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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
You're a fucking idiot
Labels: race, sharpton, wingnuttery
This could happen to you, John
John Ridley
It's a Hate Crime, So Where Are Jesse and Al? It was a fairly horrific scene. Long Beach, California: On a public street, in the dark of night on Halloween, a gang of about thirty youths beat three girls ages nineteen and twenty one. One of the girls was battered so severely she will require ongoing surgery to repair multiple fractures around her face and to reposition one of her eyes.
That there were taunts alluding to the girls' race and gender made the beating fall under the special circumstances of a crime motivated by hate.
The perpetrators were caught. The cops ID'ed nine of them as worthy of prosecution. Kids all. Thirteen to seventeen years of age when the crime was committed.
This past Friday eight of the nine were convicted, their sentences yet to be determined.
This story, beyond being sad for both the savagery of the crime and the youth of the offenders, also has a certain "through the looking glass" quality. In this hate crime the perps were black and the victims were white.
The far right soldiers of the Retro Guard will have you believe that the liberal concept of "hate crime" means that when people of color are the perpetrators the law overlooks the very concept of racial motivation.
Clearly that is not the case.
But the fact that blacks have been convicted for violence against whites is no cause in particular for documentation and certainly not celebration of this crime. Violence, and especially violence motivated by hatred of race or gender or religion or sexual orientation or merely the fact that the vic is "different" is deplorable.
Equally deplorable are those who pretend to stand for equality but who hypocritically allow such an injustice to pass without taking a stand against it.
So in the aftermath of this whole mess there is one thing that stands out to me: the conspicuous absence from the scene of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. How is it that these two men, these two supposed champions of racial justice who went into a fit of histrionics when Michael Richards went on his "nigger" rant, were nowhere to be found when actual racial hatred manifest itself.
The simple fact is, and this is no revelation but rather confirmation of what has been painfully obvious going on decades, neither Jesse nor Al are truly committed to any ideal higher than raising their own profile. To a degree, as with any public advocate, that's to be expected. It is a profile that gives one a platform from which to advance an agenda.
I wish this asshole would talk to the Bell family. Yeah, raising his profile by calling the NYPD murderers.
Where has John Ridley been on the Bell case? Has he had anything to say about the shooting of three unarmed men? Of course not. Because he wants to pretend that Sharpton is somehow off-limits and we can just rely on people like him who stand for nothing and no one.
Did the victims parents ask for Sharpton to come? Well, that's how he gets involved in these cases, they call him, not the other way around, They didn't. I would like Mr. Ridley explain to the police brutality victims how Sharpton is capitalizing on their names. When no one else would speak up for them, he did. But I guess that's too frightening for men like Ridley.
He wants quiet people, who say and do little, and make everyone happy. Then he can gin up an incident like an NYPD union official and ask where's Al?
Did it make you feel good to get all those pats on the head from the Huffington Post readers? Wish they could rub your head?
Let me explain something, John, and you need to understand this. If the police shoot you in the street like a dog, those HuffPo readers won't be there. All your pleasing commentary will be forgotten with "maybe he did something". But if one of your cousins call Sharpton, he'll show up and ask why the cops shot you.