Ladies and gentlemen, the first sentence in today’s Richard Cohen column is this:
Ferguson has become the liberal Benghazi.
Oh well then. I’ll let Goldie Taylor handle this one.
Fuck Richard Cohen. http://t.co/LqJ99LmuLW
— Goldie Taylor (@goldietaylor) March 24, 2015
Open thread.
West of the Cascades
Richard Cohen is a horrible human being.
Ben Cisco
Yeah, I’d say that pretty much sums it up. Succint and on point. Well done, Goldie.
The Dude
Is this Richard Cohen guy a writer or just a troll from the comments section? It’s impossible for me to tell.
greennotGreen
I thought early on that Michael Brown wasn’t the ideal poster child for the problem of Black Lives Don’t Matter to the Police, but there is a real problem there, amply demonstrated by statistics. And Darren Wilson still could have avoided killing Brown by handling the entire interaction differently from the get-go.
But Benghazi? If only the Republican Congress had approved funds to increase security at our diplomatic missions abroad…
Porco Rosso
I find it hard to dispute the abusive overeach of authority in Ferguson
Mike J
San Diego police got body cams. Complaints are down 41%. Use of bodily force down 47%. Use of pepper spray down 31%.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-cameras-20150318-story.html
schrodinger's cat
If there is one group in Washington more despicable than the GOP, it is the MSM Punditubbies who give the GOP cover by arguing that both sides do it. WashPost tubbies are the worst offenders, in my opinion.
MattF
Not the first time that Cohen has, um, displayed a problem with race. It’s well beyond tiresome.
Patrick
I take it Cohen ignored the Justice Department’s report on the Ferguson PD.
beth
I disagree with the Justice Department report that Wilson acted correctly. At one point, Darren Wilson was alone in his patrol car and Mike Brown was unarmed, shot and running away. Wilson could have just radioed for help, locked his door and waited. If that makes me as bad as the Benghazi truthers, so be it.
Big ole hound
Cohen will walk it back just like his hero Bibi. They both talk shit and then cover their ass.
Bobby B.
Well, where do you go when “liberal” MSNBC has Koch ads?
aimai
I am currently being cyberstalked by some nutty guy who seems to have read something I said somewhere about Ferguson. He seems to think he is engaging with a public figure whose pronouncements on the subject of Ferguson need to be rebutted and who needs to be forced to recant, publicly.
I’d definitely say that for the right wing Ferguson has taken on an almost mythic quality, like the Duke Rape Case it serves as a permanent rebuttal to every liberal/minority statement ever made about police brutality. Even though the real story of Ferguson is much deeper, wider, and more awful even than the shooting itself (including leaving the body out for four hours).
Cohen’s wrong–Ferguson isn’t our Benghazi, the resentment and rage of the right wing against any person who even discusses racism is the White Whale of the right wing. They are permanently Ahab, voyaging around the world, careless of the harm he is doing, pursuing the death of the imagined enemy.
Gin & Tonic
In today’s UN news, a resolution introduced by Russia that would have cut off benefits to the UN’s LGBT staff has failed. Interestingly, while Belarus voted with Russia, Kazakhstan abstained and Ukraine voted with all the Western European countries against.
Lavocat
In the immortal words of Smokey Robinson, I second that emotion.
Scott S.
@West of the Cascades: Cohen is a Republican… so yeah, what you said…
Elizabelle
How tonedeaf. And it got past WaPost editors.
Although: it’s the neocon editorial page. So could be a lot worse.
And following on Jonathan Capehart’s column (which I still have not read) re there was no “hands up, don’t shoot.”
Still doesn’t mean there is not a regional police force out of control, using military tactics to police a civilian population, which it’s fleecing because the people do not want to pay taxes adequate to provide good public services.
kindness
How did Cohen ever get the ‘Liberal’ tag? I can’t remember him ever coming out with anything remotely like a liberal point of view on anything.
Marc
@Patrick:
That was my reaction. That was a damning report, and a shocking documentation of systemic racial bias.
SatanicPanic
Richard Cohen has a lot of nerve to write this:
when he spends his whole column that there’s no story about what’s going on in Ferguson. Let’s concede that there was nothing suspicious about Michael Brown’s death- that the officer didn’t use excessive force or that his reason for stopping him in the first place wasn’t based on racism- let’s just do that. What about the rest of the report? No story there? What an asshole this Richard Cohen is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Washington Post op-ed stable deserves the John McCain Medal For Most Yawning Chasm Between Reputation and Actual Merit.
Villago Delenda Est
Surely somewhere inside the Beltway there is a 16 ton weight that can accidentally be dropped on the vile shit that is Richard Cohen?
scav
@Patrick: It’s no doubt sitting next to the Cincinnati OH report and now the Philadelphia report (al J video and the NYT print for those that can). Philly is at least pure police tendency toward violence and police-requested so might get a little more traction.
Hal
I find myself incredibly annoyed at some of the reactions to the justice department’s report on this shooting. I expected these results, but some of the “oh never mind, I guess Mike Brown’s shooting was justified” is exasperating.
At the end of the day, I just don’t accept Wilson’s story of Brown trying to take his gun in order to kill him. Wilson says Brown hit him so hard he was afraid the next hit would kill him, but the only mark on his face was a little red mark. Mike Brown was shot four times, ran, turned around 25 feet away and was now going to come back and kill Wilson, a trained police officer with years of service? No hands up, don’t shoot doesn’t mean there was no other solution, and the prosecutors obvious collusion in order to make sure there was no indictment just reinforces my belief that Wilson’s killing of Mike Brown was unjustified.
SatanicPanic
@Hal: I think people are taking “we can’t prove exactly what happened” and saying “see, we told you Wilson was innocent!”
Bobby Thomson
Kennedy made troubling remarks about statutory interpretation. You may resume drinking heavy re ACA. Kennedy is easily the dumbest member of the Court and not someone to rely on.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai: You’re absolutely right about this. Ferguson is yet another example of the obsession of the wingtards with the blahs.
Punchy
Also, fuck you Indiana, you white-trash, 3rd world-esque backwater shithole.
I believe they’ve legalized Sharia, only they don’t realize it yet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Villago Delenda Est
@Hal: The vile scum that constitutes the Ferguson Gang in Blue did everything they could in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown to muddy the waters so that it would be impossible to establish an empirical narrative of what happened. Somehow, the self-serving testimony of Darren Wilson, collaborated only by a known racist fabulist, has become the gospel truth of what happened while forensic evidence and other accounts are dismissed out of hand. So we can’t know with absolute certainty what happened, because such a good job was done in making that very hard to do. And we know, from the report, that the scenario dreamed up in the four hours while Michael Brown’s body was baking in the sun fits the pattern of outright, overt racism that was policy for the Ferguson Gang in Blue.
The Moar You Know
@Mike J: Unreal. I’m a SD resident, have been all my life. Not one word about this in the local GOP-owned rags.
It’s almost like they never thought there was a problem to be addressed in the first place.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: They’re probably angry that brown people in San Diego (the ones who aren’t here to play Mariachi Music for tourists visiting Old Town) aren’t having a hard time
ETA- as hard a time, that is
kc
Meh.
gvg
Ferguson happened to be a spark to a pile of problems much bigger than the actual incident. First I think there are a lot of white people who were vaguely aware of some problems but knew things were overall getting better which was proven by Obama’s election and our own life experiences. We knew their were predjudiced people still but they didn’t seem to have as much power any more. Obama didn’t get a majority of white votes but he did get a pretty significant number. Then he was elected and the bigots lost their minds and manners and just shocked the heck out of us. It goes on and on and they don’t get what an eye opening display they are making of themselves.
The drug war and the statistics that somehow result in way too high a number of black men in jail. In passing I will also say there are way to many white men in jail too from this failed policy, but the black statistics are just mind boggling. Waste of money too. Corrupt seizure of property is also involved. I have always thought that part was unconstitutional but people fear drugs so much they weren’t rational and I was a kid when it started.
Death row and execution statistics and several stories in the last few years that make it clear actual guilt or innocence is not determining justice. Poverty is almost as dangerous as race too.
Quite a few stories with videos in the news in the last 5 years showing cops behaving like thugs…and the Ferguson police acted badly, just like decades ago. It was clear by the departments actions that they didn’t actually care what happened. Their guy must always be right. That right there is the problem. They didn’t secure the scene or evidence. They didn’t respect the victem or family. They displayed their contempt of the community.
At the moment I think the biggest problem is gerrymandering to control people. We can’t fix alot of arrogance without getting a fair vote. I am trying to think of ways to write a system that ignores political manipulations. I live in Florida, so that is where my thoughts start but every locality needs to think about this. I’d like a system that was a math formula combined with census data and public results that could be checked by the public.
Anyway, The attention that Ferguson got had a lot to do with a lot of other problem stories that came before, it didn’t stand alone, and such stories are still happening. Videos by everyone have a lot to do with it. So do statistics that back up the videos.
srv
@Patrick:
As always, it’s best to make assumptions and not do your own reading:
@aimai:
I remember when frat boy John Cole was pilloried for questioning the “truth” about Duke on this very blog. You think the right wing should just give you a bye?
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: Well, you know ol’ Manchester needs that cheap cross-border labor to keep the profit margin fat on his hotel empire – gotta offset the losses from buying every newspaper in the county. Now they might get uppity and start demanding that they be treated like at least 3/5ths of a human being.
The office wingtard thinks that this is the final step in “neutering” our police force and that soon, the Mexican Menace will strike and enslave us all into the Aztlan empire. Christ, these people have their own mythology and everything, and it’s pretty orthogonal to reality. I wonder how long that can last as a way of life.
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy: These fucktards NEVER think things through.
Mike E
@Villago Delenda Est: I was visiting my sis and her local rag had the tagteam from hell: A David Brooks column followed by a Richard Cohen…I told her I would love to beat to death one using the other’s dead body, solving about a third of our miserable media existence.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: yeah, I hear people getting angry about immigrants or whatever, but it always comes back to- what is it about California that you think is so bad? Because I think we have things pretty good in this state. Sure, there are some people who have a tough time doing business, but overall, white people are doing pretty well here. I don’t get it.
aimai
@srv: I have absolutely no interest in you, your opinions, or the opinions of the right wing. Why should I? You and your type have absolutely no connection to reality, humanity, sociality, generosity, or anything I want to have anything to do with.
dww44
@Hal: I am of the same mind as you. Lawrence O’Donnell followed the killing closely for weeks on his show and I watched all his interviews. I am not convinced that Mike Brown, by his actions, brought about his own death.
Mike E
@aimai: Pure itty troll. Feed at your own risk! Carry on.
scav
Funny how quickly this can devolve into being all about the WaPo and all about the suffiently pure’s proper response to same, instead of anything remotely practical and on the ground in
Ferguson and communities like it. Muddying the waters achieved.
Turgidson
@schrodinger’s cat:
As a group, that’s probably right. But the leading performance artists in this field are undoubtedly Ron “severe dementia” Fournier and David f’n Brooks. Those two are both doing it expressly to support the GOP and without a hint of sincerity or intellectual honesty, while others probably really do think both sides are generally equally unreasonable and reverse-engineer the facts to fit that preconceived notion. Those people are just fucking morons (Tom “we’ll win Iraq in six more months! Promise!” Friedman is the poster boy for this crew). Not sure which group Cohen falls into since I barely read him. Maybe he’s both.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: Well, the building trades people are pissed with good reason. I understand that. Even agree with ’em. Sure, they’re mad at the wrong people, but still they’ve got a point. Those were good jobs, jobs that took some investment to get into and learn properly, and now they’re minimum wage minus taxes jobs that are not being done safely or well.
Other than that, though, yeah, it’s a great state for pretty much everyone.
Turgidson
@aimai:
Yep, we’ll be dealing with rightwing dolts spewing “hands up don’t shoot wuz a lie!1!” for years. Just like they reflexively say “4 Americans BENGHAZI!!” or “if you like your insurance you can keep it” as all-purpose non-sequitur rebuttals whenever they sense they’re being put upon, getting caught in a lie, or losing an argument. It’s quite tedious.
WaterGirl
@dww44: I agree with you. When I saw that from report about his death, but also saw all the other damning stuff in the report, I wondered this:
Since it’s impossible to completely prove definitively one way or another, I wondered if they opted to go with the scenario that would not martyr the police office but would instead allow the rest of the report to be heard.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: that’s exactly the people I was thinking of. too many NIMBYs in this state and I’m glad the state government is finally pushing back against them.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah. I never used to understand the loathing professional centrists got from both sides, but in the last half-decade or so watching their reaction to Obama and the teabaggers, oh, my, do I ever get it.
Chris
@aimai:
At least Ahab had legitimate beef. The whale bit his freaking leg off.
WaterGirl
@aimai: I just wanted to say that I am so sorry to hear you are being cyberstalker. What a nightmare. So sorry.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
It’s a little bit surprising that they haven’t trumpeted the drop in use of force complaints, claiming it as proof that Those People were lying about police brutality.
Quaker in a Basement
So does this mean Michael Brown isn’t dead after all? I bet his family will be happy to hear it.
Another Holocene Human
@beth: ditto
frankly this all started because the cop rolled up and started barking
they teach you to roll up in an SUV and start cussing at “citizens” in Cop 101?
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Capehart is giving cover to this nonsense.
Nobody ever said that Mike Brown said “hands up, don’t shoot,” furthermore the report doesn’t say he hands never went up which could have been as simple as an automatic defensive posture.
“Hands up don’t shoot” comes from the first few days of Ferguson PROTEST which WAS televised, motherfuckers!!!
And fuck you Capehart for validating these horrible racist shits. Way to miss the point.
ps: the notion that Wilson knew that Brown had stolen swishers in his pocket (oh dear, larceny of $1.19, checked the price at Walgreens yesterday) IS BULLSHIT, no, I do not believe that shit for a second
Another Holocene Human
@WaterGirl: Same here.
WaterGirl
@Another Holocene Human:
Sadly, I think the answer to that might be “yes”.
Tree With Water
Posted at Salon.com: “Don’t look now, but concussions have become the new global warming,” [Dylan Gwinn] wrote. “A debate where ‘consensus’ trumps evidence, and heroes and villains are determined by their stances on an issue where the science is bogus at worst and murky at best.”
It’s a fact that people who answer to Rupert Murdoch pay a steep price in their reputation for integrity. I guarantee you that at least 90% of NFL fans fully credit the reality of brain trauma- maybe closer to 100%. As does the league itself, for crying out loud. But I suppose if the dog wants its biscuit, the dog has to bark on command.
WaterGirl
@Tree With Water: Speaking of concussions, I really liked this article by Dave Zirin.
emphasis mine.
steve
What’s amazing is that he even throws in the, “what about all the black people killed by other black people?” diversion after presenting a strawman argument. That is two fallacies in a row!
samiam
Why are you doing EXACTLY what they want by posting links? Apparently you haven’t figured out how this internet thing works. Hint, it’s not a dump truck. It’s a serious of tubes.
At least wr0ng way Cole did something right for a change in the post after this by using a proxy.
Tree With Water
@WaterGirl: I remember Meggyesy in his playing days, and read his truth-to-power book when it was first published. It was right around that time that Jim Bouton published Ball Four, and the same people who liked the status quo howled to see their boats rocked again. The late ’60’s and early ’70’s were an interesting time to come of age in.. a ‘sensibility chasm’ had been torn by events between people my age and those who came before. Even- perhaps especially- with people my older sister’s age, the class of 1964. They grew up in Ike’s America, and we didn’t. My political sensibilities began the year before, in fact, the morning the P.A. system in my 3rd grade class suddenly announced that JFK had been shot and killed. By the time my class graduated high school, Nixon had 14 months-and-counting left to serve in office.
Sad_Dem
So the real scandal of Ferguson is just the same as the fictional scandal of Benghazi. Got it.
rikyrah
@Patrick: lpl@Bobby Thomson:
Never trusted him to begin with.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Would that make him a vile shit stain?
Jebediah, RBG
@Ruckus:
Maybe more like a smear.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
This is why I use Cleek’s bakery. Pie the bastards. srv is one I’ve had in there for a while. Makes life just a little bit better.
Ruckus
@Jebediah, RBG:
Like a smear of lox?
Jebediah, RBG
@Ruckus:
And if lox were made of brain-dead racism, it would be exactly like it!