Wednesday, September 2, 2015

If There is No Ferguson Effect, Then There Must Also Be No Problem With Police Brutality

Police across the country are pointing to various assaults on police as "The Ferguson Effect".  Naturally, Black Lives matter activists and various sympathetic "journalists" are angry about this and calling it racism and whatever.  Which is hilariously ironic.

Black Lives Matter is based on stringing together unrelated instances of police violence, in different jurisdictions with widely different police departments and policing policies, and claiming there is a pattern of racism.  The only thing these instances have in common are that the person killed was black.  But the Michael Brown and Vonderrit Myers shootings were justifiable.  The former was found justified after a justice department probe.  The latter was justified because Myers had a gun and was shooting at a police officer.

Others, such as Eric Garner and Tamir Rice were tragic mistakes, but not intentional murder.  Freddie Gray may actually be the result of brutality, but the officer most responsible for his death (the driver, who is charged with murder) is black, so this defeats the "racist" narrative.  Strangely, the one incident that appears to be definitely murder, the shooting of Walter Scott, is mentioned less often than these others.

These incidents really only have one thing in common; they resulted in the death of a black person.  All of the other facts and circumstances are widely disparate.  But a significant number of uninformed citizens are willing to believe that this tenuous string of purely anecdotal, context-free evidence proves that there is prevalent police racism in America.  Well, if that's true, then it must mean that the "Ferguson Effect" is a real thing.

We now have similar anecdotes of police attacks and other violence since Ferguson.  Police report more murders in Ferguson and Baltimore.  Two officers are murdered in New York.  A deputy is shot in the back and killed in Texas.  And last, but most telling, an Alabama cop is pistol whipped with his own gun.  He claims he hesitated precisely because of the national attention on police violence (This is what "Ferguson Effect" means), allowing the perp to have the advantage.  These are not the whole story.  But activist journalists such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and the clown car that is Salon.com would have us believe that these are not a pattern; that they are unrelated incidents.  This, despite the fact that they are more than willing to connect the dots between every black person killed by a police officer, regardless of differing facts and circumstances.

The evidence supporting the "epidemic of police brutality" and the evidence supporting "the Ferguson Effect" is the same.  Meaning, the evidence is anecdotal, incomplete, and unencumbered by context or nuance.  So, Black Lives Matter activists and their supporters have to make up their minds.  Either the police brutality coverage is overblown, or there is in fact a "Ferguson Effect".  They can't have it both ways.  If their movement continues to have this sort of cognitive dissonance and blatant hypocrisy, they will lose all credibility.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Horowitz Called Idris Elba "Too Street" and Then Wussed Out.

In an interview with the Daily Mail James Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz call Idris Elba "too street" for the role.  Outrage trolls called down the wrath of almighty Twitter, which immediately exploded with random accusations of racism.  Because "street" can only mean "black.".  It couldn't possibly mean that some of Elba's roles are a little scruffy (See: Luther), so maybe he doesn't have the polished image a James Bond would need.

Of course, these accusations all became questionable the second it came to light that Anthony Horowitz said it wasn't a race thing.  He even gave an example of a black actor (Adrian Lester) who he thought would make a suitable Bond.  And he did this in the same interview, before the Twitter explosion.

No matter.  Having already married themselves to the narrative that this was a racist comment, overwrought activists went into denial mode.  The fact that he said it wasn't "a colour thing" meant that it absolutely was.  Their rationale?  If it wasn't about race, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to say that it wasn't.  This is something only possible with liberal logic.  What actually happened is that Horowitz said it wasn't "a colour thing" to alleviate the concerns of an over-sensitive media ready to turn any random adjective into a "code word" or "microaggression".  Ironically, it had the opposite effect.

Others attempted to explain away the Lester reference.  Perennial racebaiter Ta-Nehisi Coates claimed it was "not an out", because Sony wasn't considering him.  The obvious answer to this is: So what?  Horowitz was asked his opinion.  What Sony thought is irrelevant.  The fact that Horowitz could name a black actor who wasn't too street is exactly an out.

Personally, I don't think Elba is "too street".  If he wasn't too street to play a Norse God, he can handle Bond.  Actors can polish up a scruffy image for a role if they need to.  Remember how scruffy actor Harrison Ford once cleaned up and played the President of the United States?  It's been done before.  Horowitz might have been a bit elitist (the Bond image is a sort of high-falutin', tweed-wearing, upper-crusty type. I.E. the opposite of street.), but that's not inherently racist.

The outrage police quickly scared Anthony Horowitz into submission.  Liberal knees jerked right into Horowitz's balls.  So he apologized profusely and caved to the PC overlords.  Maybe he should have had some backbone, like the fictional character he writes about.  Instead, this is yet another example of political correctness run amok.