and completely predictable result of victim politics.
If Christian and Newsome were black, and their attackers white, would anyone be doubting that they were targeted for their skin color?
This is a commentary on the assumption that whites attacking blacks is automatically a ‘hate crime’, rather than an attempt to read motive into the Christian/Newsome attackers’ actions. I don’t know why they did what they did, and I don’t care – whatever their motivations, they should be put to death like any vicious animal that can’t control itself. Preferably a slow painful death, but we know that won’t happen.
I’m waiting for the story to break that one or more of the attackers had a vicious criminal record, or was let out of jail before they should have been for some crime or another, or was wanted on other charges. It’s not like a group of twenty-somethings just decide to do something like this out of the blue. Or is it?
I don’t know, Alice. Maybe Dr. Helen’s movie Six, which I’ve yet to see, because I’m a schmuck could give you some insight.
Face it, folks, the Duke case was a man-bites-dog story insofar as white men virtually never rape black women (Samhita and Amanda hyperventilation notwithstanding). Black men rape white women on a regular basis, so Mr. Stephens is essentially correct…along with the disproportionate black-on-white murder rate, the Knoxville case is dog-bites-man.
Andrew’s a real piece of work, then again he seems to have gone the way of Liebman, (the
pro-Taiwan organizer)White (the Falwell biographer) and of course, David Brock, the
reverse Whittaker Chambers. His ignorance of
how long his countrymen spent in the North
West Frontier in the 19th and 20th century;
the retreat from Kabul, Maiwand,(featured in
Holmes’s “A study in scarlet, and inferred in
Kipling’s poetry & prose, the Black Mountain expedition, the Tirah expedition, the 3rd Afghan war, the unsuccessful 25 year search for the Fakir
of Waziristan. Not to mention, the fact, we’re only half as long as the first Mesopotamian incursion, whose denoument complete with the “Out
of Mesopotamia” placards, and the Ilkwan proto
Al Queda incursions into the south of the country;
he is driving us toward
If races had been reversed, the certified malicious liar Al Charpton would have been dumping gasoline on this ASAP; certified adulterer Jesse Jackson would have been chanting something, somewhere to gain cash somehow. I am sorry, but the media would have been all over this if the races had been reversed and maybe portions of Knoxville set in flames, if only because the police did not nail the white bastards soon enough…
And Duke is just the perfect example of why they only lynch white boys today.
If white liberals had not destroyed the black family, the black-on-black murder rate would be nil today. It is white liberals who plotted to destroy blacks in the least detectable manner: either by blacks killing blacks with guns, or with uterine evacuators.
I see Andy is so succumbed by the vapors, he can’t get his facts straight. Anbar is a safe haven for al Quaeda? It’d be news for them.
Thats not what the FBI <a hre=”http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2005/table5.htm”>thinks</a>.
“White” includes hispanics in breakdowns of race that are based on Census categories, shine. So that 22% of Anti-White “hate crimes” that were committed by Whites makes a little more sense than maybe it would at first glance.
Actually it looks like they are including blacks who identify as hispanic in the Hispanic category as well.
Bottomline is that you can’t really answer your question from the information given, from what I can tell.
Almost everyone here knew what I meant. I’ll bet you did, too. If you makes you happier, only white males of European extraction can commit hate crimes.
In any case, you removed it from the context of the argument. That gets really effing tiring.
And yet the FBI thinks that 933 black offenders committed bias motivated crimes in 2005. But they might not have access to your statistics.
# Fiction: Christian was held captive four days.
# Fact: Christian was dead within 24 hours of the kidnapping.
Well, that’s a relief. Now we can just plead this thing down to a misdemeanor and get back to the important things like The View and global warming.
*Yawn*
The data does show that blacks are much more likely than whites to get all hateful on the gays. The FBI’s stats show that that kind of thing made up 24% of black-committed hate crimes, vs. 14% for whites. Extrapolating out on a per capita basis, you’ll see that Blacks very much over-index for this type of hate crime. Which makes it kind of ironic when they anally rape straight white guys, but irony is not a crime. Yet.
Nitpicking free of charge for the blogs I like: bleach is an oxidant – neither acid nor base. It is pretty mild as oxidants go, but strong enough to cause serious burns – especially to soft tissue.
In my experience racism (and the associate sense of superiority and dehumanization of the Other) is pretty much universal. Examples abound in history too.
oxidizer, in fact
I mean, its like almost 20-some percent of the crimes where we know the offender’s race. you said you’ve been following the issue, have you been ignoring 20% of the crimes?
For the record, I found my data regarding race and rape/sexual assault in the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2005 (Table 42). The long and short of it is that there are roughly 100 rapes/sexual assaults by black perps on white victims…per day. The converse, white rape/sexual assault of a black victim occurred fewer than ten times…for the entire year.
I’d almost prefer this was treated as a hate crime. As someone said on (I think) this blog already; once every crime is treated as a hate crime, it all just kinda’ evens out. Excepting whites from Victim status is what makes the hate crimes laws so awful. I’m all for stricker penalties. (This doesn’t solve the problem of prosecuting someone for thought… which is why I said “almost prefer.”)
And the media so dutifully associates us with the racial supremecists because we share the common sin of questioning their choice of what sorties to cover. Real nice move. Assholes.
I did laugh when the story criticized people for finding racial tension where there was none, and then moved on to statements from NAACP reps.
the only good nigger is a dead nigger.