“Meh. Read the transcript. Limbaugh bit is obvious parody, which Dreher didn’t catch, and Megan didn’t notice that he didn’t catch, and I didn’t notice that Megan — oh, never mind. Anyway, much ado about nothing much.”

FYI

Best wishes,
-MFS

No, John, that’s not the only way I read it. I also take her to mean that she (and others) believe that there is racism behind much of the extreme reaction to the President’s policy goals. (Birthers certainly are fringe, and I think she uses the word “teabggers” to imply the fringe and not mainstream reasoned opposition to bigger government.) But what I don’t read into the post that everyone who disagrees with the President’s policies is racist.

And yes, I do also think she’s criticizing those who say racism doesn’t exist, because it does. I don’t think it is as pervasive as some on the left would like us all to believe, but it does it exist and it does motivate the behavior of some people.

Well, if news stories are all that matters in establishing fact allow me to do likewise:

Gay City News also criticized the report in an article headlined “Trashing Matthew Shepard.” Reporter Duncan Osborne immediately discredited the report for claiming to land the first media interview with McKinney. “McKinney’s first media interview came in 1999 with KGAB, a Wyoming radio station,” Osborne wrote. Claiming to be first sets Vargas up nicely for a chance to reveal the emerging truth behind Shepard’s murder: McKinney may have killed a gay person for drugs, but he doesn’t actually hate gay people. “This is an old argument, but ABC has been promoting the story as if they have made a new discovery,” Osborne said. He also pointed to “reams of evidence” left out of Vargas’ report, including a statement McKinney gave to police just days after the killing, in which he referred to Shepard as a “faggot” and a “queer.”

Osborne also cites a letter obtained by Denver television reporter Rick Sallinger of News4 and reported in the Rocky Mountain News in 1999. According to this letter, attributed to McKinney, he learned that Shepard was gay, he “flipped out” and beat the college student with a gun. Shepard “said he was gay and wanted a piece of me,” according to the letter. “Being a verry (sic) drunk homofobick (sic) I flipped out and began to pistol whip the f– with my gun.”

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released a viewer’s guide which addressed each of the assertions made in Vargas’ report. The guide systematically discredited sources, pointed out facts that 20/20 ignored, and showed a lack of evidence for the new theories. [I assume this is the guide: http://www.glaad.org/Page.aspx?pid=582

One example is Kristen Price, McKinney’s girlfriend at the time of the murder and a key witness at the trial. She told Vargas she made up the story about McKinney’s homophobic rage. “I don’t think it was a hate crime at all,” she said. “I never did.” But Price spoke with 20/20 in 1998 and testified in 1999. “They just wanted to beat him bad enough to teach him a lesson, not to come on to straight people, and don’t be aggressive about it anymore,” she said in her first interview with 20/20.

“Did she commit perjury in McKinney’s trial?” GLAAD asks. “And why does 20/20 put forward as fact the statements of someone who’s admitted to deceiving and lying to them in the past?” Good question.

Vargas quoted the prosecutor in the case against McKinney to bolster the theory that drugs made McKinney beat Shepard in the head with a pistol. “The methamphetamine just fueled to this point where there was no control,” Carl Rerucha said. “It was a horrible, horrible, horrible murder. It was a murder that was once again driven by drugs.” The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) addressed the drug theory in a reaction to the episode. “That drugs may have played a role in a violent crime and in this murder is not news,” said Clarence Patton, acting executive director of the organization. “Everyone knows that drugs and alcohol often play a part in hate crimes and bias-related incidents.”

Carter’s observations may seem obvious to those of us in the coffeehouse. We’ve seen this racist, code-laden garbage surface during the 2008 campaign only to revive with a bigoted bang right after the inauguration. But it’s significant that the former President, a man of the South (as is Joe “You Lie!” Wilson) during a time when there was enormous social race-based upheaval calls it out so bluntly. He knows most of this crap is simply dancing around calling the current President of the United States a n*gger — and you know Wilson knows it too.
Honestly, I’m surprised these fringe birthers, teabaggers and junior-league Klan member wannabes haven’t thrown down that card yet. It’s on the tips of their forked tongues.

Lemme guess: you only see Spaulding saying here that racism still exists in this country and criticizing those who might say otherwise, correct? Wrong. Read it again.

. . .

O’REILLY: So you may get backlash now from the gay groups who say, well, why even bother with this thing? What are you going to, what’s the answer to that?

VARGAS: The answer to that is we’re trying, we have an obligation to uncover the truth of what really happened. 20/20 was one of the first newsmagazine’s to go out with this story that this was a bias crime, this was a hate crime way back in 1998 when this happened. … The girlfriend of Aaron McKinney went on our program in silhouette … She lied. She comes to us now, not in silhouette, in full face to admit that she lied. This was something they cooked up hoping to get him a lesser sentence to explain why he might have freaked out and done what he did.

O’REILLY: So they were going homophobia, whatever? They tried to do it.

VARGAS: They claimed that this was something from the beginning they cooked up as a way to get a lesser sentence. But I must say it’s important to know we knew this would be controversial. We know there will be some people who are not happy about this version of events.

The connection isn’t between those two events at all. The point of the post, like many others, is that there are many commentators today who claim that because we elected a black president (bi-racial president maybe?), this is now a “post-racial” country, i.e., that racism is dead. Pam’s point is that such events (the beating of a black woman while using racist slurs and and ex-president accusing a Congressman of racism) is that racism does still exist and such commentators are buffoons. I don’t believe she’s accusing anyone of being a racist, but observing that racism does still exist despite the claims of some people.

SoCalRobert
You have it 110% correct
Good post

America has a serious, serious shortage of objective thinkers.

Second best line, “I had some liberal call me ‘Clarence Thomas’ he was upset that I took it as a compliment.”

One of my other favourite blogs is written by Kevin Jackson of Black Sphere. He gets a lot of flack because he does not fit the liberal idea of a downtrodden black.

For some reason as I was reading the comments to this post I was reminded of my experience on the train between Albany and Montreal in July. Despite the fact that I met a really lovely young lady on that trip, what marred the trip for me happened to be some young men and women who were a mixture – mostly blacks, but there were some whites amongst them. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting in front of some of these rather ugly Americans and had to put up with the foulest and crudest of language imaginable. On top of that this group had fouled up the bathrooms closest to us so bad that I was totally nauseated by the smell and ended up vomiting as a result.

Does that episode make me have a distaste for blacks? Nope. Yet I have a real distaste for those particular young people, black, whites, female and male. I suspect that they were heading to some kind of boot camp or even a detention of some sort because they were met by people in govt. vehicles when they arrived at Pt Henry. To say that I was thoroughly grossed out by their behaviour is an understatement.

Did you note something I wrote? UGLY AMERICAN…. Yes… that statement could make me racist against Americans… but that is not the case at all. It is just that I recognize that some Americans, just like some Australians and yes some British people behave badly in certain circumstances.

But it’s not that black and white (as it were). It’s a nice, self-conforting, hazy shade of grey. You can’t call it evil or wickedness because liberals don’t want to be called what they are.

As for the cure, some people just deserve a bullet in the back of the head.

Anyone (including that police chief) who thinks that the race of that kid on the bus was not an issue is a fool. The chief, I suspect, got a call from someone suggesting he get his mind right if he didn’t want to dead-end his career.

The young couple who were raped, tortured, and murdered in Knoxville were picked because they were white. I seem to recall the brutal murder or four whites in Wichita by blacks (Dec 2000). Hate Crimes? Does it matter?

It’s a certainty that there are white (and brown, red, and yellow) miscreants that select victims based on skin color. When they commit crimes, they should be prosecuted and punished.

The problem is that “hate crime” laws are applied selectively based on political calculations. That is not justice any way you look at it.

As far as the perp in this beating – who cares what he said? Would it have been better if he’d just called her a dumb b***ch? Used the c-word? Told her that her child was ugly? If he’d left her race out of it, would that be less of a crime? The case sounds like a slam-dunk to me; convict the jerk and let him spend a few years in the slammer.

Judges and juries have long been able to use motive to decided guilt and punishment. We should just leave it that way.