Tag: President Obama

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Editorial Opinion

Restore the DREAM Act

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

To say the least, President Trump is not renowned for either finesse or a judicious sense of timing. A case in point was the fact that, when North Korea last week was wagging its nuclear weaponry and making reckless threats against both the United States and staunch American ally South Korea, the president chose to unjustly accuse the South Koreans, who are in the Pyongyang regime’s direct line of fire, of “appeasement,” and to browbeat them for what he said was their unfair trade deal with the U.S.

Justin Fox Burks

DACA students at Rhodes College

Then there was Hurricane Harvey, the monster hurricane that savaged Texas, causing billions of dollars in damages, destroying countless thousands of homes, and dislocating the lives of the state’s citizens. If there was a high side to this catastrophe, it was the visible coming together of the people of Texas, across all class and ethnic lines, in heroic efforts to confront the emergency. It was a time when human fellow-feeling was the order of the day.

Not, evidently, for the current inhabitant of the White House, who, despite two showy visits to Texas, to suggest his concern, has once again flunked the test of compassion in his callous decision this week to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), a 2012 initiative by President Barack Obama that has granted work permits to nearly 800,000 young people, the children of undocumented immigrants. Huge numbers of these “Dreamers” (a term deriving from  the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, proposed — and still pending — legislation that would accomplish the same goals as DACA) were caught up in Harvey’s depredations, both as victims and as rescue workers.

In fairness to the president, he was up against a Tuesday legal deadline of sorts promulgated by 10 states threatening to double down on legal action to end DACA.

And, to be sure, Trump had campaigned last year on a pledge to terminate DACA (as well as every other Obama initiative he could think of). But, as recently as last week, in the course of one of his Texas photo ops, the president proclaimed, “We love the Dreamers,” giving rise to hopes that he might take another course of action.

Not so. As is so often the case, Memphis’ Democratic congressman Steve Cohen has aptly summed up the moment: “President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program is heartless, illogical, and un-American. DACA is a common-sense, compassionate program that helps protect from deportation young people who were brought to the United States by no choice of their own. According to the Center for American Progress, 95 percent of these DREAMers are currently either working or in school. The decision is not only harmful for the DREAMers, but also for America which relies on them for a more effective and productive workforce. I urge Congress to move quickly to protect these bright and talented young people who have significantly contributed to what makes America great.”

We agree. Congress should proceed at once to pass the Dream Act or some equivalent thereof. The benefits would accrue not just to the Dreamers but to the much-vaunted American Dream itself.

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From My Seat Sports

Inauguration Day: Then and Now

Among the hundreds of Memphis sporting events I’ve attended, one of the most memorable took place on January 19, 2009, at FedExForum. The Grizzlies hosted the Detroit Pistons in the franchise’s seventh-annual Martin Luther King Day game. Julius Erving was honored before the tip-off, so there was basketball majesty in the building. But the day lives on in my memory more for its place in time than for anything that happened on the hardwood.

The event took place the day before Barack Obama was inaugurated as America’s 44th president. Erving got some big cheers, as did second-year point guard Mike Conley. But the loudest applause that afternoon came during a video tribute, not to Dr. King, but to the man who would become this country’s first black president. It was extraordinary to absorb. A basketball game scheduled to honor this country’s patron saint of civil rights — a few short blocks from where he died — merely hours before a black man would take the highest office in the land.

There was togetherness that day at FedExForum, and not the typical, cheer-the-home-team synchronicity. As at every Grizzlies game, the crowd was majority white. And that crowd seemed to recognize a larger togetherness, one that stretched, well, from sea to shining sea. We all cheered the moment in time, the moment in American history.

I thought of that day Sunday night when the Grizzlies hosted Chicago in this year’s MLK Day game. ESPN had moved the game up a day, into a prime-time slot, a move that backfired when an NFL playoff game was pushed back into the same broadcast window. Eight years have been good to the Grizzlies, though, with six straight playoff appearances and players who now feel as much like family as numbers on a roster: Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Tony Allen. And Conley, owner of the fattest player contract in NBA history.

But what will Inauguration Day this year bring? There was no video presence for Donald Trump during Sunday’s game. And any sense of togetherness — “from sea to shining sea” — seems as distant as Vince Carter’s prime. The Grizzlies lost a close one to the Bulls, just as they fell to the Pistons eight years ago. But the result didn’t matter on January 19, 2009. None of us cared as we left the building. There was larger inspiration to be found.

Today? Every Grizzlies win serves a purpose needed more than ever, that of distraction. Of joy, if for just that night. If we can’t find togetherness as a country — perhaps that’s too ambitious — let’s at least find it with a team we cheer. And hope for better days ahead.

• Wednesday should be a good day for Memphis baseball fans with long memories. In his tenth year of eligibility, Tim Raines is all but certain to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The offensive catalyst for some fine Montreal Expos teams in the 1980s, Raines is fifth in baseball history with 808 stolen bases. He also starred in 1979 for the Memphis Chicks (Montreal’s Double-A affiliate at the time), batting .290 and stealing 59 bases for a team that made the Southern League playoffs. Raines would become the first former Memphis player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame since Gary Carter in 2003.

• Two years ago in this space, I made the case that Tom Brady is the first one-man dynasty in the history of American team sports (January 26, 2015). This Sunday, Brady and his New England Patriots will play in their sixth consecutive AFC Championship. It will be the 11th AFC title game for Brady in his 16 seasons as the Patriots’ starting quarterback. (His 11th in 15 seasons if we exclude the 2008 campaign, most of which Brady missed with a knee injury.)

This level and length of contention for NFL championships can be matched by only one other franchise. Over the course of 17 seasons (1966-82), the Dallas Cowboys played for the NFL or NFC Championship 12 times. During that period, four quarterbacks started those games: Don Meredith, Craig Morton, Roger Staubach, and Danny White. That lengthy era of success led to the Cowboys being tagged “America’s Team” by NFL Films. What does that make Tom Brady today?

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Opinion The Last Word

Not My Problem

CREDIT: Andrew Cline | Dreamstime.com

There’s a graphic that’s been making its way around social media for a while. It says something like, “I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, black, or white. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.” I’ve had many friends share it while patting themselves on the back for being so generous with their correctness. On the surface, it sounds great, but inside lurks the real evil: I’m not going to be nice to you until I see you’ve earned it. This tends to be shared by people who will also say they don’t see color. White people such as myself like to say this because it makes us feel like we’re doing a service to you by denying your ethnicity. After all, true equality means we’re all treated white, right?

I’ve been thinking about this lately because of our new Cheeto-in-Chief. Some of my left-leaning friends have spoken up loudly to say, just as my right-leaning friends did when Obama was elected, that Trump is not their president.

Here’s the problem. He is.

The year 2016 was one of blame cloaked as personal responsibility. Don’t want to get raped? Don’t drink at frat parties. Don’t want to be beaten for being transgendered? Stop being transgendered. Don’t want to be stopped by the police? Don’t dress like a thug. Don’t want to be mocked for your religion? Don’t wear a hijab. Don’t blame me! I voted for Hillary. Can’t blame me! I didn’t vote at all.

A few years ago, Elizabeth Warren and President Obama both stirred a bit of controversy for pointing out that no one achieves anything by themselves. They noted that when you build a successful business you do so using roads we all paid for. Your business is protected by tax-paid police and fire departments. Your business used community-financed resources such as electricity and water. Your responsibility as a business is to help repay that.

Andrew Cline | Dreamstime.com

Elizabeth Warren

They were both castigated for pointing out these facts. Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple? This is what critics asked. Are you saying he didn’t build that? No, that wasn’t what either of them said. Steve Jobs hired programmers, designers, cafeteria workers, security guards. He wasn’t a one-man office. And even if he were, he’d have still had to buy office supplies somewhere. The point was that your success doesn’t mean that someone else can’t be successful because you won’t help pay for repairing the roads you used to haul your goods across country.

When we say Donald Trump isn’t our president, it says that we will not take responsibility for what comes next. It’s a convenient excuse to sit at home and stream Netflix and eat aerosol cheese because, hey, that dude is your problem. Well, hey. Those who voted for him don’t see that dude as a problem. So when the company who makes the computer you use to watch Netflix is the same company as the one that provides your internet service you use to watch that company’s movies, and the cheese you’re squirting on crackers is a subsidiary of that very same company, and you find out this all happened because someone else’s president created a climate in which there is now no place else for you to go for internet and cheese, and your service is now being throttled because you could no longer afford unlimited bandwidth because with no competition that one company could charge whatever it damn well pleases for service, what are you going to do? Now that other person’s president has made it personal, because NO ONE MESSES WITH YOUR MURDER, SHE WROTE MARATHON.

When you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. And that means you think you’re entitled to your opinion that climate change is real. And that being gay isn’t a choice. And that bathroom laws aren’t necessary to protect our children. We’ll agree to disagree. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to deny what you don’t agree with or understand. You don’t get to deny your responsibility as a citizen because your candidate didn’t win. And you certainly don’t get to be a jackass because you think someone else might hurt your special snowflake feelings.

We wanted the swamp drained? It’s been drained and is filling up with corporate logos. With men who think they got there with no help from anyone. The 115th United States Congress will be brought to you by Exxon and Hardee’s. So you can get fries with that.

I cannot think of anyone more resistant to personal responsibility than a man who railed against a corrupt, rigged election that would put his opponent in power, but once he won, denied that same election was corrupted, despite proof a foreign power he lusts after was involved in corrupting it.

But hey, not my problem. I didn’t vote for him.

Susan Wilson writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com. She and her husband, Chuck, have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Who to Hate?

Well, now we know the culprit behind the mass murders in Orlando, Sunday morning. It was the Obama administration’s “political correctness.” At least that was what was responsible, according to an NRA spokesperson, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz, to name just three GOP leaders who propagated this hogwash.

None of these folks explained exactly how political correctness accounted for the shooting, but we can presume they think the FBI interviewed the killer and decided not to detain him under orders from the president, because Obama is afraid to offend Muslims and refuses to say the magic words “radical islamic terrorism.” Something like that. It couldn’t have been that the FBI made a mistake or was incompetent or that our gun laws are ineffective. Nope, political correctness is now a mass murderer.

Trump went on a Twitter rampage within hours of the shooting, congratulating himself for being “right” about Muslims. He then said we need to prevent immigration from any country with a “history of terrorism,” and doubled down by intimating that Obama himself had “something going on” when it came to Muslims.

The president initially responded to the tragedy by saying the murders appeared to be an act of domestic terrorism but that he would wait to make a judgment until all the facts were in. What a politically correct wuss.

Then, oops, we discovered that Omar Mateen, like Trump, was born in Queens. A day later, we found out that the killer, a Muslim, was quite likely gay and had frequented the Orlando club for years. Then we learned from former co-workers that he was a racist and was considered “unstable and unhinged.”

The GOP has shown itself to be anti-gay rights, anti-Hispanic, and anti-Muslim. So when a Muslim kills gays on “Latin Night,” it’s a real quandary. And when the Muslim murderer of all those Hispanic gay folks is apparently a self-loathing gay man himself, it gets even more complicated.

But look, political correctness didn’t kill 50 people in Orlando. Political “incorrectness” did, namely, the in-bred culture of demonizing and dehumanizing LGBT Americans that is propagated every year in legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly and other GOP-controlled legislatures around the country — laws that institutionalize discrimination and fear of gay people.

And it’s also the politically incorrect culture of ignorance and hatred spread in the name of Jesus and Allah by so many backward-thinking churches and “men of God.” It’s a culture that shames people into suppressing their true sexuality and gender identity, a shame that separates gays from their families and friends, causing feelings of guilt and hopelessness that can lead to suicide — or, in Mateen’s case, to rage and murder.

Governor Bill Haslam, Speaker Beth Harwell, and other GOP state and national leaders offered “hopes and prayers” and held “moments of silence” to honor the victims — the same victims they helped create with their backward and hateful laws. In Tennessee, for example, a gay person who sought grief counseling in the wake of the Orlando shooting could be turned down by anyone whose “sincerely held beliefs” compelled them to refuse to help.

It’s sad and twisted, and it can’t be fixed with a wall or tougher immigration laws or tighter gun laws. It can only be fixed by more of us working to accept and understand our differences, instead of politicizing and institutionalizing them.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Serious Christians

CREDIT: Bruce VanWyngarden

Bruce VanWyngarden

What is the picture on your computer’s desktop screen? Your kids? Your dog? Maybe a memorable vacation photo? Mine is a shot I took one October morning in 2012 as I was about to wade into the Little Red River. A mist is coming off the water, lit golden by a rising sun. The streamside trees are glowing yellow and red and that pale, dry green that says autumn is here. The photo captures everything I like about being on a stream. I put it on my computer so I’d see it each morning when I began to work — a reminder of the beauty that’s so easy to lose sight of in the hustle of everyday life.

I haven’t really looked at it in a long time.

That’s because what’s beautiful can fade with time and familiarity. So can what’s horrific — like mass shootings of innocent people by a crazy person. What unfolded on an Oregon college campus last week was the now-familiar nightmare: an insane gunman with multiple weapons acting out some disturbed fantasy, destroying the lives, hopes, and dreams of others before shooting himself or being shot or captured.

Next come the somber statements of support for the families of the victims, the prayer vigils, the tweets of sympathy, the Facebook postings, the presidential statement calling for lawmakers to pass some sort of sensible gun-control laws, the funerals.

Then comes the gun-fetish chorus, spurred on by Big Ammo and the NRA: “It was a gun-free zone, liberals … “; “If one of those students had been armed … “; “Obama will take our guns … “; “The Second Amendment guarantees my rights … “; “Why don’t we ban cars?”

And on it goes, the perpetual circle of death and dialogue that is unique to this country. We’ve had 294 mass shootings in 2015, more than one a day. It’s because we’ve created a culture where gun rights trump all else. And we have allowed it to flourish because not enough people have the guts to stand up and say “Enough. This insanity doesn’t happen anywhere else on the planet. We have a gun problem, and we’re going to address it.”

Instead, we get the moronic response of Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who, in the aftermath of the Oregon massacre, said, “I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise.”

Not exactly the approach Jesus would have taken. But then, maybe he wasn’t as serious about his faith as Ron is.

Then, as icing on the cake, comes a story this week out of Blount County, Tennessee: Eight-year-old McKayla Dyer was approached by an 11-year-old neighbor boy who wanted to see her puppy. When McKayla refused to let him, the boy went back to his house, grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun, returned, and killed McKayla.

If only she’d been armed, like a serious Christian, she might have been able to shoot the 11-year-old first, and we could have avoided this tragedy. Because the answer is always — say it with me, now — more guns.

Jesus.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Future of Energy

It is an unfortunate fact that low-income and minority Americans are more likely to live near power plants. Communities living in such close proximity also bear the brunt of the negative health impacts caused by the pollution spewed from these power plants. Due to these historic disproportional impacts, it is imperative that we ensure that those who have been harmed by power plant pollution see the benefits of our nation’s transition to a clean energy economy.

The Clean Power Plan, part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, will be our nation’s first comprehensive regulation aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Coal plants emit 77 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from our nation’s power sector, as well as millions of tons of hazardous air pollutants that contribute to the formation of harmful ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone and hazardous air pollutants are particularly dangerous for vulnerable populations, like children and the elderly.

Additionally, ground-level ozone increases smog, which contributes to respiratory illnesses such as asthma and can cause reduced lung function, particularly for adults who spend more time outdoors. Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to the ever-growing threat of climate change, which is predicted to impact historically disadvantaged communities more severely than others due to increases in extreme weather and more extreme heat. 

The Clean Power Plan will not only reduce carbon dioxide and the accompanying suite of harmful air pollutants emitted by coal plants, but it will also spur the development of clean energy resources such as solar and wind and increase energy efficiency.

By increasing renewable energy resources, we will create much-needed jobs in the clean energy sector. According to national business leaders, more than 18,000 jobs were announced in the clean energy sector in the third quarter of 2014 alone. A study released by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that if the Clean Power Plan is enacted, 274,000 jobs related to energy efficiency will be created over the next five years.

One important aspect of jobs in the clean energy sector is that many are accessible to those without advanced degrees and are generally higher-paying jobs compared to other jobs attainable to those with similar education backgrounds. The typical wage for someone employed in a clean energy industry — about $44,000 — is 13 percent higher than the typical wage earned by Americans. Perhaps most important, these jobs will be created at the local level and cannot be exported.

This clean energy revolution can and should benefit low-income communities by increasing the availability of higher-paying jobs and providing these communities access to low-cost, safe, and clean energy resources. Energy efficiency programs can reduce a family’s energy bills in both the short- and long-term. Experience has shown that well-designed and adequately funded energy efficiency programs can trim utility bills and limit exposure to pollution by reducing reliance on traditional forms of energy such as coal plants.

Increased access to funding for energy efficiency improvements is especially important for limited-income households, which spend disproportionately higher amounts of their monthly income on electric bills and often live in homes or apartments lacking proper insulation with old, inefficient appliances.

Last month, Vanderbilt University Law School and Medical Center hosted a two-day forum on the Clean Power Plan. This forum allowed doctors, lawyers, scholars, business leaders, and policymakers an opportunity to discuss how we can work to protect our state and citizens from the threats of climate change while benefiting from the positive impacts of a transition to a clean energy economy.

For new jobs, energy savings, health benefits, and basic economic fairness, we should invest in clean energy resources in order to level the playing field for disadvantaged communities. I stand ready to work with the Tennessee Valley Authority, leaders in the energy industry, and my colleagues in Congress to make this commitment a reality.

We can and must do more to focus on the fair distribution of both the benefits and the burdens related to how we produce and consume energy.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

“No Deal”

It has only been a few weeks since the speaker of the House of Representatives, without seeking the concurrence of the president of the United States or even bothering to consult him, chose to invite the head of state of another nation to

address a joint session of the Congress. And it was on a matter, moreover, which was even then the subject of delicate negotiations between this country and a potential adversary, Iran.

As expected, that leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, had a view of the issue that was diametrically opposed to that of President Obama. No problem on that point: People and nations differ. The timing, however — just as negotiations with Iran were reaching the crucial point and (no accident, either) just before Netanyahu faced an election back home — was atrocious. And the issue — the very sensitive one of a deal with Iran to restrain that country’s ability to make a nuclear weapon — was no small matter. Neither was the matter of this country’s constitutional checks and balances, which Speaker John Boehner’s partisan power move, at the very least, put in jeopardy.

Steve Cohen, the 9th District congressman who happens to represent Memphis, more or less said all the above back then, and we were happy to quote his words editorially, deferring to him as a Jewish American, a lifelong supporter of Israel, and a patriot.

Putting all the breaches with tradition and good sense aside, the fact is that Netanyahu spoke well and forcefully in his address, the point of which was to condemn the proposed agreement with Iran as a “bad deal,” which, in his view, made it worse than no deal at all.

But there was something terribly wrong with his logic, as there is, to an even worse degree, with a follow-up letter by 47 Republican senators to the reigning Ayatollah of Iran instructing him, in essence, to disregard the proposed deal — to reject it, rather, on grounds that the Republican Congress had the power to strike the deal dead by not ratifying it and would almost certainly do so.

Now this effort to scuttle a pending treaty, to further hobble the elected chief executive, and to nullify, not just weaken, the checks and balances of our political system, is not only egregious, it is patently in violation of the Constitution, both in letter and in spirit. It is in fact, borderline treasonous. Once again, though, leaving that aside, it ignores the fundamental point of view, as did Netanyahu, that the five other nations participating in negotiations with Iran — Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany — have made it clear they will not join the United States if it should follow Netanyahu’s advice and jettison the pending deal. They, in fact, are likely to forgo the existing multi-national sanctions they have adopted in deference to the U.S. position and to resume trade with Iran, leaving the United States out of the loop and Iran home free to do as it chooses with its nuclear program. That’s what’s wrong with Mr. Netanyahu’s logic and with that of  the GOP barn-burners in Congress. And, along with a trampling of the Constitution, that’s the bottom line of what “no deal” actually means.  Iran wins outright.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Killing the ACA?

For Republicans, it sure was fun while their hopes lasted, but many have concluded the Supreme Court might not be able to kill off the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after all.

When the high court rules this spring in King v. Burwell, even a decision that would invalidate subsidies to cover health insurance in 37 states where the federal government operates exchanges may not necessarily spell doom for those subsidies or the system at all. 

Republicans are already anticipating President Obama’s response would be an executive order directing federal marketplaces to immediately belong to those states or a bill asking Congress to do the same, or at least to extend the subsidies in some form. 

Somewhere between 5 million and 7 million people, many from Republican states that refused to start exchanges, will be at risk of price hikes that could eventually torpedo the entire law. The GOP is scrambling for an appropriate response as a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows, in the case of a ruling against the law, that 64 percent of Americans want Congress to extend subsidies in affected states — including 40 percent of Republican respondents.

Over time, ObamaCare has morphed into a zombie Republicans cannot extinguish. 

First, there were the angry town halls in August of 2009, but then the bill passed in March of 2010. 

There was a historic, nationwide victory for Republicans in the midterm elections of 2010, resulting largely from antipathy toward ObamaCare. 

Then, to conservatives’ horror, in June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the taxes in the ACA were constitutional, with the deciding vote of Chief Justice John Roberts. 

Then, when there was hope of electing a GOP president to repeal the law, the party nominated someone who had created the very model for the law in Massachusetts and wouldn’t denounce it, and Obama was reelected in 2012. 

Now, Republicans have expanded their majority in the House, taken control of the Senate for the first time in eight years, and the law faces a high court review that could obliterate its very structure. The Affordable Care Act’s approval, at 40-46 positive/negative, stinks. Yet the law, no matter the ruling in June, not only could survive, but it could subsequently be improved.

Conservatives on the far right, not surprisingly, are hoping for the insurance price death spiral should the court declare subsidies in federal exchanges illegal. Other Republicans say it would not be the responsibility of the Congress to provide any response, while still others say that preparing a thoughtful response that prevents chaos could actually smooth the way for a majority of the nine justices to rule against the subsidies.

Some Republicans describe it as the last chance for the undoing of the ACA. In order to force it into the 2016 presidential debate, one option would be the extension of subsidies that would sunset in late 2017, in order for a new president and a new Congress to fix it again or repeal it. For an extension, Republicans would want concessions like reinstating the 40-hour work week and eliminating both the employer and individual mandates.

But cajoling 13 Democrats in the Senate to override a veto seems far from likely. So does refusing to extend subsidies, because millions of those possibly affected are from red states Republicans represent or blue ones they want to keep or win. The 56th vote in the House to repeal the ACA saw three new GOP defections, from Republicans in swing districts. States potentially affected by the King v. Burwell decision include 2016 battlegrounds like Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. There are Republican senators running for reelection two years from now in all five.

Five years after passage, ObamaCare is a paradox. It’s deeply unpopular — but just not enough to destroy it.

(Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis, Inc.; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.)

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Je Suis Nigeria

Last week’s horrific attacks by Islamist radicals in France galvanized the world. Within hours of the murders of 12 people at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, “Je Suis Charlie” became a worldwide meme. I received calls and emails suggesting that the Flyer should post images of Charlie Hebdo covers in solidarity with our fellow journalists.

Charlie Hebdo covers are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic; some are just sophomoric and lewd. Though no one should have died for printing them, I felt no need to republish them. Nor would I have republished images from a Westboro Baptist Church publication, if some of their members had been murdered by political opponents.

Just because you support someone’s right to say something doesn’t mean you have to repeat their message.

France’s police and military responded admirably to the attacks, quickly tracking down and killing those responsible. In the following week, millions of French citizens, including thousands of Muslims, marched and rallied against Islamist terrorism.

As France worked through its 9/11-like moment, mourning its dead and rekindling a sense of national unity and pride, we in the U.S. were back to divisive politics as usual. Critics railed against the Obama administration for not sending either the president himself or a high-ranking official to the march in Paris. Administration officials admitted that they made a mistake in not doing so.

Talk-show commandos revved their engines, and the airwaves were quickly filled with recriminations and attacks on the president. Overnight, the focus in U.S. political circles turned from fighting terrorism and supporting free speech to lobbing dung at each other.

It’s all so stupid and petty and predictable and tiresome.

Four days before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram roared into a Nigerian village and massacred 2,000 men, women, and children.

Two thousand.

They chased their helpless victims through the bush on motorcycles; they hunted people down in their houses; they slaughtered so many innocents that bodies are still scattered on the ground as you read this, 12 days later.

No one noticed.

Oh, there were a few perfunctory articles. But there were no rallies protesting the unspeakable evil that had been done in the name of Allah. World leaders did not journey to Abuja to show solidarity with a country that had been hit with one of the worst terrorist attacks since 9/11. No pundits or talk-show politicos raged at the president for not showing proper support for a country that is being destroyed by Islamist terrorists.

“Je Suis Nigeria”? Not happening.

We don’t have time to worry about every terrorist attack, after all. Besides, we’re too busy attacking ourselves.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Chris Rock and a Hard Place

“If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, ‘Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.'”

The quote is from an interview with comedian Chris Rock in New York magazine this week. It was widely shared online and is well worth the two clicks it will take you to find it. His point with the above quote?

“To say [electing] Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.”

Anyone who’s been in this country for a few decades can see that racial progress has been made from the pre-civil rights era, but the recent events in Ferguson have opened new wounds and have pulled the covers off a nasty strain of American bigotry.

Rock also said, “I’ve invented a new app that helps you find out which of your friends are racists. It’s called Facebook.” Boy, did he nail that one. The posts on social media vilifying Michael Brown and his family are almost unavoidable at this point. Lots of people now seem to think it’s important to convince others (and themselves) that Brown deserved to die. It’s ugly out there in social media land.

There’s little doubt that Brown was foolishly aggressive with a cop and that his behavior contributed to his death. And there’s no question that the ensuing burning and looting in Ferguson gave those who wanted to turn this incident into an excuse to paint all blacks as “thugs” a great opportunity to do so.

But it’s also likely that if a cop shot and killed a teenager who lived in your neighborhood and left his body in the street for hours in broad daylight, you and your neighbors would be upset and angry. There’s also little doubt that the prosecutor in this case gamed the grand jury system, putting his thumb on the scales to keep Officer Darren Wilson’s actions from objective legal scrutiny.

Little noticed in all the Ferguson furor was the subsequent case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot by Cleveland, Ohio, police on November 21st. Unlike in the Brown case, there is video of this horrific killing. The cops pulled up at high speed, screeched to a halt, jumped out, and shot Rice within three seconds. I urge you to watch it, and then try to convince yourself this kid did anything that would make him deserve to die — or that the cops followed any kind of logical protocol. And ask yourself if you really think the cops would have done the same thing to a white kid playing with a toy pistol in a park in the suburbs.

Yes, there’s been progress, but we have a lot more work to do. Ratcheting up the hate and anger won’t get us anywhere. We’ve got to stop punching each other in the face.