Tag Archives: Race and racial bias

Apr 13 2015

Sharpton Calls for “National Policing”


SHARPTON

Posted By Roger Aronoff On April 9, 2015 @ 10:13 am

Al Sharpton, President Obama’s “go-to man on race” as described [1] by Politico last year, is at it again. After riling up the nation over false narratives about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, Sharpton has found a case he can get behind where there appears to be little doubt this time that a white policeman, Michael Slager, brutally and unnecessarily shot to death an unarmed black man in South Carolina.

But in our justice system, even that cop deserves his day in court. After all, we were reminded of that right when on Wednesday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on 30 counts for his role in the Islamic terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon that resulted in four deaths.

Within hours of the release of the cell phone video of Walter Scott being shot dead in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sharpton announced [2] that “It’s time for this country to have national policing,” adding “We can’t go from state to state, we’ve got to have national law to protect people against these continued questions.” Never mind that the cop in question was quickly charged with murder, fired from his job, and is being held in jail without bail. Once again, it appears that Sharpton draws the wrong lessons from such tragedies. No peace, no justice? Or is this what justice should look like? Sharpton announced yesterday that his organization, National Action Network, would stand with Scott’s family.

Jack Cashill, an outstanding journalist, recalls [3] in his latest article just how those false narratives, including the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, take hold. Cashill cites the case of Rolling Stone’s false, and now retracted, story of a gang-rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house. He makes the point that “all right thinking people were of one mind…on the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, a collective misreporting far more consequential than that of the Rolling Stone rape story.”

The mainstream media often treat MSNBC’s Sharpton like royalty, promoting his left-wing agendas while carefully avoiding mention of his conflicts of interest and continuing corruption. The Washington Post recently published a piece that serves as an ideal example of such biased coverage.

The piece, “Sharpton to lead advocacy campaign in advance of 2016 election [4],” written by Wesley Lowery, acts as a press release for Sharpton’s National Action Network’s radical civil rights agenda. Lowery described this agenda as promoting Loretta Lynch’s nomination to replace Eric Holder as attorney general, and “opposing state-level religious objections bills, seen as discriminatory against gays and lesbians, and pressing Congress to advance reforms of the criminal justice system.”

Accuracy in Media has extensively outlined how the mainstream media have worked first to stoke racial tension in places like Ferguson, Missouri and then called for criminal justice reform throughout the country, with Sharpton as one of the more vocal media mouthpieces [5].

“Although he is a lightning rod despised by many police groups, especially the New York Police Department, Sharpton is vowing to take a more considerate line,” reported Lowery.

“We demonstrate that we are serious when we say, ‘Let’s take the name-calling down,’ and when we’re willing to hear from everybody as long as they are serious in substance,” said Sharpton, according to Lowery. “We don’t need a season more of screaming. We need some real policy.”

Sharpton has a show, “PoliticsNation,” on MSNBC on weeknights. According to accusations [6] in a $20 billion racial discrimination lawsuit, and public comments by Byron Allen, a black TV executive, Sharpton has his show on MSNBC “Because he endorsed Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.” Could that have been a factor in NBC getting the first interview [7] with the gentleman who took the video of the shooting in North Charleston?

Sharpton’s MSNBC show wasn’t even mentioned by Lowery. Neither was his failure to pay back taxes [8], nor allegations of pay for play [9], nor that Sharpton was found liable for defamation [10] in the Tawana Brawley case. And with Sharpton’s latest call for “national policing,” once again, Sharpton isn’t getting the media scrutiny he deserves.

Article printed from Accuracy In Media: http://www.aim.org

URL to article: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/sharpton-calls-for-national-policing/

URLs in this post:

[1] described: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/al-sharpton-obama-race-110249.html#.VSYm8fnF8eO

[2] announced: http://observer.com/2015/04/al-sharpton-calls-for-fedeal-police-laws-after-south-carolina-killing/

[3] recalls: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/what_columbia_missed_in_its_review_of_emrolling_stoneem.html

[4] Sharpton to lead advocacy campaign in advance of 2016 election: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/04/07/ba2ab96a-dd56-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html

[5] one of the more vocal media mouthpieces: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/msnbcs-conflict-of-interest-al-sharpton/

[6] accusations: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/03/black_media_exec_exposes_the_deal_that_got_sharpton_his_show_on_msnbc.html

[7] NBC getting the first interview: http://www.thewrap.com/lester-holt-lands-first-interview-with-man-who-taped-south-carolina-police-killing-video/

[8] failure to pay back taxes: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/30/exclusive-al-sharpton-and-newt-gingrich-owe-the-irs-a-lot-of-money.html

[9] pay for play: http://nypost.com/2015/01/04/how-sharpton-gets-paid-to-not-cry-racism-at-corporations/

[10] found liable for defamation: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/14/nyregion/the-brawley-ruling-the-overview-sharpton-liable-for-defamation-in-brawley-case.html

Apr 12 2015

Lucifer, Salesman of the Year


We can end the day with some Humor — we need it since Hillary Howled out her Hobble for the white House today.

Austin's avatarThe Return of the Modern Philosopher

Porch writer“Isn’t this the most gorgeous day we’ve had all year?” I asked The Devil as I put my feet up on the front porch railing and sipped my Snapple.

It was a glorious Spring Sunday, and I didn’t need Lucifer to confirm that today was the best day 2015 had offered thus far.  The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid sixties, and the snow was almost all gone.

“I’m going to miss the frigid weather, though,” Satan replied as he tentatively put his feet, in their expensive Italian loafers, up on the porch railing.

“Is this some sort of Hell is hot, and Maine in Winter is the exact opposite, so I love the juxtaposition kind of logic?” I asked incredulously as I passed my porch guest a Snapple from the cooler that sat between our chairs.

“Not at all.  This Winter turned out to be quite…

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Apr 12 2015

That Didn’t Take Long – NY Mayor De Blasio Doesn’t Endorse Hillary Clinton – Immediate Threats Toward Him From Team Hillary…


Hail to the Queen

Apr 12 2015

Jeanine Pirro discusses threats to the power grid with Tony Shaffer and Frank Gaffney


Apr 12 2015

BREAKING: Walter Scott Vehicle Passenger Identified: Pierre Fulton (30)


With this information it is getting to look more like all the other one that have happened over the years but not what the left will want!

Apr 12 2015

*Update* Game Changer OR Paradigm Shift ? – Walter Scott Shooting: Enhanced Video Shows Officer Slager With Taser Darts…


Things are never what they seem …

Apr 12 2015

Misreading Alinsky


Posted By Andrew C. McCarthy On April 10, 2015 @ 5:27 pm

Since the year before his disciple, Barack Obama, was elected president, many of us have been raising alarms about how Saul Alinsky’s brass-knuckles tactics have been mainstreamed by Democrats. It was thus refreshing to find an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, by Pete Peterson of Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, expressly calling out a top House Democrat for resorting to the seminal community organizer’s extortion playbook.

But in the end, alas, Mr. Peterson gets Alinsky wrong.

He does a fine job of exposing the hardball played by Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. Grijalva attempted to intimidate scientists and professors who fail to toe the alarmist line on “climate change” by sending letters to presidents of their universities. He wrote the letters on congressional letterhead and purported to impose a March 16 due date for a response – creating the coercive misimpression that the letters were enforceable demands for information, made by a government official in a position to punish noncompliance. The missives sought information about the scientists and academics (among them, the excellent Steve Hayward of Pepperdine and Power Line), including whether they accepted funding from oil companies. Peterson adds that the letters were followed up by officious calls from Grijalva’s staff. The abuse of power is blatant and reprehensible.

Peterson is quite right that Grijalva’s “targeting [of] institutions and their leaders is pure Alinsky; and so are the scare tactics.” He goes astray, however, in contending that this leftist lawmaker’s adoption of Alinsky’s tactics “may not fit with Alinsky’s philosophy.”

In essence, Peterson contends that Alinsky’s systematizing of extortionate tactics can be divorced from any particular ideological agenda. He urges, as did Alinsky himself in Rules for Radicals, that the latter’s system was devised for the “Have-Nots,” advising them how to take power away from the “Haves.” Therefore, Peterson reasons, “an existential crisis for [Alinsky’s] vision” arises once the Have-Nots acquire power: i.e., the system is somehow undermined by its own success because the Have-Nots are not Have-Nots anymore.

This overlooks a crucial detail. There is a reason why Alinsky’s self-help manual is called Rules for Radicals, not Rules for Have-Nots.

Alinsky was a radical leftist. Of course, he struck the pose of one who eschewed faithful adherence to a particular doctrine; but that is a key part of the strategy. To be successful – meaning, to advance the radical agenda – a community organizer needs public support. Thus he must masquerade as a “pragmatist” rather than reveal himself as a socialist or a communist. The idea is for the organizer to portray himself as part of the bourgeois society he despises, to coopt its language and mores in order to bring about radical transformation from within.

But it is not as if Alinsky organizers are indifferent to the kind of change a society goes through as long as it is change of some kind. Alinsky was a man of the hard left, a social justice activist who sought massive redistribution of wealth and power. Peterson acknowledges this in a fleeting mention of Alinsky’s “professed hatred of capitalism.” Noteworthy, moreover, is Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals critique of such seventies revolutionaries as the Weathermen: his contempt stemmed not from disagreement with their goals but from the fact that their terrorist methods enraged the public, making those goals harder to achieve. When a book begins, as Rules for Radicals does, by saluting Lucifer as “the very first radical,” it is fairly clear that the author has taken sides.

It is true, as Peterson observes, that some non-leftists have recommended that some Alinsky tactics could be used to advance some non-leftist causes. But that does mean this is how Alinsky himself would ever have used them. Furthermore, even if a conservative might opportunistically exploit an Alinsky tactic here or there, one who by nature seeks to conserve the American constitutional system would never wholly (or even very partially) adopt the Alinsky plan, which seeks to destroy that system.

Community organizing is not designed for any random Have Nots to use against any random Haves. It is for the Left’s Have Nots to use against proponents of individual liberty, economic liberty, private property, and the governmental system created to protect them. To be sure, the election of an Alinskyite to the presidency is, as Peterson describes it, a climactic event. But that does not mean Alinskyites perceive it as an “existential crisis.” To the contrary, they perceive it as an opportunity to achieve total victory over the former Haves. That is why Democrats have no compunction about using their awesome government power in the same way – except to greater effect – that a community organizer uses “direct action” (i.e., extortion).

Peterson confounds ends and means. Alinsky was not trying to improve the lot of the Have Nots. He was trying to rally the Have Nots to his side because doing so was necessary to achieve his goal of supplanting the American system. Alinsky was not planning to switch sides if his program succeeded in turning America’s Haves into Have Nots. Alinsky’s program is about acquiring power in order to use it for purposes of imposing a leftist vision.

Mr. Peterson is absolutely correct to see the political success of Alinskyites, and their accompanying grip on government, as a huge problem. But that hardly means the Alinskyites themselves see it as a problem, theoretical or otherwise. They see it as a coup. Rules for Radicals is not a strategy for giving Have Nots an even playing field; it is a strategy for giving the radical left the power needed to win.

Apr 12 2015

Judge Jeanine Savages Hillary For Laughing About Her Rapist Client


” On the eve of Hillary’s announcement that she is running for president, Judge Jeanine reminds us all just how vile her character really is, playing a tape of Hillary laughing about getting her client only 2 months incarceration for the brutal rape of a 6th-grader.”

Apr 9 2015

The Burdens of Thought Policing


From gay weddings to Iran’s muscle-flexing, PC enforcers have a big job.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Photo via NRO

It is not easy being a contemporary thought policeman.

No sooner had the radical gay Left demonized the owners of an Indiana pizza parlor, which does not cater weddings, for suggesting that in theory they might not wish to cater a gay wedding than all sorts of stories surfaced saying that lots of Muslim eateries professed that they too would not cater gay weddings. What can the thought bullies do if one victim should victimize another?

Money complicates thought policing as well. The CEO of Apple is outraged at the thought crimes of Indiana pizza-parlor owners who offer his trillion-dollar company no chance of lucre — but he is not outraged at the concretely homophobic culture of the Middle East or the religious intolerance of China, which are hooked on i-products. Are theoretical sins worse than actual ones?

We are back in spirit to the scripted outrage of a few years ago at Mormons in California for supposedly voting down gay marriage on a ballot proposition — until exit polls suggested that the state’s black voters had proved as much opposed to gay marriage as the so-called Religious Right. Figuring out who is and who is not an enemy of the people, and so subject to banishment to the PC gulag, is as difficult as it was for the Stalinists in the 1930s to hound out the last Russian counterrevolutionaries.

In the George Zimmerman case, we have to give the thought police of the New York Times and NBC News some credit for matching the untiring zealousness of Inspector Javert. The Timesinvented a new rubric, “white Hispanic,” to preempt any competing Zimmerman claim on ethnic victimhood. NBC doctored a 911 tape to make Zimmerman sound like a foul racist. Other news outlets tried to Photoshop away police images that had shown a bleeding Zimmerman after the fight; in contrast, Trayvon Martin, who by the time of the confrontation was a tall teenager, was often seen in photos as a cuddly preteen in his football uniform. But finally even the thought police could not stop a supposedly poor, honest woman of color who was a witness for the defense, Rachel Jeantel, from testifying as an unapologetic racist (“creepy-ass white cracker”) and homophobe who seemed to confirm the defense’s argument that Martin started the fight (“whoop ass”).

In the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo., a nearly-300-pound thug — who had just strong-armed a liquor store, walked down the middle of the road under the influence, and rushed and attacked a policeman — had to be transmogrified by the thought police into a “gentle giant.” When Big Brother got through with Brown, he had been gunned down in cold blood by a racist cop after pleading for his life with a final “hands up, don’t shoot.” The makeover almost worked — if it were not for a few honest eyewitnesses and the laws of ballistics and criminal forensics. Note one constant “true lies” theme of thought policing, whether in Ferguson or in the recent Rolling Stone rape-allegations caper: When exposed, falsifiers never apologize to their real victims, whether the smeared Officer Darren Wilson or the University of Virginia fraternity members. Instead, we are subjected to ends-justifying-the means throat clearing and worries that the lies may prevent discussion of real racism or actual rapes — as if the untruth at least served some social good by raising our awareness.

To believe the media’s acceptance of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail yarns, we would have to engage in mental gymnastics that would make Rose Mary Woods’s physical contortions during Watergate seem a trifle in comparison. Hillary sort of had four mobile devices, but also sort of had only one. Everyone knows you need two separate smartphones to have two separate e-mail accounts, and thus she had only one of each. She protected her server from hackers by having bodyguards on the premises — but not from her more dangerous alter ego, who deleted thousands of e-mails and crashed her server. She wanted a private account to e-mail her husband – and, as proof, Bill Clinton said he had written only two e-mails in his entire life. She swears that she knew which e-mails were private and which were public, and so understandably destroyed the former to prove just that to the American people. What Hillary Clinton did was not at all unusual, although no other high-ranking administration official communicated only through a private e-mail account and server. Listening to her gibberish was like an exasperated Dorothy watching the stammering Oz as the tiny man behind the curtain frantically twisted dials and pulled levers to let out steam and project a defiant, though empty, talking head.

The Obama administration has prompted a new use for the old adverb “unexpectedly,” which has been repeatedly used by the media to characterize dismal current statistics on economic growth and employment. “Unexpectedly” now means that massaged federal statistics and media spin are still not enough to hide the fact that something that inevitably should have happened actually has happened. Jaw-boning down business, hiking taxes, creating the Obamacare mess, expanding entitlements and regulations, running up $1 trillion deficits on the way to an $18 trillion national debt — all that and more “unexpectedly” led to more dismal economic news on flat employment and stagnant economic growth.

Do we remember how the thought police cited the unexpected Japanese tsunami, the unexpected Washington earthquake, the unexpected Arab Spring, unexpected online ticketing, unexpected ATM machines, an unexpected BP oil slick, unexpected Hurricane Irene, and unexpectedly soft Americans (cf. Barack Obama’s pronouncement: “The way I think about it is, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades”), which all unexpectedly combined to cause a sluggish economy?

The Iran nuclear deal poses the greatest challenge to thought policing — largely because of the simple fact that if the theocracy, as it professes, did not wish to enrich uranium to get a bomb, there would never have been any enriched uranium there in the first place, and therefore no need for talks with an already energy-rich Iran.

President Obama and his administration had in the past warned us that we must not do what they just did. Suddenly Iran can keep the subterranean Fordow enrichment site. The Arak plutonium facility is now apparently okay too. Thousands of centrifuges can keep spinning. Enriched uranium does not have to be sent to Russia for inspection. Sanctions can be lifted before full compliance. Ballistic-missile development is a separate issue.

John Kerry had done his best multicultural mimicry (“Inshallah!”) since “Jenjis” Khan to convince us that he fathoms the Middle East. Barack Obama, who speaks no foreign languages and confuses the Falklands with the Maldives, let loose his pseudo-authentic Tay-hrran to prove that he too has special expertise to decipher the Iranians — in the tired fashion of his faux-erudite Pock-kee-stahn, Chee-leh, and Ta-lih-ban. So why worry about Ee-rahn when it is a legitimate regional power naturally flexing its muscles a bit in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen?

The thought police have been busily at work. The Iranians will no doubt fear crossing Obama in the same way that Putin feared destroying reset, that Assad feared crossing the Obama red line on WMD use, and that the ISIS jayvees feared Obama. The only alternative to the Iran deal is supposedly a war ginned up by the neoconservatives — never tougher sanctions, embargoes, or blockades. Iran, unlike other nations in the Middle East, is supposedly a great and powerful country that deserves singular respect. The greater fear is that Republican extremists in the Senate could derail the sober and judicious diplomacy of foreign-policy pros like John Kerry.

Why fight them? Close your eyes like Winston Smith and accept that you kept your doctor, that your premiums and deductibles went down $2,500 a year as your coverage expanded, and that the health-care savings reduced the deficit. When you wake up in your pod with a snatched body, Bibi Netanyahu is a coward and chickens–t, and Hassan Rouhani a new American ally.

Apr 8 2015

GUN CONTROL WORKS