We spent last night like every other journalist in Boston: searching Google and Twitter for “Ferguson” and “Boston.” Then for “Boston” and “Ferguson.” Then for different combinations with hashtags, then “Boston” and “riot.” And so on.
We’re not ashamed to admit this since, from incarceration to gentrification, we cover issues that lead to situations like the one in Ferguson. So there was little shame in combing social media for local hooks. For example:
- While amateur dummy-watchers went straight to Fox News for blatant bigotry, hate connoisseurs like us went to conservative radio, where, unlike on right-wing television where they sometimes bite their forked tongues, there’s no filter whatsoever. In Boston, in the hour following the verdict, the always-ignorant WRKO was syndicating some schmucks from the Midwest, one of whom was a white woman who — surprise alert — doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as white privilege. She felt so strongly about this that she hung up the phone on a black caller who disagreed with her. We considered writing about that.
- Then there were the clowns at WHDH, our local NBC affiliate in Boston. Rhyming for the sake of riddling, the asses there ran lots of teasers on their website, which anticlimactically lured readers to a generic AP story. Considering that every NBC affiliate in America probably pulled the same ruse, we thought they might be fun to kick around.
More than anything else, though, in spelunking for Hub angles we discovered commentaries involving Ferguson, Missouri, and what the situation there allegedly has to do with the Boston Massacre. There are more of these cockamamie theories than we’re comfortable acknowledging, and none of them make sense. Not the lefty hypotheses; not the right-wing extremities. Here’s a sampling:
This guy, over at Patriot Post, is not a total monster, but we wouldn’t want to spent Thanksgiving with him either …
J. Christian Adams, author of “Injustice…exposing the racial agenda of the Obama Justice Department,” says his former boss has carried a card in his wallet for thirty years, written with an odd phrase – that he (Holder) “shares common cause with the black criminal.” This, despite the American tradition that justice (and the Attorney General office), is blind to race, station of life, sex, political party, and raw emotion.
My heart goes out to the family of Michael Brown, and, as a father, I cannot imagine the loss. But let us not judge the officer from the sidelines and kill the foundation of due process as well, based only on as yet unproven racial charges.
John Adams, who dared defend those hated British, went on to let due process and the jury decide their fate – and then became our second President.
Then there’s the Independent Voter Network, “a platform for unfiltered political news and policy analysis from independent-minded authors.” Unfiltered is right. What you’re about to read is proof that it takes more than just placing a question mark after unintelligible alphabet soup to make a solid point? Or as the author put it …
The real question is whether the people of Ferguson, as well as the hundreds of “imported” protesters, will accept the rule of law regardless of whatever the announcement might be — or will they riot?
Would we be like our Founders? Would we potentially put our careers in jeopardy to ensure a fair trial for an unpopular defendant? Would we stand by the jury’s verdict?
America works because we have faith in the rule of law. Sometimes the courts get it right, sometimes they get it wrong, but we still have to have faith that in the end the truth will come out and justice will be served.
Not all dimwits are equally guilty. Hacks are hacks, but then there are history teachers looking for contemporary angles. Understandable. Here’s DeSales University Professor Robert J. Fisher, who is so famous in the place where they publish his column that they put his name right in the headline: “Robert J. Fisher: American history offers insight into Ferguson shooting, riots” …
The relevance of this historical background to the recent tragic events in Ferguson, Mo., should be apparent. Yet, in recent weeks, many white Americans have tried their best to justify the murder of Michael Brown by a white police officer. This has been disheartening to African-Americans.
We hate to dis the professor, who we’re sure gets laid like Ron Jeremy at the Annual Analogy Awards, but we wouldn’t quite say that the similarity between Ferguson and the Boston Massacre is as clear as he suggests. Any way you spin it — the jurors are John Adams, Michael Brown is Crispus Attucks, whatever it is, any such exercise seems like a futile, self-serving exercise in bullshit.
Few things about the current situation in Missouri are obvious, or transparent. What’s apparent, however, is that people love blowing smoke up their own asses by spinning bizarre and contrived historical comparisons that suit their political perversions.
On that note, some final words about the matter from conservative scholar Mark Levin …
FURTHER READING
EVEN WITH FERGUSON BACKDROP, MASS MEDIA BARELY REPORTS COPS GETTING AWARDS FOR FATAL SHOOTINGS
THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM IN FERGUSON
BOSTON SITS IN SOLIDARITY WITH VICTIMS OF POLICE BRUTALITY EVERYWHERE
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
