AFTER GAGA AND CYRUS, AMERICA NEEDS A KAREN CARPENTER BATH

              Like others among the dwindling portion of Americans who are offended by the offensive, I have long since learned to avoid watching much TV at all, let alone the abominable and redundant carnivals of vanity and vulgarity that are laughably portrayed as entertainment awards shows. 

                Merely refusing to watch these insufferable programs, however, does not shield one from exposure to news and publicity reporting their poisonous content, featured on nearly every variety of news outlet, including the websites which are my primary source of daily news.

                That was the case this Monday morning, when virtually every news source I visited included reports and pictures of what, for want of a better euphemism, can only be described as the obscene on-stage contortions of two of the most renowned female performers of the era:  the entity widely known as Lady Gaga (it is absurd to grant her the vaingloriously self-assumed honorific without a qualifier) and former adolescent TV star Miley Cyrus.  Their squalid escapades were the headline acts of the annual cultural atrocity known as the Video Music Awards, or VMA.

                Although I have abstained from viewing the widely available videos of these "performances," the reports describing them are quite sufficient to confirm that Ms. Cyrus in particular ventured across new frontiers of obscenity and offensiveness.  Not to be outdone by the outlandish Gaga's predictably pornographic shock-tactics, Cyrus descended to depths of explicit sexual depravity and exhibitionism that left even a few prominent media liberals (like MSNBC's Mika Brezinski) gasping in revulsion. 

                                                   

                                    Karen Carpenter:  Antidote to the Vulgar VMA Culture

                But most mainstream outlets found it merely amusing, or even cute, that Cyrus had repeatedly engaged in a particularly lurid and explicit form of sexual simulation referred to as "twerking."  My deliberately limited experience of contemporary youth culture has spared me knowledge of exactly what that awkward and ugly term means, nor do I wish to know.  But one particularly feckless and smirking CNN TV commentator gleefully explained that this nasty maneuver was now all the rage with the younger generation; and then, with the utter illogic and incoherence that is the earmark of liberal media commentators, reassured us that, in that case, Ms. Cyrus' obscene simulations were okay after all.  In other words, "the kids are alright" -- no matter how obscene their behavior.  Chuckle, chuckle, wink, wink. 

              Other media sources reflexively mocked social conservatives for their allegedly puritanical intolerance in objecting to a young woman being "able to perform as she chooses."  Their "defense" of the VMA show's extreme forms of pornographic exhibitionism, promoted to appeal to both teens and pre-teens, is simply the circular and conclusory argument – what lawyers call "ipse dixit" -- that there is nothing wrong with the unfettered broadcast of extreme obscenity because millions approve of it,; and that conservatives are therefore unenlightened puritans to object.  Take that.

                Cyrus, many will recall, originally came to fame starring as "Hannah Montana" in the brainless, but relatively innocuous, Disney TV series targeted largely at teenage and sub-teenage girls.  She no doubt retains a large following among these very young girls.  And many of their parents were undoubtedly idiotic enough to allow them to watch the VMA's grotesque carnival sideshow of creepy and lurid sexual simulation.

                So this is  the depth to which we have descended:  millions of American families gathering around their television sets to watch Hannah Montana engage in simulated sexual contortions with her smirking and strutting backup dancers and with prancing teddy bears.  It's a long way from "Good-night, Jim-Bob," to put it far too mildly.

                Lurid and depressing stories like this tend to reinforce a growing conviction that our culture is poisoned and polluted beyond the cleansing capacities of disinfectant and decontamination chambers -- leading SR to throw up his hands and pose the rhetorical question, "Where is Karen Carpenter when we need her?"

                But then one stops and realizes that Ms. Carpenter, and other refreshing oases of cleansing and uplifting beauty like Astrud Gilberto and Dionne Warwick, are merely a Youtube click away.

                After wandering into the depravities of VMA, Gaga, and the degenerate remains of Hannah Montana, what one needs is a cleansing, musical Karen-bath to restore one's faith in the prospect that there is genuine innocent beauty still lingering somewhere out there.

                                                            

                A good place to begin is by enjoying the Carpenters' charming performance of their hit recording "Sing" at their sold-out concert before an enthralled Japanese audience at Tokyo's Budokan in 1974.  Karen Carpenter's gentle and protective inter-action with the choir of very young Japanese schoolgirls who were invited to sing back-up, including her rendition of several of the song's lines in fluent Japanese, nicely illustrates the class, decency, and sweetness of this remarkable vocalist and pioneering lady drummer (Ms. Carpenter appears a bit disheveled in the video because, only minutes before, she had just concluded an all-out, "head-banging" drum-riff as part of the group's rendition of "Johnny-be-Good"; she is not called the Drummer Girl for nothing.). 

                For another refreshing escape from the sordid and lurid anti-music of the VMA exhibitionists, it would be difficult to improve on Karen's moving live rendition of the Carpenters' classically beautiful Gold Record, "For All We Know" – which rescued that song from the obscurity of a forgettable scene in the movie "Lovers and Other Strangers" to the celebrity of an Academy Award for best song, and became a wedding song classic for the ages.  The video of Karen's performance of the song at the "Live at the BBC" concert in London in 1971 faithfully records not only the unmatched depth and beauty of her flawless contralto, but the ladylike grace and modesty of this remarkable and lovely superstar.  At a time when she was the most successful female pop vocalist in the world, Karen never resorted to any form of self-indulgent exhibitionism or vanity, but simply let her magnificent voice, surrounded by her brother's exquisite arrangements and a superb group of backup musicians, do artistic justice to great music.

                A final illustration of the uplifting qualities reflected in Miss Carpenters' musical performances can be found in the Carpenters' classical ode to innocence, "Bless the Beasts and the Children."  This was the emotive soundtrack theme song of the somewhat edgy animal rights and adolescent right-of-passage movie of the same name.  The song was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972.  It is hard to envisage any other vocalist who could credibly bring off this anthem with the sincerity and innocence which it required, and which Karen so naturally and movingly conveyed.  The song also provided the backdrop for a series of public service television ads urging responsible treatment of pets which the Carpenters performed for the Humane Society.  Fast forward 40 years to find Miley Cyrus using teddy bears -- once the innocent toys of childhood -- as porn props for her creepy VMA burlesque, and we can grasp the pertinence and foresight of Karen's exhortation concerning the adult world's responsibility towards children and animals:  "Light their way when the darkness surrounds them."  In today's wretched media culture, regrettably, the darkness is winning that battle in a rout.

       
         Karen Carpenter was a model of personal and professional modesty even as she recorded and performed some of the greatest pop and romantic music of the 20^th century.  Her preserved performances, a perfect antidote to the VMA smut of Gaga and Cyrus, provide a refreshing and cleansing retreat from the cultural sewage that too much surrounds us in the early years of the 21^st.

MEDIA MOVES FROM RACIAL DOUBLE STANDARD TO CRAVEN COMPLICITY

       As I recently demonstrated on this blog, see "Media Suppression of Racial Realities in Crime Reporting," splashingrocks.blogspot.com, America's mainstream TV, internet, and print media have steadfastly suppressed facts, information, and stories that would reveal the infuriating extent of black-on-white violent crime in this country today.  Those who do seek to expose and spread the truth on this issue commonly refer to the media's perverse dishonesty in inter-racial crime reporting as the product of a "double standard" -- i.e., an enthusiastic readiness to report and dramatize the relatively rare instances of white-on-black crime (e.g., the Zimmerman-Martin episode) in contrast with a systematic and institutionalized refusal to reveal the race of blacks who commit violent crimes against white victims, even in the most egregious cases.

         It is beginning to appear, however, that blandly describing this widespread form of media malpractice as a mere "double standard" is far too generous an understatement, serving as something of a convenient euphemism.  The especially perfidious reporting of the most recent of many black-on-white criminal outrages this summer -- the bullet-in-back murder of a young white Australian man in Oklahoma by two black thugs (assisted by a third thug of indistinct, but apparently mostly caucasan, lineage) -- is moving SR to the view that a more genuine description of the media's role in the misreporting of inter-racial crime is one of craven complicity. 

        In deliberately and systematically concealing and minimizing the widespread occurrence of violent black-on-white crime, the media effectively condones and facilitates it.

        Although one could point to many similar examples, the Associated Press (AP) report of the murderous outrage in Duncan, Oklahoma, was particularly dishonest and shamelessly misleading.  It's opening line states as follows (see Washington Post, Aug. 21, 2012, at p.3, and washingtonpost.com):

               With the simplest of motives -- breaking up the boredom of an Oklahoma summer --
        three teenagers followed an Australian collegiate baseball player who was attending school
        in the United States and killed him with a shot to the back for "the fun of it," prosecutors
        said Tuesday as they charged two of the teens with murder.

      The insidiously deceptive and vapid phrases used to characterize these atrocities -- allegedly bored generic "teenagers" acting on "the simplest of motives" -- served to distract the reader's attention from any suspicion that some kind of inter-racial hate crime may have been afoot.  One would search in vain through every line of the AP/Post report for any indication of the murderers' race.  And the Post's presentation of the story included only a photo of one of the impromptu memorials for the victim, while omitting the mug-shot photos of the hardened faces of the perpetrators that were included in reports on conservative websites. 

                                                                  

                                                                                   from theguardian.com               
                             The Media's "Bored Teenagers" Theory of Summer Murders 

       Anyone depending upon the AP/Post report for information on the Oklahoma atrocity would have been left clueless as to certain highly significant characteristics and motives of the perps that more vigilant and professional news outlets quickly discovered and reported.  While AP and the Post so glibly, falsely, and sneeringly reported that these murders were attributable to the need to escape "the boredom of an Oklahoma summer," vigilant internet truth-seekers unfettered by liberal establishment blinders honed in like lasers upon the darker and more insidious realities at work.

       The ever vigilant Pajamas Media, see Bryan Preston's article at PJMedia.com, and other internet reporters, see "Investigation: Chris Lane Death Result of Gangster, Gang Culture," at storyleak.com, lost little time in finding and scrutinizing the Facebook and other social media pages of James Edwards and Chancey Luna, the two arrested perpetrators charged with Murder One.  These materials demonstrate that Edwards and Luna were heavily involved in the so-called "gangsta" rap culture, including possible links to the notorious Crips crime gang.  Pictures of Edwards and Luna arrogantly flashing gang signs were also displayed on the media pages.  It has also been reported that Edwards had expressed hatred for white people on his Twitter account.

         In short, what the mainstream media sought to disguise as a random, inexplicable killing committed by a faceless and generic group of bored and aimless "teenagers" was actually a patently obvious inter-racial hate crime perpetrated by a pair of black delinquent thugs who were openly and proudly associated with the so-called "gangsta" culture and possibly with the notorious Crips African-American crime gang, or a variant thereof. 

        This murder was not "random" and is attributable to something far darker than boredom.  It was instead an act of calculated inter-racial malice perpetrated by barbarians whose own public declarations and displays conclusively reveal their embrace of a violent black-gangster culture.  Any contention that there was no racial element in this atrocity is demolished when one recognizes the absurdity of insisting that these thugs would just as likely have selected a fellow black bystander for random execution.

         The mainstream media's continuing and systemic dishonesty in misrepresenting or ignoring outrageous inter-racial crimes like the recent atrocities in Oklahoma, Brunswick, Georgia (the point-blank murder of an infant in his stroller), and Gulfport, Florida (the infuriating 3-on-1 school-bus beating) does more than conceal the magnitude of black-on-white crime from the public.  It continues to feed the insidious fallacy -- fanned by the Obama administration as well as by the media -- that violent black delinquents are victims rather than criminals.  In doing so, the media obscurantists have moved beyond a mere double standard into the pernicious realm of complicity.

UPDATE      UPDATE

       August 23.  Hardly had the ink dried on reports of the Oklahoma atrocity when another infuriating inter-racial attack occurred and was again either ignored or misreported by various mainstream media cites.  Delbert Belton, a white 89-year-old Army veteran of World War II who had been wounded at the bloody Battle of Okinawa, was beaten to death in a Spokane, Washington, parking lot by two black thugs whose pictures were captured, presumably by a security camera.  The odious perpetrators had not been apprehended or identified as of this post. 

      As usual, the stalwart Drudge Report immediately reported the outrage, including the entirely relevant reporting of the fugitive thugs' race.  Fox News filed a similarly prompt and complete report, but the persistently deceptive CNN's report of the incident reiterated the stock liberal media canard that these obviously racial hate crimes are merely random, shamelessly stating, "It was the second time in a week that a seemingly random attack by teenagers has claimed a life."  It is becoming increasingly apparent that in the liberal media's style book, the term "random" has become a synonym for "black-on-white" or "inter-racial."  Another revealing point:  How does CNN know that the unapprehended, unidentified perpetrators in the Spokane murder were in fact "teenagers"?  They don't, but what does it matter to a news outlet where sloppiness and negligence are at least an improvement on deliberate falsehood. 

      Significantly, as of this morning, both the Washington Post and the LA Times sights had simply ignored this hellacious but totally newsworthy story, with the Post reporting instead on the far more important topic of "NFL bag policy," and the LA Times considering a follow-up story on developments of the prior slaying of a transgender person in Florida more significant than genuine "hot news" on the shocking Spokane murder of an aged WWII hero.

      But the prize for the most fraudulent, deceptive, and unprofessional reporting today goes to the CBSNews.com website.  Needless to day, CBS.com failed to report the Spokane outrage, but it was still dedicating space to concealing the now obvious racial facts in the Oklahoma murder.  Days after multiple outlets had published facts demonstrating that the Oklahoma perpetrators were associated with the black "gangsta" culture, that at least one of them had spewed anti-white venom in his social media outlet, and that two of the killers may have had connections with the Crips crime gang, the CBS site was still perpetuating the fraudulent narrative of a "random" killing by bored teenagers.  Incredibly, CBS ran a gallery of seven pictures related to the slaying, but not one of them portrayed the killers themselves.  And when CBS.com finally got around to running a story on one of the perpetrator's (Edwards) hate-filled social media postings, it perversely suppressed any mention of the fact that he was black.  A more glaring example of perversely deceptive and misleading reporting of a major national (indeed, international) inter-racial crime story would be difficult to conceive.

THE RAINBOW GENERALS

               There was a time when the U.S. military's monolithic and enthusiastic response to presidential directives was an admirable and reassuring trait – such as its prompt and agile mobilization for all-out war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  Now, instead, the military leadership's headlong rush to fall enthusiastically in step with immoral and tyrannical policies such as the Obama administration's campaign to impose a radical pro-homosexual agenda on the entire nation should be cause for deep concern.

                Only recently, for example, the Pentagon has made special provisions to enable homosexual service members who decide to "marry" each other to travel cross-country to states that permit same sex marriage.  Seven to ten days of preferential and unchargeable leave will be granted to these same-sex military couples so they can circumvent the laws that limit marriage to one man and one woman in the state in which they are stationed or their state of residence.  This cross-country marriage leave will be fully paid, of course, as well as unchargeable, so unsuspecting citizens will be glad to know that they are now subsidizing same-sex military marriages with their taxes.  The Pentagon's policy on special leave arrangements for homosexual military honeymoons was not made clear.

                But this is hardly the only area in which homosexual troops are receiving special and preferred treatment, while their heterosexual comrades-in-arms are admonished to button their lips and salute the Rainbow Flag.  Although military personnel are generally prohibited from wearing their uniforms in off-duty parades or demonstrations, in 2012 the Defense Department specially authorized homosexual troops to wear their uniforms in a so-called Gay Pride parade in San Diego.  The Pentagon's utterly incoherent and circular justification for the preferential approval was that the organizers had "encouraged" gay troops to wear their uniforms and that the parade had received national attention.  Then the special permission was repeated for the same Gay Pride parade in 2013.  One can only imagine the sputtering response of Obama's politically correct generals and admirals if sponsors of the annual Right to Life March "encouraged" pro-life service members to wear their uniforms at the next March and requested a similar exemption.

                                                                  

Marine Legend Chesty Puller would not be amused by the Corps' LGBT Outreach                

                Elsewhere, U.S. Air Force officials recently defended a vulgar public performance by a bevy of drag queens at a so-called "Diversity Day" celebration officially sponsored at a Los Angeles Air Force Base.  An Air Force spokeswoman, aggressively defending this grotesque burlesque in language that would have done credit to Barney Frank himself, actually stated, "Drag acts to this day represent the struggle for freedom and equality of the LGBT community, while at the same time providing a deep-rooted form of historical entertainment for the LGBT culture."  The Air Force did not address the suitability of such "historical entertainment" for the young dependent children who would be exposed to it as they innocently strolled the base with their unsuspecting military parents. In a conflict between the unfettered expression of "LGBT culture" and the innocence of dependent military children we now know that the U.S. Air Force stands squarely with the drag queens.

                But the Air Force is not alone in its suddenly discovered enthusiasm for the LGBT agenda.  Two years ago, no sooner had the military's long-standing prohibition of homosexual acts been revoked than none other than the U.S. Marine Corps rushed headlong to outdo the other services in targeted recruitment of homosexuals.  Crew-cut Marine recruiters quickly deployed to gay community centers in an effort to take the lead in enticing homosexuals to enlist in their service.  See "Marines Hit the Ground Running in Seeking Recruits at Gay Center," NY Times (Sept. 11, 2011), at nytimes.com/2011/09/21.  Astonished Marine veterans everywhere can only ask, "Where is Chesty Puller when we need him?"  We can only be sure that, like Queen Victoria, he is "not amused."

                Far from amusing, the military leadership's unquestioning and gung ho embrace of the administration's pro-homosexual agenda is distinctly ominous.  As shown by the above examples, it goes well beyond merely minimal obedience to the letter of presidential directives and statutory requirements, and reflects a bizarre and unseemly enthusiasm for some of the most extreme tenets of LGBT orthodoxy.  It indicates that military leadership is willing to turn cartwheels and somersaults to curry favor with their political masters, at the expense of the vast majority of the troops in their command. 

                At the slightest tug of the strings by their presidential puppeteer, the military authorities instantly reversed long-held positions and policies respecting the dangers of homosexuality in the barracks to enthusiastically assume the role of pro-LGBT authoritarians and advocates -- ready, willing, and able to suppress and punish the views of brave soldiers and Marines whose moral and religious principles conflict with this profound and sudden reversal of a fundamental tenet of the military and moral code.

                One then can but wonder:  What other longstanding principles and standards of this Nation would today's sycophantic general staff be so enthusiastically and instantaneously prepared to abandon some day at the behest of a Caligulan president?     

        
                Before the time-honored military policy against homosexual activity in the military was repealed, then Marine Commandant James Amos had forcefully testified and spoken out against repeal, stressing that the distractions caused by homosexual incursion into the force may  even endanger the lives of Marines in combat.  But as soon as the traditional policy was reversed by the politicians in Washington, General Amos instantly suppressed his presumably genuine fear that the spread of openly homosexual Marines throughout the force would introduce a disruptive element that could endanger the lives of the Marine under his command.  Not content merely to suppress his misgivings about the safety of his troops, the compliant Commandant went so far as to declare that the Corps would now "step out smartly to faithfully implement" the new pro-homosexual directive. 

                 There was a time when a senior officer might have honorably resigned his commission rather than embrace a policy that he believed would endanger or deeply demoralize his troops, unless that policy were necessary for the defense of the Nation or other essential strategic objectives.  Needless to say, the accommodation of a pro-homosexual political agenda meets neither of those objectives.  Yet, far from either resigning or even continuing to offer principled dissent against the new policy, the Commandant insisted that the Corps must "step out smartly" and enthusiastically advance it.

                President Obama and his administration have repeatedly demonstrated their disregard for the restrictions of the Constitution and laws of the Nation in furthering their political objectives.  They have done so, to cite just a few examples, by categorically declining to enforce the immigration laws to deport illegal aliens, unilaterally dropping the requirement to seek work as a precondition to welfare, and selectively deciding which provisions of the health care reform law to enforce.

                Is it only a matter of time before this law-defying administration employs an unquestioningly subservient general staff to jettison other longstanding principles and standards in furtherance of its extreme political and social agenda?  At present, it is only members of the military itself whose constitutional and religious rights – such as the right to assert and obey one's religious beliefs on matters of sexual morality -- are being trampled by military commanders to force conformity to the regime's pro-LGBTpolicies.  Yet in an era when the invocation of even a chimerical terrorist threat can be used to justify the functional equivalent of martial law – witness the lockdown of Boston to enable militarized police to pursue a solitary teenage fugitive, see "Lockdown over Liberty in Boston," at splashingrocks.blogspot.com – peremptory deployment of the Armed Forces in unprecedented contexts and for unprecedented purposes does not seem as farfetched as it seemed only a decade ago.

                After all, it was only recently that a Department of Homeland Security report conflated those opposed to abortion and Big Government, as well as other conservative categories, with potential terrorists.  We might be only one crisis and one presidential terrorist designation away from a situation where a compliant general staff orders the troops to "step out smartly" to suppress ideologically disfavored groups of Americans.

MEDIA SUPPRESSION OF RACIAL REALITIES IN CRIME REPORTING

               As noted in my prior posts and elsewhere, the major television, internet, and print media outlets deliberately manipulated the facts of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case to create and cultivate the inflammatory and false narrative of an outrageous white-on-black crime.  The Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department seized on this opportunistic mythology and ran with it to appease their most-favored minority constituency.  Notwithstanding Zimmerman's acquittal by an honest jury, Holder's minions at DOJ continue to cultivate and pursue the possibility of a federal civil rights lawsuit against Zimmerman, although it is evident to informed legal observers that adequate grounds for such a suit are lacking and that even Holder will have to reluctantly acknowledge that in the end.

                But a more recent and deeply infuriating inter-racial crime, and the major media's blatantly dishonest response to it, underscores in harsh relief the profoundly disturbing corruption of both the media and the Obama administration with respect to the inter-racial aspects of violent crime.

                Back on July 9, three 15-year-old black delinquents participated in a brutal beating of a smaller 13-year-old white boy on a school bus in Gulfport, Florida.  The story only surfaced nationally because it was recorded on video and, in the parlance of the day, the video "went viral" on YouTube.  The video reveals a sickeningly sadistic assault by a group of criminal bullies who have since been charged by authorities with aggravated assault (one has also been charged with robbery of the victim). 

               The bus driver in question, who was a 64-year-old black man, did not intervene physically to stop the assault, although he did tell the assailants to stop and placed a call to dispatchers urgently calling for help.  The youthful victim somehow managed to leave the bus, with a broken arm and black eyes, apparently before the authorities arrived.  The assailants were later arrested and charged, but apparently have been released pending trial or plea.  They should be charged as adults and prosecuted for felonious assault, but one suspects they will be tried as juveniles and escape the lengthy imprisonment they deserve.

                                          Mainstream Media contemplates Black-on-White Crime

                Appallingly, but not surprisingly, major media outlets reporting this outrageous criminal assault suppressed its inter-racial character.  It should first be noted that the crime would not likely have been reported at all but for the widespread circulation of the sickening video on the internet.  But even when television media outlets picked up the video, they apparently doctored it to conceal the fact that the victim was white.  As reported in the Bayou Buzz, www.bayoubuzz.com/us:

                                But one reason the case has not become as racially charged as other attacks

                may be that many news outlets have either not shown the first few seconds, before
                the victim goes down behind a seat, and others blur out his face to the point that his
                race is no longer apparent.

                Apparent video doctoring was not the only evidence of media manipulation to suppress the exposure of another black-on-white crime that underscores the absurdity of the false "We are Trayvon" narrative of the purported national threat to young black males.  A quick spot-check of media reports identified by an internet search shows that both national and local media reports of the incident deliberately suppressed its manifest inter-racial character.

                A CNN report, at http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/05/justice/florida-school-bus-beating, slyly focused attention on the issue of the bus driver's responsibility, neatly diverting attention from the real issue of a violent inter-racial beating of a young boy on a school bus in apparent retaliation for reporting a drug-pusher.  CNN not only failed to report that the victim was white, but even suppressed the race of the black perpetrators (made obvious on the video).  Both the Tampa Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel also suppressed the racial component of the crime in their stories.  The Sentinel's journalistic dereliction was even more outrageous.  Its headline of the story read "Teens beat classmate over a marijuana dispute [emphasis added]."   Not only does this headline deftly divert attention from the inter-racial bullying aspect of the beating, but it insidiously implies that the victim may have brought the beating upon himself by some kind of involvement in drug dealing.  Thus, in their perverse commitment to the distortion of racial reality, the media portray a brutal inter-racial assault as a "marijuana dispute."

                 The most infuriating aspect of such deliberately deceptive and truth-suppressing reporting on racial matters in the mainstream media is that it is part of a consistent pattern rather than an isolated episode.  That pattern is so well-documented as to require no further elaboration here.  See, e.g., "Newark Star Ledger admits to censoring race in savage mob attacks," Examiner.com (May9, 2012), at http://www.examiner.com/article/star-ledger-admits-to-censoring-race-savage-post-concert-mob-attacks.  Conversely, of course, the liberal mainstream media is only too glad to report, or even to invent, an inter-racial component when the victims are black or other minorities, as evidenced by the Zimmerman-Martin affair.

                As shown in prior posts, this racially-biased approach in the media's reporting of crime and other policy issues reinforces, and seeks to validate, the Obama administration's similarly biased policies and practices on racial matters.  The Obama-Holder Justice Department has made it clear that it has no interest in investigating, let alone prosecuting, outrageous black-on-white episodes of inter-racial crime such as the Gulfport incident and many others like it.  Yet a single episode of self-defense killing of a black teenager by a so-called "White Hispanic" is deceptively portrayed as evidence of rampant anti-black crime by Obama, Holder, and their media minions, and is relentlessly pursued and exploited by a politically corrupted Justice Department.

                Despite all this, Republican "leaders" in Congress, Statehouses, and elsewhere seem loathe to raise, let alone pursue, an issue that demands strong prominent voices to counter the false racial narrative pedaled by the Obama administration, the Holder Justice Department, and their subservient mouthpieces in the media.  This reluctance appears to be attributable in large part to an irrational and unwarranted concern that opposing anti-white bias in law enforcement and other areas of public policy will offend the sensibilities of constituencies that would never vote for Republicans or conservatives in any event.  Those leaders should be more concerned about the constituencies who do vote for them, many of whom have had enough of the increasingly insidious racial double standard in law enforcement, public policy, and media reporting.

 

OBAMA, THE MEDIA, AND THE HUMPTY DUMPTY METHOD OF RACE MANIPULATION

          My previous post examined how the Obama-Holder Justice Department has reacted to the Zimmerman-Martin case as the champion and advocate of the interests of Black Americans rather than as representatives of the Nation as a whole. 

         No sooner had that piece been posted than Obama emphatically validated its theme by delivering a "surprise" Friday afternoon television soliloquy in which he repeated the same hackneyed and bogus canards regarding alleged black victimization which have been the stock-in-trade of American race hustlers for over half a century.  He continued the Administration's race-based exploitation of the Zimmerman case by invoking it as a pretext for the repeal of the numerous state Stand-Your-Ground (SYG) laws, which rightly uphold the time-honored right of Americans to defend themselves against violent predators, and by perpetuating the fallacy that the wildly disproportionate share of violent crimes committed by young blacks is somehow the fault and responsibility of the citizenry as a whole.  Obama's call for repeal of SYG laws was especially audacious, since the alternative to strengthening self-defense capacity in today's America is to place blind reliance in the protection of government law enforcement typified by Obama's politically and racially biased Justice Department.  Good luck with that.

         Obama also repeated various outright racial falsehoods in his speech, such as the claim that the death penalty is discriminatorily imposed on blacks, when in fact (as detailed in a previous post on this blog, "Two Generations of Racial Preference -- and America Still Sleeps," www.splashingrocks.blogspot.com) the opposite is true -- white murderers are far more likely to receive the death penalty than their black counterparts, as demonstrated by the annual statistics published by the Justice Department's own Bureau of Justice Statistics.   Indeed, the casual assertion of out-and-out racial falsehoods as though they were well-established truths is a specialty of this president.  As but one example, he blithely asserted that "[t]here are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store."  To which I respond:  Nonsense.  Where is the evidence for this wildly hyperbolic assertion?  He doesn't have it.  Anyone with the slightest knowledge of realities in contemporary America knows that retail and other store proprietors are so paranoid about the prospect of being charged with racial harassment for even the slightest perceived insensitivity that they bend over backward to avoid any appearance of discriminatory behavior towards blacks.  This and other similar cavalier assertions in his manipulative speech are nothing more than incendiary canards.  But, of course, no one in the mainstream media has the slightest inclination to examine the truth of such assertions, much less to call him on them.

                                                                    

          Like Humpty Dumpty, Obama and the media make race language mean whatever they choose.                                
          
           As much as people prefer to avoid the issue, it can no longer be realistically denied that Obama and Holder demonstrate a glaring pro-black bias when they persist in their obsessive preoccupation with the defensive killing of Trayvon Martin, while they callously ignore far more atrocious murders of whites by black criminals, such as the previously noted point-blank murder of a one-year-old baby in Brunswick, Georgia.  Further, their failure to give similar attention to the countless far more culpable and malicious murders of blacks by other blacks, should leave no doubt as to the race-based discrimination in their approach to criminal justice and public policy.  The obvious reason for the administration to seize upon and dramatize the comparatively rare incidence of a black being killed by a non-black (Mr. Zimmerman), while studiously avoiding any public outrage against the thousands of blacks who murder other blacks, is to perpetuate and exploit  the myth of alleged white racism in America.

 

                                                     * * * *

 

              Although the Administration's manipulative role in the Zimmerman case bears much responsibility for the division and discord that it has generated, no discussion of the affair would be complete without citing the equally insidious part played by the television, print, and electronic mainstream media in turning a routine local crime story into a veritable bonfire of racial agitation.  I will not duplicate the considerable commentary on this issue in other conservative sources, but will confine my observations to the media's grotesque manipulation of terminology to obscure truth and appeal to passion and prejudice.

 

               The media's insidious malpractice in the Zimmerman-Martin affair has included some of the most shameful misreporting ever perpetrated in American journalism.  The shorthand descriptions used to fix the gullible public's perception of the two protagonists have been especially egregious in their duplicity.  Like the perverse philosopher Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, the leftist media has twisted the language describing the case to convey whatever distorted racial message they "choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

                Both TV and newspaper poltroons, for example, have repeatedly and shamelessly misrepresented the altercation between Zimmerman and Martin as an armed man's attack on a "child."  Putting aside the fallacy of  calling Zimmerman's jury-validated self-defense as an unprovoked attack, the portrayal of the strapping 17-year-old Martin as a "child" is not only grossly deceptive and deliberately inflammatory, but an insult to the legions of 17-year-old (and younger) men who have served honorably and effectively as warriors in the U.S. Armed Forces. 

                Both the Navy and Marine Corps accepted enlistments from 17-year-olds in World War II (and still do), and many thousands of these teenagers (including my Father-in-Law, who was a UDT Navy diver) played crucial combat and support roles in the defeat of the Axis Powers.  Indeed, the legendary Marine Jacklyn ("Jack") Lucas – who had actually enlisted at the age of 14 without his parents' permission, claiming to be 17 – won the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism at Iwo Jima when he was still only 17 years old.  Military history alone – even putting aside such teenage freaks as Alexander the Great – confirms that 17-year-olds are indeed men, especially with regard to physical fighting capacity.  So spare us the lugubrious portrayal of Martin as some vulnerable "child."  Martin was not a child, but a physically fit young man, more than capable of defending himself and inflicting mayhem on others.  Yet the media outlets and the race-baiters deliberately perpetrated the fallacy of Martin as some kind of vulnerable waif.

                The media's Orwellian distortion of Zimmerman's racial or ethnic status has been equally  duplicitous.  From the start, the media and the race-baiters were frothing at the mouth to portray the killing as a white-on-black crime.  White-on-black murders are so relatively rare (especially in comparison to black-on-white), and yet so crucial to the left's false narrative of allegedly persistent white racism, that the media and the black political agitators were united in their determination to portray Mr. Zimmerman as a non-minority "white." 

                Yet by the standards each of those cohorts generally employ in racial or ethnic matters Zimmerman would normally have been classified as an Hispanic minority.  His mother is a Peruvian Latina, while his father is apparently a non-minority Caucasian.  Because liberal civil rights and political policy relentlessly seek to expand the "minority" community – and because it is often legally, economically, and politically advantageous to be classified as a minority – persons of such divided parentage are typically classified on the minority side. 

              President Obama, who is 50% white, emphatically and insistently portrays himself as black – but Obama is mathematically no more "black" than Zimmerman is "white."  Similarly, the extremely diverse ethnicity of Tiger Woods is considerably less than 50% black – his mother has no black ancestry and his father is a mixed-race black -- but the liberal media has always emphasized Tiger's purported blackness because that portrayal suits its narrative purposes. 

             In telling contrast, however, the liberal media (led by the duplicitous N.Y. Times) has persistently described Zimmerman with the contrived label of "White Hispanic," and deliberately disregarded his actual minority status.  Had the media honestly recognized Zimmerman's status as a Hispanic-American minority from the outset, their incendiary narrative of a white man's murder of a black "child" would have been confused and diluted.  But there is little room for such honesty when liberal journalists are on the scent of a story that can be shaped to fit their obsessive narrative of white racism.

           If Zimmerman is a "White Hispanic," then Obama is a "White Black."  Neither label makes much sense, but the media, the racial agitators, and the Administration perpetuate the distortion of Zimmerman's actual ethnicity in order to exploit the racial elements of the story.

HOLDER'S DEPARTMENT OF MOB JUSTICE

          SR regrets the absence of posts over the past few weeks, owing to two distinct reasons.  An invigorating beach vacation with a lively three-generation family, and reasonably decent body-surfing waves at Sea Isle City, NJ, accounts for the first portion of the break.  But my blog-silence was prolonged by less pleasant factors:  the accumulation of appalling developments in the news during this interlude, including the U.S. Supreme Court's constitutionally incoherent de facto endorsement of the unnatural oxymoron of same-sex marriage, temporarily rendered me speechless with astonishment.  Only now am I beginning to regain what passes for equanimity in my rock-splashing state of mind.  I plan to first address some of the deeply disturbing racial issues raised in the wake of the clearly valid acquittal in the  George Zimmerman case.  Later, I expect to examine the distortion of young children's natural values and perceptions that are likely to follow from the mindless and indiscriminate acceptance of the homosexual agenda by an increasingly large portion of the American public, which is likely to expand further yet in the wake of the Supreme Court's incoherent rulings. 

                                                   * * *

                 Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the self-defense killing of Trayvon Martin, the Obama Administration has reacted in a manner that further confirms a racially biased approach to justice and law enforcement policy that has long been evident but which has been overlooked by both the media and what passes for a Republican opposition. 

                While Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and other Administration hacks studiously ignore outrageous incidents of black-on-white crime that would appall even the most hardened observer – like the almost unbelievable recent point-blank shooting and murder of a 13-month-old white infant by two black teenage thugs in Brunswick, Georgia – they deliberately distort and exploit the jury-validated self-defense killing of a young black man by a Hispanic man in a manner intended to perpetuate the canard that white racism pervades the American justice system.  From these and other episodes (like the notorious New Black Panther voter intimidation case), it is becoming increasingly clear that the administration of justice under Obama and Holder is infected by a strong element of pro-black  bias.

                Promptly after the killing of Mr. Martin, Obama helped to sensationalize and elevate the case with his gratuitous observation that if he had a son, he would look like Martin.  The obvious purpose of this statement was to place the presidential imprimatur on Martin's status as an icon of black victimization, while its obvious result was to further inflame public and media outrage against Zimmerman. Obama hadn't the slightest knowledge of what actually happened in the tragic confrontation in Florida, or whether legitimate self-defense was involved, yet he chose to use the presidential bully pulpit to help transform a routine local law enforcement matter into a racially inflammatory media circus that would seriously undermine the nation's race relations.

           
                Meanwhile, Eric Holder's Justice Department sent its so-called Community Relations Service to Florida, where (at taxpayer expense) it joined with race-baiting black and so-called civil rights organizations in organizing rallies, marches, and protests that further inflamed racial antagonism against Zimmerman and anyone supporting or defending him in connection with the Martin confrontation.  Rather than seeking to cool racial passions and encourage dispassionate compliance with the rule of law, the Justice Department stoked the frenzy to convict Zimmerman in the court of public opinion before a jury could fairly determine his guilt or innocence based on the actual evidence.

                                                           

  Media Justice for Mr. Zimmerman -- Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards

                 Notwithstanding the fanatic, relentless prosecution by a band of ruthless special prosecutors -- cheered on by a grotesquely biased liberal media baying for the defendant's head like the Queen of Hearts -- Zimmerman was acquitted by the jury on all counts.  The integrity and objectivity of the jury's verdict is emphatically underscored by an especially compelling circumstance:  a contrary verdict would have spared them the menacing threats, insults, calumnies, and genuine dangers to themselves and their families that resulted from their conscientious decision.  They followed the evidence where it led them, and took the heat.  But future jurors in similar cases might not be so courageous after observing what a dangerous and thankless task it is to reach a verdict that does not conform to the angry demands of the media-driven mobs.

                 Although the Administration itself had contributed to the racially incendiary nature of the Zimmerman case, Obama issued a statement after the verdict stating that although the case had elicited strong passions, "we are a nation of laws and a jury has spoken."  The statement signaled that the jury's verdict should be respected and that the nation should move on to the task of preventing "future tragedies." 

                But hardly had the President's statement faded from the airwaves before his insufferable Attorney General was on the racial stump, assuring the various black groups and agitators that the case was far from closed, notwithstanding the President's admonition that "a jury has spoken."  He declared that, notwithstanding Zimmerman's full acquittal, the Justice Department would forge ahead with its aggressive investigation into a possible second criminal prosecution of Zimmerman on federal civil rights charges.  The Justice Department even solicited the submission of any additional "evidence" that citizens might have to a DOJ website, even setting up a public e-mail address to receive "tips" from civil rights groups and the like. 

                Holder and his feckless DOJ minions must be aware that they have no legal basis for bringing any federal criminal charges against Zimmerman.  The FBI's report of its own investigation of the matter reveals that there is no evidence of racial bias motivating Zimmerman's actions, which would be essential to the federal civil rights charges that Holder insists are still on the table.  Moreover, fundamental principles of double jeopardy militate against such a second prosecution, even if the Department could establish technical grounds for evading the double jeopardy bar under a contrived theory of separate sovereignty.  Rather, it is clear that the Department's persistence in pursuing Mr. Zimmerman is motivated by race-based pandering to black political organizations, racial agitators, and baying mobs in the streets.

                Holder took his pandering and distortion to new levels in a speech to the NAACP further stoking the flames of the Zimmerman case.  He shamefully described the rabid rioting and marauding by mobs angered by the jury's verdict as "peaceful protests . . . designed to inspire responsible debate."  In fact, the protests were violent and radical, such as the reported attack on a Hispanic man in Baltimore where the black "protesters" shouted, "This is for Trayvon."  And while Holder falsely depicted mob violence as peaceful protest, the internet reverberated with countless threats against not only Mr. Zimmerman himself, but his family and the trial jury, including numerous menacing tweats (some by celebrities and famous athletes) that were reported in the media. 

                The race-based violence of the Zimmerman rioters and the race-based Zimmerman-related threats on the internet, Twitter, and elsewhere implicate genuine federal crimes and civil rights offenses that the Justice Department should be forcefully pursuing.  So too, of course, did the unspeakable hate crime committed by the black teenagers who shot the one-year-old white infant in Georgia.  In the same vein, the graphically documented voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party thugs at Philadelphia polling places in the 2008 elections presented one of the most egregious violations of the Voting Rights Act in this century.

                Yet Holder's Justice Department ignores or simply refuses to pursue these and countless similar outrages, even while it persists in pursuing the persecution of a man who has just been acquitted of all charges by an honest jury in a vigorously and relentlessly prosecuted case involving apparent self-defense.

                The Holder Justice Department's disparate approach to these matters provides persuasive evidence of a racially biased administration of justice.  Holder and Obama, both black, are in full control of federal law enforcement in today's America, and both are closely associated with, and committed to, the political and legal agenda advanced by black interest groups like the NAACP, the Rainbow Push Coalition, and others like them.  The persecution of the so-called "White Hispanic" neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman is part of that legal agenda, while the pursuit of the black teenage killers in Georgia, the black voter intimidators in Philadelphia, and those who bandy violent threats against Mr. Zimmerman and the jurors who acquitted him is not. 

                There is a deeply disturbing pattern here, and the refusal to acknowledge and challenge it will only perpetuate the problem until it reaches more critical levels. 

                Next SR will address the obscenely distorted presentation of the Zimmerman case by what passes for the "news media" in a nation that seems increasingly indifferent to fair and accurate reporting of the difficult issues that affect its welfare.

 

BIG GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE AND THE EYE OF SAURON

               The National Security Agency's massive general surveillance of the phone and Internet communications of multiple millions of Americans eerily recalls the image of the Red Eye of Sauron sweeping like a menacing monitor-beacon over the Free Peoples of the West from a dark tower in Mordor. 

                Sensational metaphors aside – I just could not resist that one -- a remarkable aspect of this affair is the atypical division of opinion it has generated, confounding the usual divide between liberals/Democrats on one side versus conservatives/Republicans on the other.  In this case, the division appears to be drawn between two somewhat diversified general groupings that cross the standard lines.  Staunchly supporting this unprecedented mass surveillance by Mega-Tech Government is an unholy coalition of Obama Administration members and political supporters; Bush Administration alumni and loyalists who supported the earlier (and less sweeping) Patriot Act surveillance prototypes; advocates and defenders of Big Government; and the grizzled military/national security/intelligence Establishment of both parties.  Opposing the program are genuine libertarians of both the left and the right, and from both parties; hardcore, across-the-board opponents of the Obama Administration; and constitutional conservatives who oppose Big Government expansionism, without necessarily embracing the libertarian ideology.

 

                                     The All-Seeing Eye of Big Government Surveillance

                SR is more of a cultural conservative than a libertarian.  Nonetheless, coming on top of five years of the Obama Administration's anti-constitutional, oppressive, and perfidious misgovernance, the exposure of the grotesque scope of the NSA surveillance programs has pushed me over to the libertarian camp on this issue.  Without going into all the details of this complex affair, two particular issues seem especially persuasive in rejecting the Establishment's defense of this ugly, over-rated, and over-reaching citizen-surveillance program.

                First, virtually every defense and justification for this ominous monitoring program depends upon a false premise:  i.e., that it is a necessary and effective means of preventing catastrophic acts of terrorism and other major damages to national security.  The Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees – persons who are themselves complicit in the establishment and continued approval of the surveillance – insist, for example, that the programs are crucial, and that they have been "instrumental" and helpful in stopping several possible terrorist incidents. 

                 These claims are suspiciously vague, and must be taken entirely on trust, because the particulars that would reveal what really did or did not happen on the prevention side are invariably too confidential to reveal.  On the other hand, we do know that our national security Inspector Clouseaus have failed to thwart terrorist plots, such as the Boston Marathon fiasco, even when, for example, Putin's Russian intelligence services provide them with strong and specific advance warning.  So no one should buy these vague claims of the NSA program's alleged effectiveness unless and until there is a hard and specific demonstration that -- and in what way -- it was critical to stopping a truly substantial number of likely terrorist attacks.  As President Reagan famously said in another context, "Trust, but verify." 

                But some suggest a better idea altogether.  Rather than spending billions of tax dollars monitoring our own citizenry's communications, the Government might actually do something palpably effective to prevent terrorism, like barring radical Islamicists from entering the United States altogether.  Yet the same national security hardheads who so enthusiastically monitor innocent Americans' communications are paralyzed by Obama's policy of coddling Islam from taking such directly preventive measures.

                In any event, even if there were hard evidence that the surveillance program had actually helped to thwart a few potential terrorist incidents, it still would not justify the establishment of wholesale, dystopic police state surveillance of the general populace.  And at a cost of so many billions as to stagger the mind.  Enough of this notion that merely invoking the talisman of fighting terrorism justifies the surrender of our civil liberties and granting national security bureaucrats a blank check on our national treasury.  Instead, a rigorous cost-effectiveness test needs to be applied to these programs.  The tangible and demonstrable benefits of the program must be carefully weighed against its enormous impositions on privacy, liberty, and democracy, as well as its present and future costs in government expenditures.

                Secondly, we are repeatedly assured that the Government is merely gathering a mysterious category of information called "metadata" and that there are various checks to prevent the abuse of particularized prying into an innocent citizen's actual communications and transactions.  Of course, these checks are not foolproof; on the contrary.  We are nonetheless supposed to place our trust in the unimpeachable integrity and restraint of the officials and judges who control, operate, or supervise use of this massive surveillance matrix. 

                But the demonstrated corrupt and abusive behavior of the Obama Administration and its minions in scandal after scandal confirms that such trust would be foolishly misplaced.  The IRS's abuse of its power against conservative organizations in a shocking program of insidious political discrimination; the duplicity and deception by the national security agencies in the cover-up of the Benghazi disaster; the Justice Department's malfeasance and misrepresentations in such cases as the Operation Fast and Furious gun-running fiasco and the New Black Panthers voter intimidation outrage in Philadelphia; all these, and many other comparable episodes, demonstrate all too well that governments in general, and this administration in particular, should not be trusted with such massive discretionary power to monitor the communications of the citizenry. 

               We have simply been lulled for too long by the dubious pretext of national security necessity into a blind and passive trust that can no longer be sensibly justified.

                For those who nonetheless remain inclined to trust the Government with this massive power, closer consideration of the particular men and women in whom this trust is placed is in order.  Take, for example, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who was asked the following in a recent senate committee hearing on government surveillance issues:  “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”  Looking like a latter-day Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but without the theatrical charm, Clapper, after an excruciating and shifty-eyed consideration, responded, "No, sir."  But when the questioning senator pressed him, he apparently realized he might be getting himself into testimonial trouble, and so offered the following bizarre qualification:  “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.”  Given what we now know about the astronomical volume of data gather by NSA on at least "millions" of Americans, the brazen mendacity of Clapper's testimony on this grave matter is astonishing and disturbing.  There is nothing "inadvertent" or "unwitting" about NSA's undisputed mass collection of "any type of data" on millions of Americans.  And yet this character – and others like him, such as the devious Attorney General Eric Holder -- is a man who serves at the very highest levels of the government bureaucracy which we are expected to trust with the surveillance of the communications of virtually the entire citizenry.  With protectors like this, who needs threats?

                The threats to liberty and privacy raised by this open-ended mass sureveillance program are many and varied, but one is particularly salient in today's polarized political environment.  The Obama Administration and its liberal allies have exploited recent multiple murders by unhinged psychopaths to advocate legislative and regulatory programs to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American gun owners.  It does not take a paranoid imagination to foresee that the sophisticated, all-seeing electronic surveillance systems of the NSA and other agencies – especially when coupled with gun registration requirements that have been ardently proposed by gun control advocates – could be used to help identify, investigate, and prosecute Americans who exercise their Second Amendment rights in a manner deemed too assertive by an over-reaching Federal Government.  SR has previously posted about the disturbing historical precedent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's notorious Sword Hunt, see "Lessons of the Sword Hunt," Splashingrocks.blogspot.com, which reduced the Japanese people to abject subservience for centuries.  Let's hope we never reach the point in this country where the all-seeing surveillance powers of the Government threaten the American right to keep and bear arms with the prospect of a similar weapons hunt.