Who Can You Count on When the Chimps Are Down?

The New York Post has apologised to those offended by an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee.

The New York Post cartoon drew immediate criticism from Al Sharpton, the black activist and community leader. . . .

The country's first African-American president had the previous day signed the $787 billion economic recovery bill after a heated debate in Washington. Mr Sharpton immediately accused the newspaper, which takes a strong conservative editorial tone, of deploying a crude racist stereotype of blacks as monkeys.

Col Allan, the Post's editor-in-chief, had vigorously defended the cartoon as a parody of Washington politics, saying it "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy". ("New York Post apologises over 'racist' Barack Obama cartoon")

* * *

Needless to say, I’m sad to see the New York Post fall on its sword this way. Free speech has died a little more.

The NYP cartoonist clearly meant to skewer Congressional Democrats. Indeed, Republicans have criticized Obama for letting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have control of this bill instead of having more input himself.

You remember Nancy Pelosi, she’s America's Speaker of the House, and was last seen crouching on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, happily peeling a banana.

Then America’s new Attorney General, Eric Holder, just finished a speech insulting the whole country as a “nation of cowards” because we don’t talk about race more candidly.

Next to cleaning a handgun without unloading it first, I can’t think of a higher-risk activity in this country than talking about race without the express prior approval of the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

The problem is that the folks who most want to talk about race, (the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the Congressional Black Caucus), are the most reactionary when it comes to boycotting, calling for resignations and firings of people who make the stupid mistake of saying something about race. For example, this is how the NAACP is handling the chimp cartoon controversy, which isn't even about race:

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called on the tabloid to remove editor-in-chief Col Allan, as well as longtime cartoonist Sean Delonas.

Then we’re called cowards because we refuse to step on things clearly marked “LAND MINE.”

The reason these candid conversations fail is because they always follow this pattern:

African-American spokesperson: This country needs to have a serious conversation about race.

Non-African-American respondent: Okay. I feel I treat everybody fairly, and I don’t see why I should get passed over for a promotion to make way for a less-qualified guy just because he’s a minority.

African-American spokesperson: Shut up. You have no right to discuss what our people have gone through.

Race hucksters not only control the subject matter of race, but also claim control of any subject matter that can possibly be connected to race, even if only as an arbitrary emblem or symbol of race.

Hurrican Katrina, for example, was a hurricane, not a Klan attack. As many white people were killed, injured, and suffered property damage as blacks, (more whites died, proportionally). But once the story of New Orleans was adopted by Jesse Jackson and the rest as an example of racial injustice, then white Americans were no longer allowed to discuss Katrina without facing 100-1 odds of offending blacks. (Unless, that is, they used it as shorthand for the racism of the Bush administration. But candid talk about Katrina is forbidden).

Just Friday some state governors said they intended to refuse the “stimulus” money because they don’t want their states saddled with escalating entitlement bills after the federal money runs out. They were rational, economic/political decisions. But U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said he was insulted by opposition to the bill because it was a "a slap in the face of African-Americans."

There simply isn't any having a candid conversation under these conditions.

It’s perfectly obvious this New York Post cartoon isn’t about Obama. I don’t even believe that Sharpton and Julian Bond believe it’s about Obama. They just see an opportunity and they’re going to take it. Good race-hustling jobs are hard to come by in post-racial America.

But where were these guys when Leftist racists were drawing cartoons explicitly mocking Condoleeza Rice as a race stereotype, or Palestinian racists drawing her pregnant with a chimpanzee?

And didn’t Lincoln’s enemies call him a baboon and caricature him as a monkey? Doesn't Obama imagine himself to be the New Lincoln?

If Obama doesn’t unsay his AG’s foolish talk, then he’s the coward.

An Open Letter to Osama's Number 2 (With Apologies to Toilet-Training Toddlers Everywhere)

Look here, Mr. Zawahiri, a lot of us were able to overlook that whole 9/11 thing. That was probably understandable, what with us helping Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from being overrun by Saddam Hussein, and what with us being infidels and little Eichmans, not to mention all the rest of your group’s very valid criticisms of our nation.

But calling our new president a “house negro”? (“Al-Qaida's No. 2 insults Obama”). Saying our Messiah isn’t as cool as Malik al-Shabazz (Malcolm X)?

This is 2008 America, pal, and those are fighting words.

From here out there’ll be no more ineffective unilateral cowboy diplomacy. Now you're going to have a mess of groups mad at you, instead of only Dick Cheney and George Bush. To start with, Rev. Al Sharpton, who happens to have a worldwide copyright on the term “house negro”©, (along with such equally valuable expressions as “No Justice”© and “No Peace”©).



The intellectual property litigation alone is going to make your boss wished he's stayed in Saudi Arabia building 10-car garages .

My point is, if you thought Obama’s campaign threats to hunt you and Osama down were scary, just wait until the ACLU gets the case.

Trust me. If there’s anyone who can zero in on people with strong religious views and drop a bomb on them--no matter how well hidden you are--it’s those cats.

May Allah have mercy on you, 'cause I wouldn't give a potful of number 2 for your chances now.

Not God DAMN Reverend Wright, God BLESS Reverend Wright

[Author’s Note: After the following was posted, an informed reader sent me a correction regarding Charlene Reynolds, namely that I misidentified her as being black, when in fact she is white. I’ve reviewed the post, and decided that removing the erroneous description detracts very little from my intended point. But I have made the correction and done some minor edits to close up any gaps. At DU we do NOT consider identifying someone as black to be a defamatory statement, so for that I feel no need to apologize. But we try to be accurate, and I apologize for any confusion. TRC]

Here’s a summertime activity that’s cheap, fun, and doesn’t burn gasoline:

Let’s all have a conversation about race!

I know what you’re thinking. Remember we did that one year, and what a lousy time we had all had!

But I’m here to tell you, the whole country’s going to be having this conversation one way or the other, whether we like it or not. (Okay, we’re not going to like it). So why not get started now?

Because something big is changing in race relations in America. And it’s high time.

But it’s not going to be pretty. And it sure won't be fun.

But it will be for the best.

And that's on account of this new conversation we’re all going to have--the one not being controlled by the same people who’ve been controlling it these last forty years. I don’t think when it comes it’s going to be controlled by anybody. It isn't Obama's idea. That was an accident. It's not Rev. Wright's idea. He's a classic controller of the ancien regime.

That’s all over. Done with. Finito. That's a page that's been been turned. Turned by accident. But turned nonetheless. And forever.

By way of illustration I ask you to consider Detroit Free Press columnist Stephen Henderson. He’s black, a self-admitted Obama euphoriac who sees Obama’s nomination as a sign of progress and falling “racial barriers.”

In his Sunday column Henderson was hard at work for his candidate, fretting that the a lot of the right kind of voters are failing to dig Obama the way he does. (“Racial attitudes that Obama must address”). Henderson specifically was worried about a woman named Charlene Reynolds, and “lots of people just like her.”

It seems Ms. Reynolds had written a letter to the Free Press in response to another black columnist, declaring, “I would not vote for Obama because he is inexperienced, has not earned the right to my vote, and he is black.”

Plain enough. Detroit’s full of racists, right? Or so we’ve been told for forty years. More than likely Ms. Reynolds is just an outspoken Republican, that other party that's made up 99 and 44/100% of Klansmen, and people who plan vacations around dragging black guys behind pickup trucks.

The strange thing is, Ms. Reynolds is a Democrat. And what's more, she’s “a retired civil servant and union member living in western Wayne County. She voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and twice for Gov. Jennifer Granholm. She's against the Iraq war, fed up with economic stagnation, thinks there should be broader access to health care.” Put another way, she’s supposed to be what Henderson calls a “gimme” for Obama.

Instead, he uses his column to call Charlene Reynolds an ignorant, bigoted, racist. He even went and met her in person after reading her letter, so he could accuse her of racism with even more authority. Sure enough, after finding her commendably honest in person, he wrote, “I find her bigotry is more complicated and nuanced -- but no less ignorant -- than the overt, cross-burning racism that gets portrayed as prototypical. Reynolds has reasons for her racism, she told me.”

(Now I seriously doubt that Ms. Reynolds described her own reasons to Henderson as “racism.” But Henderson had to fall back on paraphrasing Ms. Reynolds's actual thoughts. The Free Press refused to run Ms. Reynolds’s letter verbatim, out of fear, Henderson says, that “running it without any context would have sent the wrong message about this newspaper, and the discussion we're trying to cultivate in. [sic].”)

Henderson writes that Ms. Reynolds specifically refused any suggestion that she’s been “duped into her racial estrangement, she said. She's not some uneducated redneck who thinks blacks are dirty or stupid or inherently unequal. She comes by her views from experience.”

Ms. Reynolds spent her working career as a state employee, working first for several years as a case worker for the welfare department, and then as a probation officer. In any other context, she would be given the latitude of having come by her attitudes honestly.

Yet I think the problem arises when, as a prominent black columnist and, ergo, a voice for the lesser-voiced Detroit black community, Henderson sees himself as a gatekeeper for discussions on race. The duties of race gatekeeper are simple. If you’re white, and want to talk about race, the gate stays closed. In fact, how dare you? You don't talk--you just listen! (Characters like Fr. Pfleger are the rare exceptions--but only because they are the white equivalent of Stepin Fetchit, mocking their own whiteness in craven exchange for approval--but never the respect--of blacks. The Trinity Choir and Peanut Gallery in the Pfleger video aren’t laughing with him --they’re laughing at him.) But then if you’re black, and are critical at all of the "black experience," or any of the usual black leaders, or any of the tried-and-failed solutions of forty years of black liberal politics—then the gate also stays closed. This isn't exactly the narrow gate spoken of Elsewhere that few enter--it's much more restrictive.

This is gatekeeping, old school. Which is why Henderson just knew he had to shut the gate on Ms. Reynolds for daring to hold opinions like this one: “She believes middle-class blacks can be ‘normal’ in mixed company, but resort to conspiracy-laden anti-white rants when they're among other blacks; even educated blacks, she says, just don't trust whites.”

Henderson’s reaction is straight by the book: “Reynolds' generalizations aren't worth dignifying with a response.” And doggone it, he doesn’t respond. Instead he just burns up a lot of column inches calling his fellow black an ignorant, racist, bigot.

And that, friends, is why the racial conversation in America has gone No Place in an ever-tightening circle for forty years. Say something the gatekeepers don’t like, and the conversation is over.

Now I happen to think Ms. Reynolds’s point is worth dignifying with a response. Otherwise, the conversation Obama wants us all to have isn't going to last long, is it? Not every response has to be in agreement. Henderson could respond without agreeing. He could engage, persuade, he could offer contradictory facts. Isn’t that what columnists spend their time doing?

But Henderson skips all that, simply throwing up his hands and asking, “How on Earth do you refute what for Reynolds is a lifetime of encounters that have led her -- wrongly -- to her broad but firm conclusions?”

Well, how do you refute anything? By refuting it. (If you can.) Certainly you don't refute anything by telling someone whose conclusions are based on a lifetime’s observations that she arrived at her conclusions “wrongly.” How, if a lifetime of encounters led her to those conclusions, could she have been led there “wrongly”? Isn't that the meaning of the word, "experience"?

As a matter of fact, when Ms. Reynolds makes her observation that “middle-class blacks can be ‘normal’ in mixed company, but resort to conspiracy-laden anti-white rants when they're among other blacks; even educated blacks, she says, just don't trust whites,” she’s not even expressing anything that some blacks haven't said before, and recently--blacks who weren't called ignorant racists for it.

For instance, here’s Barack Obama during his Philadelphia race speech in March discussing the same point:

Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.

For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table . . . . And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons . . . .

“Those blacks who did make it” is a reference to the black middle class. And the surprising anger in Rev. Wright’s sermons was disturbing because it took the form of a bitter, conspiratorial mistrust—even hatred—of white people. And then how many times did liberal defenders of Trinity and Wright point out that the congregation includes some of the most prominent and successful people in Chicago’s black community? Obama was making the identical point as Ms. Reynolds, when she said, “even educated blacks . . . just don't trust whites.”

Yet Henderson isn’t calling Obama a bigot for acknowledging how blacks harbor secret bitterness that they try to shield from whites, or that they mistrust whites, or how the “resort to conspiracy-laden anti-white rants”-- illustrated so vividly in Rev. Wright’s sermons--is a reflects that very anger and bitterness. Even liberal white columnist, (and Wright admirer), New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, says he thinks what’s happening now “is that the Obama campaign has led many white Americans to listen in for the first time to some of the black conversation — and they are thunderstruck.” (“Obama and Race”).

(Some of us have known about the anger for a lot longer than that. But we haven’t been free to discuss it, don’t you see.)

So why is it Henderson is so hard on Ms. Reynolds and “lots of people just like her”? Aren’t they all just pointing out a social/racial rift that’s only going to be more widely obvious from here on out --the awful stalemate we're all living with between black anger on the one side and the rapidly depleting resource of white guilt on the other?

I think it's that Henderson's still locked in to the old racial regime, the rules of engagement of forty years, the ones that reject all criticism as bigotry per se, even if it comes from within the black community. Those rules don't converse, don't discuss--they only shut people up. Under those old rules all Henderson the gatekeeper can do is try to declare that Ms. Reynolds’s “generalizations aren't worth dignifying with a response.” The same rules that poisonously insist that conservatives who vote against Obama for his liberal politics are motivated only by his race.

But the gatekeepers aren’t stopping everybody as easily as they once could. More and more people are finding other ways in. Gates are being ignored, walls scaled. The scene will soon resemble that toked-up mob when they started ripping down the cyclone fences around Woodstock. (“This is a mind f***er of all times, man.”)

There are differences already. Slightly more than a year ago Al Sharpton was still hearing confessions from the likes of Don Imus. Now, after the race enforcers tried to rub out Geraldine Ferraro by calling her a racist, instead of languishing in exile, she's getting more face time now than she’s had since 1984. She’s even fighting back, sounding, if I may so, every bit like a “typical white person” or maybe even Obama’s grandma:

" 'Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,' Ferraro said. 'Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?'...”

(And speaking of old-school black gatekeepers, Bob Herbert responded to Ferraro’s remarks this way: “Geraldine Ferraro’s rants are sad and not worth responding to.” Ha!)

WCHB even canceled Sharpton’s show last week. (Yes, Detroit is now an official No Justice, No Peace Zone). The listeners, apparently, demand more "inspirational" programming.

It's a new day. The race discussion's going to be open to anyone now, or soon will be. One side will no longer have to cringe silently through hectoring, uninformed lectures on the “legacy of slavery” and the “lessons of Katrina,” while social pathologies rage through entire communities immunized by race politics. The other side, if all goes well, will have the freedom to demand better leaders, better solutions, more choices, a better legacy.

Not that it's going to be pretty. It won't be. And it won’t be nice. But everyone, Black, White, American Samoan, or Other, will benefit.

This is long, long overdue.

The Preacher, the Prosecutor, and the Lynch Law

Fresh from witnessing a real, live lynch mob licking their lips for blood in Khartoum, (yes, the victim was rescued, but the miscarriage of justice was there, the victim waiting in terror for the mob), we got our own problems here at home.

They’re getting up a lynching right here in Michigan.

It’s an ugly story, too, not exactly typical, but it's got a stubborn lawman in it, and a preacher man, too, who loves to talk about justice and peace.

Only this time, it’s the lawman who’s the hero, and it’s the preacher who's the one with blood in his eye, trampling truth and due process so he can get at his victim--and he doesn’t give a good goddamn about justice or peace.

Just What Is Lynch Law?
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Lynch law \Lynch" law`\
The act or practice by private persons of inflicting
punishment for crimes or offenses, without due process of
law.

Note: The term Lynch law is said to be derived from a
Virginian named Lynch, who took the law into his own
hands. But the origin of the term is very doubtful.

But the victim doesn’t have to die to be a lynch victim. Just ask Clarence Thomas. Or Gillian Gibbons.

The ‘Noose Incident’ of 2007
Just around Halloween a few weeks back, in Mt. Pleasant where Central Michigan University is, a bored student in a science classroom picked up some 12-inch lengths of flexible hose used for compressed gas and tied them into nooses. He did it partly as a Halloween comment, partly to express that "I would rather be hung than do more work on this project", and partly just for something to do with his wandering attention. He hung the nooses, barely big enough to hang a cat, on a wall cabinet, where they didn’t bother anybody, nor draw any excitement, for about a week. He wasn’t intending a racial or any other kind of political statement. He likely learned his American history in American schools, which means he didn’t know much American history. He didn’t know anything about segregation or Jim Crow or strange fruit.

But he did know how to tie a hangman’s noose, God help him.

Then after a week a “male student” saw the nooses, (not identified in any reports as being African American), and he decided to report it to the CMU administrators. As far as anybody’s been able to tell, no black CMU students ever even saw the nooses, nor has any ever reported being threatened with them, by them, or by any suggestion that they existed to warn of an imminent lynching. No matter. It doesn’t take that much to get a University administrator to pee his pants. CMU police were ordered to investigate.

And just as CMU police were getting into asking questions, the preacher man in this story, the Rev. Charles Williams II, (who happens to be a young seminarian in the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Peace & Justice institute), was just being tipped off about a “noose incident” upstate.

Williams was already ambitious for his first big civil rights score. He was Sharpton’s Michigan presidential campaign manager in 2004, and currently leads the state chapter of Sharpton’s National Action Network. Williams had even gotten up his own shell civil rights action group, the National Council for Community Empowerment, so he’d be ready when his main chance came--his Tawana Brawley, his Duke “rape” case, his Jena 6.

Mt. Pleasant Gets Peace and Justice Like a River
And just like that Williams fell like a very fat avenging angel on Mt. Pleasant’s CMU campus, sticking his nose in, getting up impromptu rallies, threatening CMU officials with demonstrations, announcing that he’d already tattled to Sharpton, demanding federal intervention, and of course, leading concerned demonstrators in a call-and-response version of “No Justice, No Peace!” Williams never claimed he had any more facts than anyone else about what actually happened, but that didn’t stop him making baseless accusations, and asking for everyone else's rights to get trampled:

"This could have been a student group," Williams said.
He is hoping that CMU police will investigate student organizations on campus.

It was the urgency of Williams’s mission that made him so impatient with the slow process of fact-gathering; besides, he was past all that, anyway. He already knew exactly how everything had to be played. This is a hate crime, he said, and somebody’s gonna pay for a hate crime.[1]

Meanwhile, it appears that CMU just went about its business normally, in contradiction of one breathless report by a local journalist that the noose incident “sent shockwaves through the CMU campus.” (“Police Determining Whether Noose Incident Was Hate Crime”).

But Williams’s visitation was enough to scare the CMU police into boosting the reward they were offering from $500 to $5,000. A Michigan Senator from Detroit told the FBI they better get in on this, (so he could take credit in a press release). (“FBI Probes CMU nooses”). Then the feds promptly promised, before their investigation even started, that the bad guy was definitely going to face a federal rap. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights flew down to CMU to offer “crisis management.” Then Detroit’s NAACP made a press statement calling for tougher federal laws to “deal with displays of nooses.”). (“NAACP: Feds must toughen noose law”).

Enter the Hero
To hurry things up, Williams tried to intimidate the Isabella County Prosecutor, Larry Burdick, the man who would evaluate the evidence when the police were through investigating. Williams wrote Burdick, on his intimidating Council for Community Empowerment letterhead, trying to mau-mau him about the investigation going too slow, and demanding a meeting, or else, (I'm willing to bet), threatening him with a demonstration. Burdick ignored it. (When Williams later held a press conference denouncing Burdick for dragging his feet, the investigation was still only 14 days old). Why would Burdick need Williams? Burdick knew how to do his job, had confidence in the police investigators, and he knew Williams wasn’t interested in the truth anyway.

They speak of a legend in Isabella County that, right after the Duke lacrosse players case blew up in the corrupt Durham District Attorney’s face, Larry Burdick started going around with one of those little yellow wristbands inscribed with W.W.N.D.?, for What Would Nifong Do?--that way he'd always know to do just the opposite. In this case he knew that Williams was dying for him to go Nifong on this CMU thing--try the person in the press--skip the investigation--just throw the book at him. Burdick wasn’t going to let any of that happen.

'The Hanged Man'
Then, not even a week after the press ran just a few stories pushing around their few hard facts about the “noose incident” and misexplaining about “hate crimes,” a person claiming to be the one who tied the nooses wrote to a campus web site, and wanting to explain why he did it, (because it was Halloween, because he was goofing off, but there was no hatred involved). He also expressed no small amount of disgust at all the fuss.

He even said he was about ready to go to the police to calm everybody down, but he didn’t know if it would make things worse. In fact, he did go to the police next day, (for me, this lends credence to the anonymous web posting being authentic). The web post was presciently signed "--The Hanged Man." The next day he gave the CMU police a statement, and apparently left after without being detained. No report anywhere ever actually stated that he was either arrested, nor charged with any crime.

That is, unless you get your news from newspaper and TV, in which case he was a “suspect” who alternatively “surrendered” to police or was “arrested,” and gave them a “confession”, the error claiming there'd been arrest being especially inexcusable. Interestingly, aside from the fact that he was a “male CMU student,” the person’s identity has so far never been divulged to the public. Nor was his race, age, nor any ethnic identifiers at all. (This was the oddity that drew our attention to this strange case in the first place).

'He'll Be Given a Fair Trial, Then We'll Hang Him'
When he heard there was a student who admitted tying the nooses to police, Rev. Williams II searched his capacious and light-filled soul and could discern no reason at all why there should be any more delay in charging the student with a serious crime and throwing him in jail.

To get things moving, Williams held a stunt press conference in front of the courthouse where Burdick’s office was, and demanded again that Burdick speed up the investigation. Burdick did meet with Williams that day, but, as Williams himself said afterwards, “The meeting didn't go so good.”

His main complaint about that meeting was that Burdick wouldn’t agree with him that the investigation was taking too long: Burdick even told Williams he was going to wait until he had all the evidence before he made any decisions about prosecution! Burdick told Williams, and the press, that he had full confidence in the investigators.

“I have every expectation that it’s a thorough investigation,” Burdick said. Then he promised: “I’m not going to pre-judge a case before I even get the report.”

Williams’s blood pressure was going up and up. Imagine: If Larry Nifong had taken that sorry-assed attitude, where would civil rights be now?

So Williams issued another press release condemning Burdick’s slowness, and of course threatened more rallies.

“My main concern is that there has been no arraignment, no charge, and no movement on this issue,” Williams said.

“Nothing but an investigation has been done,” he said.

Of course! Who ever heard about investigating a crime before charging someone with a crime? Besides, there's been enough investigation:

“Williams said that the authorities have a confession and something needs to be done now.

“He must prosecute now,” Williams said. “Authorities have the confession.”

Man, this guy's in a hurry. He must really believe Al Gore.

Besides, authorities haven’t exactly said the student's explanation was a “confession.” They have a statement, voluntarily offered. We don’t know if it’s a confession yet, because we don’t know if there’s any crime. It’s hard to confess to police about something, no matter how goofy it is, if it isn’t a crime.

This is exactly Burdick’s sticking point.

Ah, but as far as Williams is concerned, it has to be a crime. It just has to be.

Why? Because who ever managed to create a national reputation as a civil-rights champion just holding mass rallies to condemn pranks? (We mean besides Reverend Al Sharpton, of course, and the Lord only made one of him).

So don’t even try talking to Williams about reports that the incident was only a Halloween joke. Rev. Charles Williams II isn’t “buying that.”

“That's not going to fly,” he said.

“This is not just a prank…This is serious and the Isabella County office needs to prosecute to the fullest extent, or we will be calling for a national protest,” Williams said.

This Is Serious?
In spite of what is being repeated in the newspapers, (the worst by far I’ve turned up being Paul Egan’s November 20 article in the Detroit News, ("NAACP: Feds must toughen noose law"), the mere act of “hanging a noose” is still not, per se, a crime under state or federal law. (Still not, that is, so far). While we're on the subject, the Stars and Stripes still fly over the Capitol. (So far).

Under Michigan law, an ethnic intimidation charge requires that a person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of that person's race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, causes physical contact with another person, damages, destroys, or defaces any real or personal property of another person, or threatens to do so.

You can see how that another person technicalities bungs everything up, and also the part about having to show malice and intent.

A federal charge also would require proof that a defendant willfully injured, intimidated, or interfered with any person, or attempted to so by force of threat of force, because of that person’s race.

So federal law gives you the same problems with intent, and there's that need to show force or threat against an actual person. (Here are the sources: THE MICHIGAN PENAL CODE (EXCERPT) Act 328 of 1931, and DOJ summary of applicable federal laws).

The trouble is, none of the evidence that’s surfaced so far in the CMU story shows there was any intent by the student to harass or intimidate anyone, nor did his noose-tying entail any physical contact with another person, nor any threat to another person. And while we all know some angry people are always going to be willing to speculate about other people's bad motives, (and thus at least infer a bad intent when there may be none), there is still no making up for the lack of a victim of the gas-hose nooses.

And yes, there will be persons, angered by the nooses, (persons who never encountered the terrible nooses themselves except to hear rumors of them), who will claim regardless that the mere symbolism of the noose makes them victims. This perverse logic wins every time in public rallies and women's studies classes where the only standard of evidence is who can shout loudest. But fortunately, American law has not fallen so low as to recognize vicarious victimhood as a standard to hold innocent persons criminally liable. Our criminal prosecutions still require actual victims. (So far).

Which means this case is getting less promising by the day, that is, if you had your heart set on seeing a prank treated as a hate crime, and a student treated like a convict.

Last Chance Before the Facts Take Over
Now time's running out for Williams to salvage any of this fading race-hustling opportunity at CMU.

This Tuesday, Williams’s Council for Community Empowerment (bolstered by some Benton Harbor pastors and activists clear from the other side of the state), announced a “national rally” for this Friday in Mt. Pleasant, to show their “concern” about “an unresponsive prosecutor.” ("Benton Harbor Activists Plan to Protest Over CMU Noose Hanging").

But there's one sentence in the Council's own press release that indicates, probably by accident, just how much these concerned pastors and civic leaders already realize what the truth of the matter really is:

the council said a November 26 meeting with two CMU students at the prosecutor's office left them with a concern that the case may be viewed as a prank and may not be pursued as a racial incident.

Since the two CMU students aren’t the ones who are going to make any charging decisions, what this statement tells me is that the accounts of the two students, probably witnesses with personal knowledge, lend support to a conclusion by the prosecutor's office that the noose incident really was just a prank, and not a “racial incident.” And that kind of news, if you're in the professional racial justice business, (which means you are "troubled by," "concerned by," and naturally deplore ALL racial incidents), is one helluva letdown.

And yet, if there’s one thing Al Sharpton teaches you about peace and justice, it's that there's no reason why even a harmless prank, with skill, effort, and public prayer, can't be turned into a racial incident!

On the very same day as the Council's press relase, Burdick announced that he’s reviewed a 66-page report from the police investigators. ("More investigation sought in noose case"). He said after reading it, he turned around and “asked police for additional investigation,” specifically seeking facts “to determine if the elements of ethnic intimidation can be met.” All of which strongly suggest his 66-page report still hasn't shown him those basic elements, yet. (Prediction: he will never find the elements to bring a charge).

Burdick then carefully laid out precisely, for the 1% of the audience who cared about it, the legal burden he must meet before making a determination whether or not to file charges of ethnic intimidation. He said:

“That determination will be based upon the law, as applied to the facts presented. We are now engaged in the process that will facilitate that goal. We will do so as quickly, fairly and as thoroughly as possible.”

Burdick couldn’t speak any plainer that his determination is not going to be based on popular notions about hate crimes, threats of adverse publicity, or grandstanding scare tactics by the likes of the Reverend Charles Williams II. And in all likelihood, (especially in view of the two CMU students who persuaded the justice and peace councillors that the noose was just a prank), his remarks are a forewarning that the expected determination, when it is made, is more than likely going to clear this CMU student of any criminal blame.

Burdick says now that he understands that the noose led to understandable fear and outrage, but “It has provided a lesson that some know too well and others not at all, as to what a hanging noose could mean.”

Though that sounds as if it’s meant to scold the CMU student for his lack of racial sensitivity, I think it’s a backhanded knock at Williams and his fellow hustlers; you see, they also have no idea “at all what a hanging noose could mean,” because they’re so invested in the idea that every noose everywhere must mean an imminent threat of lynching, murder, and racial violence. They've got so much invested they will never admit that sometimes a noose could mean not a damned thing at all, could be just a prank, or a goof-off, with no harmful intent behind it anywhere. (Then again, how can they afford to admit it? Just look at the statistics on noose incidents. They try to make it sound like an epidemic, but really there aren’t enough noose incidents to go around--not if all of tomorrows aspiring Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons are going to have enough action to make it in the civil-rights racket. They've got to make every noose incident count.)

Lots of people know how to tie that hangman’s knot. Sailors tie them. Fishermen tie them. Rock climbers tie them. Even heterosexual scout leaders tie them. And in an idle moment anyone who has learned to tie a certain knot may just find himself absently tying one for practice, or for something to do with his hands, or for the challenge of trying it on a new material--like toilet paper or flexible hose. Should they then hang them to be found and turned over to excitable authorities? I have to say no to that one. Still I have to think if a guy’s truly planning to hang someone he’s going to stick to good old rope. And he won’t leave his nooses behind in the science lab with nobody's neck in them, or where all his labmates can see them.

Which is just my way of saying, (though the mountains may tumble and the skies fall), that sometimes a noose is just a noose.

In which case, people need to shut up and quit screaming that just the report of a noose somewhere turns on some Wayback machine that throws the whole nation back to 1912 Mississippi. As I mentioned before, we had a real-live lynching going on in Khartoum, and none of these concerned preachers had a word to say against it.

Can’t Wait Till the Facts Come Out
Now, I don’t pretend to have all the facts on this CMU thing, either: I’m at the mercy of the media (mercy!), and I’m too lazy to send a FOIA.

It may turn out in the end that this CMU student really is a closet racist: maybe police searches of his dorm room have turned up unwashed bedsheets with eye-holes cut in them, a bullwhip braided from varsity pennants, and proof of a conspiracy of midnight riders pledged to burn, hang, and terrorize minority students at CMU until the school adopts segregated restrooms and a ban on interracial dating.

But I find this unlikely. And not only because none of the evidence that’s surfaced supports that, but because recent historical trends suggest that attempted lynchings of blacks are a statistical anomaly almost reduced to zero, especially in Michigan[2].

But what’s not unlikely, and what's also based on the evidence and recent historical trends, is that self-styled civil-rights demagogues are willing to force prosecutions of innocent people for crimes that never took place, on behalf of victims who were never harmed or who don’t even exist, all in order to boost their own lucrative careers as race hustlers.

How Is This a Lynching?
Reverend Charles Williams II is prepared to destroy this man’s life with a criminal conviction, and a possible jail term, regardless of whether the facts show him guilty of any “hate crimes.” His methods demonstrate his utter contempt for due process, for the rule of law, for the facts, and for justice. All he’s got is blood in his eye.

In fact, Williams is working overtime to make sure this student is charged, prosecuted, and especially punished, when he has probably known all along there was never any criminal intention here.

I'm not making fun of murder by hanging. The noose can be a powerful symbol of the terrifying crime of lynching. But the noose isn’t the only symbol of lynching. There’s also the symbol of the angry unthinking mob, whipped up by some usually self-appointed rabblerouser who yelps impatiently that while everybody's “wasting time with all this legal mumbo-jumbo" the criminal goes unpunished, which is why people need to "take action now!” Sound familiar at all? Maybe that's one difference between real justice and a lynching. Real justice is never in a hurry, while you can't get a lynching done fast enough.

And this business at CMU is a lynching.

And the whole thing screams “no justice.”


[1] Williams had other reasons to be in a hurry. There were other “noose incidents” being reported around the country that he was too far away to exploit. In October there was an incident at Columbia University where a noose was tied to the door of a black professor’s office, for which a rival professor was unjustly blamed in the rush to lynch a suspect.

Then just before the CMU “crisis” in November there was a curious one at North Carolina State University where someone in a maintenance shop where students never set foot had hung a ten-inch noose, made out of toilet paper, in a rest room stall--and the North Carolina NAACP was already in full threat mode. When the NCSU administration sent out an email in response to that incident, student activists declared it lacked sufficient “strong emotion”; so protesters started demanding action first, talking and investigation later--or not at all. Sample student reactions were not promising that the demonstrations were not going to become hysterical circuses. "It's the embodiment of intimidation," senior Jaron Hinton said of the noose. "It should have gotten as much media coverage as the lacrosse incident." ("Noose angers students').

Candace Lee, the campus NAACP organizer at NCSU who threw together a "discussion" event with the guess-how-this-turns-out title of “Let's Talk About It -- Jena 6 Part II, It's Time to Act,” said “the administration needs to prosecute whoever made the noose, no matter who it is or what their ethnicity,”; and Lee had absolutely no patience for any stupid details about the lack of a victim--or for that matter--the actual levity of the underlying offense:

The materials used to make the noose were less important than its possible message, Lee said.
"It doesn't matter if it's tissue or a rope, if it's a noose," she said. "African Americans should be angrier," Lee said.

Another student protester, probably not a physics major, proposed this realistic civil-rights goal for his fellow activists:

"We need to keep someone from hanging from the other end of that noose."

[2] One source says Michigan’s last lynching/homicide was in 1893, and the victim was white. A more famous case of an attempted lynching is that of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black man and prosperous physician, who moved his family into an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925, only to have a mob attack his house with stones, and scaring Dr. Sweet that he and his family would perish in a firebombing. Both he and his brother Henry ended up being tried for murder after Henry shot a white man in the mob to death while defending Sweet’s house. Sweet and his brother were acquitted.

Sharpton the Bounty Hunter

A recent Supreme Court opinion that put the kibosh on a “racial balancing” plan in the Seattle public school system says: (“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”); so, by way of a paraphrase, I now say that the way to protect freedom of speech is to stop punishing free speech.

I don’t care for Dog the Bounty Hunter--in fact, I have a visceral reaction to the sight of him. I’ve never watched his show, and if his ads come on I change the channel, to avoid being insulted by him and the whole premise of his show. If a guy who looked like Dog bought the house next door, we’d move. I don’t like his dirtbag haircut, his convict attitude, his trashy retinue, nor the thought of all the young males--whose self-expression is limited to parking their trucks across two spaces in crowded lots, and having bumper stickers that say “DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING? DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT”--undoubtedly considering him an outstanding role model.

That said, the man has a right to talk on the phone to his kid without losing his job. In fact, the man has the right to talk on the phone without having his private conversation published in the National Enquirer. ("Bounty hunter 'Dog' off air indefinitely for slur").

No one seems to know whether or not it was Dog’s own whelp, Tucker, who taped his own conversation with his dad, (which would be legal in most states), or whether or not the call was bugged by a third party, which would be illegal wiretapping.

As a matter of fact, taping Dog and Tucker would qualify as an act of domestic spying, illegal, immoral, outside the rule of law, and about ten other things that Chuck Schumer and Pat Leahy and the overheated civil-rights community have spent eight months repeating ad nauseum endlessly about NSA programs directed at terrorists, not that they're going to bring up now.

Nor will the ACLU go after the National Enquirer over this. Because we all know that what Dog did is much worse than anything any Mafia hitman, al-Qaeda members, or child pornographer ever did, all of whom have had civil libertarians battling for their rights to be heard--or rather, not to be heard.

Oh yes, oh yes, we're to understand, it’s a violation of bin Ladin's constitutional rights if we listen to him on his cave-phone directing suicide bombings. Meanwhile, while Dog may be an American citizen having a private phone conversation, and, incidentally, not breaking any laws--because he used the “N”-word, he has no civil rights anyone has to respect!

And then Dog had to go an make things worse, for himself, and for the all rest of us, by crawling on his belly to Al Sharpton with an apology. Dog, who is, after all, "the Bounty Hunter," may have done this more or less as a professional courtesy, recognizing in Rev. Al a fellow chaser-down and bringer-to-justice of bad men (in exchange for money). And like a bounty hunter, Sharpton enjoys operating outside the limits of the law. Dog just figured if he tried to hide, Sharpton would just bust down his door, crown him with his bullhorn, and drag him off to justice, anyway. And we all know that till Sharpton gets his justice, no one's going to get any peace.

And the thing of it is, Sharpton didn’t even know all of this had happened, when someone showed him this white trash dude publicly requesting America’s Racial Conscience to give him forgiveness. As Marc Freeman at American Thinker writes:

How amazing is that? The Reverend no longer need even demand action in order to find his race-baiting butt right in the thick of it. Unlike Imus, Chapman planned his own lynching party. That's right, Sharpton hadn't even heard the bugged tirade, much less demanded Chapman's head on the block. Pre-emptive self-abasement. (“Dog throws himself to the Sharptons”).

Still, Sharpton is nothing if not the humble servant of the Lord, ever ready to search out that one lost sheep, and responding to Dog's penitential request in this wise:

"As a minister I would be inclined to meet with you despite the racist and grotesque things I heard you say," Sharpton wrote in a letter released to the media. "If you wish to meet with me somewhere on the road that is fine, but be assured that I will not sanitize the kind of hate language that leads to the hate action that has left so many people vulnerable in America today." (“Sharpton Open to Meeting With 'Dog'”)

Well, don't strain yourself, pastor. Talk about your Good Shepherds! And you'd better think twice about telling this preacher your sins, if you don't want him to reply in a letter released to the media.

Nor does anyone, at A&E, Dog’s network, nor anywhere else as far as I can tell, allow that Dog’s remarks being made in a private conversation mitigates anything. Once again Sharpton gets to be the one who explains how we in America certainly will tolerate private free speech--within limits:

“While people have the freedom to express themselves in any matter in private, when those private conversations become public, it becomes our responsibility to state, as we always have, that we condemn the use of this word as racist and derogatory.”

So when the private becomes public, even when it becomes public by the malicious action of a third party, we can let the condemnation begin?

A sentiment which grates, actually, right against the social and legal trends in our country having to do with privacy these last few years, trends to increasingly treat privacy as an absolute--and by definition, absolutes don’t have exceptions.

That’s why sodomy passed beyond criminal sanctions, because the Supreme Court ruled that what one boy sticks up another boy’s rectum in the privacy of his bedroom is a private matter that, even if it were to become public, is off-limits to condemnation. That’s why an abortion at any stage, performed on a female, even a minor, of any age, is beyond public condemnation, or even public regulation.

That’s why law enforcement is regularly sanctioned by courts who exclude evidence obtained without the strictest regard for due process and consideration for the rights of even the most heinous defendants--even where it means setting the clearly guilty free. And of course, the sanctity of privacy and freedom of speech are why the ACLU and other groups can’t sleep nights for thinking that there is a terrorist somewhere overseas chatting about plans to kill Americans--while having his phone conversations tapped by the wicked NSA.

The use of the “N”-word has not become prohibited under federal law--yet, so Dog isn’t facing legal prosecution for what he said to his son on the phone. Instead, he’s only suffering social condemnation, which may be worse, (Dog survived prison, but this?). After all, social condemnation is enough to destroy a reputation and a career, maybe even a life, at least, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

But is our nation so far gone that the only act upon which we can achieve consensus is that this--yes, this here, this daring to utter this word, is the only surviving mortal sin?