Worth watching...
UPDATE: Goldberg, being the crack reporter that he is, has all the latest. Perhaps this means nothing but I feel that I should acknowledge that a black man was killed on guard duty at the Holocaust museum. That may mean nothing. But I think it should be said.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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I like Shep Smith. He seems to be the only person on Fox News with some sense in his head.
I like him too, now. He wasn't always like this-- I watched him from 2000-2004 be just as ridiculously biased for conservatives as the rest of the Fox gang. But something happened to this Mississippi boy, ever since which he has been skeptical, cutting, and openly oppositional to right-wing orthodoxy.
Katrina.
TNC talked about why he's not conservative-- Katrina flipped Shep like a pancake. Look at his stuff from the point where he challenged Hannity during the disaster onwards-- he's been a new person.
Thank God for Shep Smith, and thank God he was on the air when this all went down. Can you imagine another Fox News anchor talking to someone from the SPLC?
It's too horrible to contemplate.
Does Shep Smith have blackmail photos of Fox's Executive Board? Is it possible that the only reason their commentators are mostly idiots is because Shep's the only normal guy to put in his resume?
Please God, let this be the right burning off some of its high-octane crazy. We can take a little of this, but not a whole lot, I fear.
Given the DHS report of last month, I think it's the beginning. Or the middle....there's only so many times right wing terrorists can strike and the right wing can convey "well, that's just a crazy, not that I don't understand how he feels about it..." without driving off a good portion of their remaining sympathists. So I don't think it will become a regular weekly occurrence....but I do think another nut, before the fall, is in the cards.
I don't think the country will tolerate it as the trend the terrorists want.
Per Andrew. I missed this weekend's two dead at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee. The gunman hated liberals and gays, and planned to kill churchgoers until gunned down by police. Instead, congregants tackled him and held him until police arrived.
I'm a lapsed UU.
One of the commentors at Balloon Juice's two children were at the Holocaust Museum when this happened today.
It's hitting close to home.
The Tennessee shooting was last year. (I would have preferred that the writer Andrew linked to had listed it first, thus avoiding the implication that it was more recent.)
People have been shaking the crazy tree since last summer. If an 88-year-old Nazi and a couple disturbed religious nuts are the only things to fall out, I'd say we're doing pretty well. Doesn't help the families of the victims, but it's kind of comforting to the rest of us.
I am still waiting for them to can Shep Smith. He simply has too much decency, common sense and integrity for that network.
Only a matter of time before they fix him. Until then, I'm going to enjoy what he's about.
Shep going completely cuckoo bananas about torture on the air is one of the greatest things I've ever seen on TV.
TNC your comment yesterday about some people being more concerned with victimology than the actual victimization was just proven right again. Right now a couple million people are watching Glenn Bleck warn conservatives that they will be scapegoated for this. He did this after he tried to tie this guy to Al Qaeda.
That sounds like the press releases that are issued by Islamic organizations after terrorist attacks are perpetrated by Muslims, warning about the dangers of an Islamophobic reaction. I'm not sure this reaction is a conservative thing; it's more a desire not to be tarred with guilt by association.
The Islamic organizations that you speak of are typically organizations that are peaceful and are trying to preempt the blind hatred of people who don't understand that all people of a certain group, whether that group be muslims, blacks, etc, don't think and act alike. To spend ten seconds condemning this man's murder seems rather hollow compared to the dozens of hours some media figures have spent insinuating that the President isn't a US citizen, speculating about whether there are FEMA camps being built to imprison your family, and telling America that a second holocaust is occuring in their backyard.
For those of you who haven't read this, please do: http://www.pollster.com/blogs/this_is_personal.php
I think it sums up what a lot of Jewish Americans are feeling right now, and I'm sorry calexical, but I don't think we can't take any of this.
As horrible as this incident was, it's a man-bites-dog story: Jews (and blacks, for that matter) are probably more likely to be struck by lightening than killed by a white supremacist. In fact, hate crimes and terrorism of all kinds are man-bites-dog stories in America, and that's a good thing. Some on the right have lamented that the media has underplayed the motives behind the dozen or so domestic terror attacks here by Muslims since 9/11 (e.g., the shooting in the Salt Lake City mall; the plowing over of pedestrians on the UNC campus, etc.), but, again, it's man-bites-dog.
Why are these guys mentioned at the end not on the FBI list?
Perhaps this means nothing but I feel that I should acknowledge that a black man was killed on guard duty at the Holocaust museum. That may mean nothing. But I think it should be said.
Check out Goldberg's post on Mark Weber, head of the leading Holocaust denier organization in the U.S. Money quote:
"I don't believe it's possible for Black Americans to be assimilated into white society."
It means alot. I'm guessing that Stephen Johns was targeted/shot at because he was black. Holocaust deniers, white victomologists, neo-nazi's, Obama Birthers, all fruits from the same tree.
Shine beat me to it, but of course it means something. I also immediately assume that Mr. Johns was singled out BECAUSE he was black. This guy didn't JUST hate Jews. We're all potential victims of that kind of hate.
Smith was the only Fox on-air person who showed even a tad of sensitivity to the callousness with which New Orleanians were being treated right after Katrina. I'm shocked it didn't get him fired.
I have to say, having worked in DC at a museum for 6 years that the reason the guard was shot was not BECAUSE he was black but because he was a guard and pretty much ALL THE SECURITY GUARDS IN DC ARE BLACK. And the ones who aren't tend to be Hispanic. That's who lives in DC and work at the "real" jobs, that it the ones that are advertised and competed locally as opposed to nationally or are political in nature.
I am not saying it is not an unimportant variable. I am saying that all kinds of Americans worked at and took pride in the Holocaust Memorial. (and the American History Museum, and the Indian Museum, and the Asian Art Museum, and the African Art Museum etc etc.) and not just those whose ethnicity is in the title.
I should have added that I don't really know why the shooter singled out Mr. Johns. But I think causality here is deeper than one shooter targeting one victim. We may find out later that this is exactly why Mr. Johns was shot. My guess would be that having so many blacks with badges and guns guarded the Nation's capital was just background offensiveness to this guy.
You bring up a good point. This racist criminal just got a
two-fer. Terrorize the Jews and the Blacks.
shep smith is cool.
he'd be a solid guy on any network; on fox, he's a miracle.
this, however, is not cool:
having two fox guys describing the craziness on the right-wing blogs and saying
"and it feeds on itself, it just feeds on itself!"
no, gentlemen: it feeds on fox. and fox feeds on it.
more than any effect that blogs have had--even the wacked-out freepers and lgfs--more than all that, the craziness has been fed by fox.
maybe shep isn't responsible for it. but fox sure as hell has a lot to answer for.
Stephen Tyrone Johns: Rest in peace.
It's not a "and a black security guard was killed." There's symbolism, but there's also a shocked and grieving family, friends bereft, colleagues deeply shaken. His life, in full, was snuffed out at the hands of a disturbed, angry, sadly warped human being.
Perfectly stated. As are the sentiments of Simon and Jeff Hess below. Take no ideological advantage from a man's death. We do not know if he was singled out. But we do know that his family has lost him. Pray for them.
Uhh yes it is. And there's nothing wrong with saying that. Nothing about noting this guy's race, excludes anything else that you've said.
I find myself agreeing with both of you. But not with some of the other posters on the thread who have jumped to their own conclusions.
11:49 P.M. and you're still posting! Go to sleep. I have an excuse, watching the Giants play Arizona.
I hear you. I wasn't saying there's something wrong with pointing out his race. Sometimes we get to the broader social or political implications of these tragic events so quickly that we lose fellow-feeling for that individual life so violently taken. I'd just heard of the incident and wanted to convey that we should spend a moment to empathize with those most directly affected by this public death.
Shep Smith seems to not have gotten the Fox News memo about the "alternate reality" I wonder how long before he leaves Fox. regardless, good on him.
A black man gave his life today to protect a monument to (mostly) Jewish victims. More: he gave his life to protect a symbol of America's multicultural promise. To me, a Jew in D.C., that's a big part of what happened today: a twisted man with a worldview based on hatred and racial supremacy attacked a society based on pluralism and mutual respect.
Stephen Tyrone Johns gave his life to protect that society. He died today, a profound loss to the museum, to his family, and to all of us. But if his death symbolizes anything, it's not a victory for the racial-fascist worldview, but why pluralism is winning.
Shalom Ta-Nehisi,
It should be said and it has been heard. A nation of Jews will say Kaddish for Officer Steven Tyrone Johns, may his memory be for a blessing.
B'shalom,
Jeff Hess
what a nightmare, and good for Shep I only wish that he would tie those hateful emails back to the Fox commentators who spoonfeed this poison to their audience but that would likely be his last act there, without taking away from the particulars of this tragic event it seems important to bring this back to the broader context of the deathgrip that the NRA has on our politics, down here in the Midsouth, around Memphis, the state reps have used racially charged fears to pass even more extensive guns rights to allow people to carry loaded rifles and shotguns in their cars and to bring hidden handguns into places that serve alcohol and last night another little black kid, there have already been several shot this summer, age 9 was gunned down, we have to find a way to shift this debate back from this radical edge and bring some sanity to our communities.
Please show me an example of anti-semetism from Fox News. I am fairly sure you cannot quote it. I can however find tons of Pro-Isreal stuff from Fox News really easy.
JD, did you watch this video or the related one on Sullivan's blog? the question is one of the relationship between the "war on terror" and right-wing paranoid delusional nationalist militancy, are you saying that this has some ties to Israel? yikes!
Hannity used a known anti-Semite as part of his campaign to smear Obama, featuring him prominently and at length - so far as I'm concerned that kind of gutter journalism and shameless promotion of the worst sort of anti-semitic trash to slime the then-candidate Obama qualifies Fox as bathing in that cesspool:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/08/fox_news/
And, of course, as a footnote, the psycho shooter was steeped in the anti-Obama junk that the thuggish, monumentally dishonest Hannity used the anti-Semitic Martin to push on his nasty little show.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2009/06/james-w-von-brunn-obama-is-missing.php?page=1
Shep changed HARD after Katrina. I've never seen a TV reporter get emotional like he did at the N.O convention center. Dude was screaming and on the verge of tears, O'Reilly had to tell him to calm down and take deep breaths and ish. Ever since then, he's spoken truth to power on the occasions where it was badly needed.
I was FURIOUS when Conservs were ripping the DHS report. Even Scarborough was mocking it. As we've seen today and 2 weeks ago in Kansas, this ish is NOT a game.
Regarding Goldberg's post... why is it that every time someone is shot, it's suddenly the WRONG time to talk about gun control? Isn't it actually exceedingly relevant?
completely agree. this is the *right* time to talk about it.
but then, if you really don't want anything to change, then that's how you do it, right?
"fix the roof? no need to: it hasn't rained in weeks."
"fix the roof? we can't do that: it's raining outside!"
talking about leaky roofs in the middle of a rain-storm is just political opportunism! it's poor taste! it offends the villagers and the very serious people!
It's a fine time to talk about it, but it's a hard argument to win. DC has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, even after Heller (which invalided the gun ban, but doesn't do anything about the zoning laws that DC uses to keep guns from being sold in the district).
Given that, it's hard to say that if only those laws had been even stricter, Steven Tyrone Johns would be alive today.
Ta-Nehisi,
OT (except that it's another incidence of violence against a black man), but given your work on police brutality I thought you might be interested in this local story that hasn't seemed to get wider play yet: an unarmed black man (who's allegedly schizophrenic) was beaten by a cop in Passaic, and it was caught on tape by a restaurant security cam. Apparently, the officer and his partner lied about the incident on their report, because their account doesn't seem consistent with the video. The cop, his (female) partner, and the mayor of the town are all Hispanic. In defense of the mayor, he called for an outside investigation right away.
Actually, thinking about this story some more, there is another connection with the incident in D.C.: the cop who perpetrated the beating is a veteran. Since conservatives tend to be pro-military, I think this is what offended a lot of them about the DHS report, but when you're profiling potential criminals, and you're being objective, you have to note correlations like that. It doesn't mean all, or even a significant number, of veterans should be suspects, but it might mean that veterans are more likely to commit certain types of crimes than non-veterans.
I think this is what offended a lot of them about the DHS report, but when you're profiling potential criminals, and you're being objective, you have to note correlations like that. It doesn't mean all, or even a significant number, of veterans should be suspects, but it might mean that veterans are more likely to commit certain types of crimes than non-veterans.
Replace the word veteran with the race of your choice and tell me how you feel about that profiling again.
It's worthwhile to note that the Holocaust Museum is not an exclusively Jewish memorial, but stands for remembrance of all of the victims of Nazi genocide and extermination policies, at least half of whom were non-Jewish ethnic or targeted groups, including Roma (gypsies), Poles, Soviet POWs, unionists, liberals and leftists, religious dissidents, gays, even hundreds of thousands of disabled people...
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005149
The list of victims suggests a reason T-NC raises concern about this latest incident of terrorist murder in America. Some of the earliest Nazi victims were selected because the Nazis believed, correctly, that the German majority would not rise up to defend them. Mentally challenged people, the feeble elderly, the Polish intelligentsia were all groups who were extermination test cases. Jews too were killed, at a slower but equally deadly pace, in the 1930s. There were people like Bonhoeffer and Bishop von Galen who argued against the institutionalization of murder. A very tiny minority.
Violence began slowly, was not countered by the voice of the people, and grew. That will not happen here. Because there are many, not few, who protect the weak. I appreciate the concern of those on this post and others who are expressing themselves about violent acts. That is important work. We need that, we need to stay wary, in an era where we have tortured people and are fighting two wars.
As I read more about this von Brunn character, I find myself thinking about your Blacks and Jews posts. This, of course, is why we're supposed to get along so well--not because of a shared history of slavery and oppression, but because the same people hate us both. Racists are anti-Semites and anti-Semites are racists. That's something to build solidarity, isn't it? We know the same people to avoid.
As for Shep Smith...yes, it's great that he's calling FOX News listeners on their "more and more frightening" letters, but he really needs to face up to the role his employer has played in ginning up those sentiments. Perhaps Smith needs to have a little chat with that cretinous blonde on Fox & Friends, who has been playing the "Obama is a socialist" card for some time (she's also the "terrorist fist jab" genius).
The woman on Fox & Friends is Gretchen Carlson.
E.D. Hill is the "terrorist fist jab" woman. I don't think she's on Fox anymore.
Perhaps this means nothing but I feel that I should acknowledge that a black man was killed on guard duty at the Holocaust museum. That may mean nothing. But I think it should be said.
It certainly means something. I'm sure to SPLC fundraisers it means something very real and tangible.
Stay classy, Stan.
Just is the past week or so, tragedies in Kansas, Arkansas, and now DC caused by the easy access the deranged have to firearms. I've been angry about this since December 8, 1980, and it's not getting any better.
RIP, Brave Brotha. You saved lives.
As for the Domestic Terrorist - I don't give a shit how old he is. I want his ass to fry.
Just to clarify, you want him to be executed by way of the electric chair?
Lethal injection would do just as well. Or firing squad.
I suppose I just find it interesting when people, who are otherwise against the death penalty, seem to make exceptions when they are particularly appalled by a crime. Maybe I shouldn't assume that rikyrah is against the death penalty, but I thought she was.
A lot of us death penalty opponents (I don't know if rikyrah is in this category) are in opposition because of how often innocent people are convicted. We agree that some crimes warrant death; we're just not convinced the right person is always convicted.
In this case, there's videotape, close-up eyewitnesses in broad daylight, puddles of blood evidence, and a handwritten confession in the suspect's car. I'm not the least bit concerned about the possibility of this being a mistaken identity case.
Wendy,
Those are the exact same reasons I'm opposed to it. I agree with every single word in your first paragraph. I simply think your second is beside the point. Of course there is no doubt that the this guy is guilty. You execute him, there is a 0% chance you've executed the wrong guy. But you can't start making exceptions. I'm not usually one to argue the slippery slope theory, but in the case of the death penalty, you ABSOLUTELY can't go there. Without reading more on the issue, the average person would assume that a confession would be a pretty iron-clad case for the death penalty. We clearly now know that it's not the case. The death penalty must be opposed in all cases.
Please remember our President in your prayers tonight.
Deleted. And banned.
The media gets the perp they want, and the Hakim Mujahid Muhammad murders can be quietly swept under the rug.
Nice that you are able to read the minds of the media and know what they think.
I also like how you don't provide any evidence for this conspiracy to sweep the muslim murderer under the rug.
Just one data point and she isn't the entire media of course, but Rachel Maddow talked about him on her show today while talking about Von Brann and used him as an example of extremism getting out of control, but that doesn't fit into your anti PC world view so I suppose that doesn't count.
I'll try to be polite because TNC prefers it that way, if your gonna bring this crap to this site at least bring something beyond the strawmen floating around in your addled brain.
I banned him. So you don't have to worry about being polite anymore.
Hey, hey, people, what about our punitive prison sentences, like Glenn Loury has argued in a forum sponsored by Cato?
Meme watch: Malkin and RedState are trying to pin this on the Lefties. I can't wait to hear from Rush and Glenn Beck. This is so sick.
Sullivan caught the odious Debbie Steussel blaming it on Muslims, seriously.
Shalom Ta-Nehisi,
For updates on memorials for Officer Steven Tyrone Johns, visit Writes Like She Talks.
B'shalom,
Jeff
It's worth remembering that this attack failed. He got stopped at the entrance, got into a firefight with the armed guards, and did *not* get inside to murder a bunch of unarmed victims, which must have been his goal. Not only evil and stupid, but incompetent.
He murdered one black security guard, which is awful, but it could have been so much worse. (And it wasn't, thanks to that guard and the others who stopped the bastard, and may have saved a dozen lives doing it.)
"Not only evil and stupid, but incompetent."
Evil, yes, but stupid and incompetent, no. The man was a member of Mensa, which means he wasn't stupid. And it's not incompetence when one man is unable to defeat several armed guards simultaneously in a gunfight; it's a near-impossible task.
Dave,
It's incompetant, and stupid to even try. I mean, you certainly can't say what he did was competent. He failed! I know several people who are members of Mensa who are complete idiots. They may have a high IQ, but are very stupid in the ways that count.
As an act of terrorism, it hasn't failed or succeeded yet. That is up to us.
Terrorism is meant to incite fear and push our people past our constitutional principles into reactions that weaken us strategically. I imagine this act was intended to help create a fearful citizenry to push our leaders to mandate a furious back lash where we sanction unconstitutional arrests, illegal searches & seizures of property and unlawful detention of militia-men/skinheads/supremacists.
If we as an electorate support such an overreach in response to these incidents, and don't lawfully deal with violence like this, then supremacist leaders would be able to turn to their followers and say: "I told you there is a real conspiracy perpetrated by [any of the above] to take our rights away. This is war." At this point they want this rallying cry (and others) to strengthen their numbers.
Politico reports the Weekly Standard may have been shooter target:
"The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn's white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a "right-wing extremist," but the substance of his views -- which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen -- are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.
The focus on the Standard, though, appears to be of a piece with his central motivation: Anti-Semitism. In one essay, Von Brunn attacked "JEWS-NEOCONS-BILL O’REILLY," and the suggestion that neoconservatism is a specifically Jewish conspiracy is common on the racist fringe."
Interesting.
Juan Williams has gone the other direction. He used to be a serviceable centrist up until very recently. Perhaps both switches were executive decisions.
We have over 300 million people and we have very few such events as demonstrated by the saturation of news coverage over the last day or two.
What we need to find concerning is a tendency by our leaders and other special interest groups to overreact and use such an event to restrict our freedoms and weaken our Constitutional rights. It's been happening since 9-11 with various iterations of the Patriot Act.
I am a socially liberal somewhat libertarian American who believes in the right of people to do whatever they wish, be it religion or relationships, etc as long as they don't harm others.
My concern at this moment is a subtle movement rationalizing the 1984 Orwellian preemptive prosecution of criminality and of thought crimes. Mind reading is at the basis of the prosecution of some hate crimes.
I see it as un-American and a slippery slope to have a private non-public entity, non-accountable group that has its own partisan and fund raising agenda such as the SPLC having a decisive word on which groups are deserving of protected status and which groups are of "hate" status. This potential redlining McCarthyist function should be a government function which can held accountable to the people and to the political leaders.