"I love you/ like a fat kid loves cake" (from Get Rich or Die Trying). Poetic recitation time being over, let us now repair to the topic of the moment. For a long time the position taken by M at
Separation of Spheres was the only one an interested party could find on the Internet and on the News. Well, actually that's not entirely true: In truth the way it started was the story was simply being buried by the media.
But then, thanks largely to socially conscious liberal bloggers like M, the corporate media was finally forced to come in and throw the big light on the bizarre and sad recent happenigns in Jena, Lousiana.
But anyway, when Harrogate first got wind of the story from the liberal bloggers, he wondered: are the conservatives defending this? Are the white students or their families or the DA speaking out in their defense? What, o What could they be saying in light of what looks to us like a clear case of justice miscarried by the good ole boy system? Here the importance of what famed linguist George Lakoff has to say about framing and contemporary politics is, it seems to Harrogate, very clearly illustrated.
There was a period where the conservative pundits layed low on this story and so the liberal blogosphere remained free to dictate the terms of our moral imaginations.
But the silence is over, and now the real battle for framing is afoot. As it heats up, the implications of this tussle will not extend to Mychal Bell himself, who already has been released on bond and now, quite appropriately, awaits his day in juvenile court to face charges dramatically reduced from what had started out as no less than Attempted Murder. But the battle has rhetorical and, therefore, political implications that are in many ways far more important than the fates of any of the individuals involved, or even for that matter the fate of Harrogate himself.
Increasingly popular pundit John Hawkins has captured, Harrogate believes, the essence of conservative apologetics for the Jena DA's original approach to the case. Harrogate exhorts ye, o readers, to peruse Hawkins' petition to the people that we have all been had by the hucksters of race.
Is there merit to his case? Harrogate reports. Ye decide.
(BTW, far be it from Harrogate to introduce the Ad Hominem element into his otherwise sober, wholly unironic, erudite political and rhetorical discourses. Yet he nevertheless feels it both necessary and even somewhat entertaining, in a morbid sort of way, to remind readers that when they're reading the ruminations of this god-prattling, gun-championing, homosexual hating, war supporting fella, you're also reading someone who very recently reminded us that the people of New Orleans need to stop milking Katrina sympathy, show some of that can-do American attitude and get over it already)
3 comments:
First, I think that you are incorrect about the media not covering the event. I learned about the incident well before the protests last week. It apepars as if there was nothing new for a few weeks or a few months while the town, the people, and the local authorities workd out the details of the legal process (i.e. some were let go early, one was still in jail-- though I assume that the last one in jail may be primarily responsible for the beating.)
Second, the media did not turn its attention on the event because of bloggers; it turned its attention on the event because between 6,000 - 10,000 people developed a protest in a town of 3,000.
Third, a typical conservativ response to this is that a crime was (1) committed so there should be a punishment and (2) if this is a civil rights issue, then advocates like Sharpton look like a joke becuase they want to make an assualt a Civil Rights struggle. I agree with them on the second, especially with the assumption that Al Sharpton does more harm to the cause of Civil Rights than good. I disagree with them on the first because they do not admit there there are different standards of justice and the "jury of one's peers" may be corrupt.
Four, the writer from Town Hall does not present a persuaive case, especially if you are not conservative or if you know of the facts of the case that the writer leaves out, because of his basic fallacy of omitting facts from the case (noting that different standards of justice applied; the DA spoke to the black students and not the white; the fact that a federal Civil RIghts law could have been violated (if charged under Federal Civil Rights statute 18 U.S.C.A. section 245) by the hanging of the noose because it was on public and state grounds.
This situation is not a win for some conservatives. The best response would be to ignore it or attack the notion that this is an epic struggle in the civil rights movement.
While I disagree with the arguments, I do agree with this proposition. The Civil Rights protestors possessed the moral authority because of the use of non-violent civil disobedience or, at least, self-defense. The students in question do not adhere to these standards.
At best this is a travesty of justice; it is not a part of the civil rights struggle.
I just heard of an even better response to the situation. According to the DA in the case, Jesus Christ intervened in order to ensure that the protests did not turn violent.
According to the DA: "I firmly believe that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened....The Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly."
"The only way -- and let me stress that -- the only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community."
You can find a video link of this blasphemy here: http://therawstory.com/
Thanks for the update on the jackass DA.
One of the only things to have clearly come across from Jena at this point, at least for those like Harrogate who are only casually following the story:
Reed Walters, Jena DA. What a jackass.
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