One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
It is laughable, yes—and Jon Stewart helped us laugh at it when he asked, “Who is Megyn Kelly talking to? Children who are sophisticated enough to watch the 10 o’clock news, yet naïve enough to believe in Santa, and racist enough to be upset that he might not be white?” That is, as he points out, a fairly narrow segment of viewers.
But what Kelly’s insane rant really shows is just how mean-spirited she really is, that her vaunted empathy extends only to white working women, or rather to white working right-wing women who think like her. Her empathy deficit is front and center in the repetition of the word, “kids,” and the use of the word “just.” When she says, Santa is “just white” to the “kids” out there, and they are just going to have to deal with it, it seems that she is also talking to non-white kids. Just deal with it, you non-white kids. Santa’s not for you.
In the ensuing kerfuffle, she accused her detractors of race-baiting — and claimed it was an off-handed remark, that she was just kidding — and again asserted that Santa is white. In response to a thoughtful article on Slate by Aisha Harris, who chronicles the genuine pain she felt reconciling Santa’s “whiteness” with her African-American family’s Christmas celebration, Kelly ratcheted up the jerkiness. “Just because it makes people uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”
Because you can’t change the facts of a made-up story about a jolly man who flies around and gives children toys. And made-up stories belong on the news, kids.
Kids!? Are you listening?
2. Pat Robertson: Letting lesbians into your house could turn your kids gay.
Patty Robertson slays us. He really does. His delusional view that gayness is a contagious germ was revealed this week when a viewer named Catherine wrote in for some advice. She had recently reconnected with an old best friend who, it turned out, was a lesbian. Catherine had invited her old friend to meet her children, but became concerned when her old friend wanted to bring her life partner along.
Big mistake, the 700 Club host told her. Having lesbian friends in her home could turn her children gay, and “you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians.”
Exactly how this transmission of sexuality would occur, he did not explain. It, like the lord, works in mysterious ways, but suffice it to say, "Danger!"
While Catherine should not risk infecting her children with the acceptance-of-the-lesbian-lifestyle virus, Rev. Pat said nor should she shun her old friend. Because, who knows, maybe Catherine could infect her friend with the good Christian, heterosexual lifestyle, ummm, virus.
Failing that, he counseled: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody, ‘Look, I love you and we’re going to do what we can to be friends if we can, but I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian. And you have yours, it’s not. And so, I’m sorry, we can’t indulge in certain things together.’”
Like lesbian sex, we’re presuming. That’s out.
3. Trump rejoices at having his birther conspiracy confirmed.
Perhaps Trump’s obsession with the wide-ranging conspiracy to obscure President Obama’s real birthplace could be better sorted out by a psychiatrist, one who specializes in racist delusions. Know anybody?
Of course, the wonderful thing about conspiracies is that everything proves them. And so it was this week that a tragedy gave the real estate tycoon Spy magazine dubbed “the short-fingered vulgarian” further fodder for his ongoing crusade to prove the president is a “furriner.” (Note that we high-minded, progressive scribblers would never make fun of someone for physical attributes they can’t help, so we won’t repeat that short-fingered thing again. Vulgarian, maybe.)
Loretta Fuddy, the 65-year-old Hawaii state health director who authorized the release of Obama’s birth certificate was killed in a small plane crash over the coast of Hawaii. Nine other passengers survived. “How amazing, the state health director who verified copies of Obama’s 'birth certificate' died in plane crash today. All others lived,” the Donald tweeted.
The implication is clear. The president had his thugs kill her. How? you ask. Or, more to the point, why? Since the birth certificate is released, confirmed Obama’s Hawaii birth and the matter closed for everyone except the truly irrational.
Dunno.
Maybe the comb-over can explain.
4. Jim Garrow: Of course, Obama was in on that plane crash, and he also tried to nuke America (God stopped him!).
The Donald is not the only eminently reasonable man who thinks Obama arranged that plane crash. He enjoys the company of Conservative nutjob Jim Garrow, who also knows for a fact that Obama killed Andrew Breitbart, Michael Hastings and Tom Clancy. Oh, yes, and he tried to nuke America.
“There are no coincidences with this administration and with the thugs that have brought Chicago tactics to bear,” Garrow said. “We’re seeing murder.” No, never coincidences for conspiracy theorists. No such thing.
His theory: Fuddy was killed with neurotoxins before the plane crash.
Dastardly plan revealed. Mwah-ha-ha-ha, the president said in a statement.
5. Glenn Beck manages to make the strange story of the fraudulent sign language interpreter at Mandela’s funeral even stranger.
For many, truth can truly be stranger than fiction. Much of what is in the news would not be believable in a fictional universe. The revelations about the fraudulent, schizophrenic sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, who may have thought he was signing the voices inside his head, was one such story. It was all the responsible media could do to keep up with the bizarre and somewhat sad facts as they were revealed. But for Glenn Beck, mental illness and a history of violence were not enough. Something else, an even more sinister plot, had to be at work. He wants the man’s blood tested, he said on his radio show "to find out if anybody jacked him on anything." Why, you say?
"This is exactly the kind of guy," Beck said, "you hire to stand next to all of the world leaders at something like this hoping that he will do something. I believe it is not unreasonable to check his bloodstream to find out if anybody jacked him on anything to have him hallucinate ... It might have just been enough to say somebody cause some kind of problem at this, for whatever the reason. But something is really wrong here."
For the crazies, there are no simple or even massive screwups.
6. Todd Kincannon: The left likes school shootings.
The Twitter war launched by gun nuts in the immediate aftermath of the Arapahoe school shooting, which coincided with the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, reached new levels of viciousness.
“Allow law-abiding school employees who will go through weapons training to carry guns at school. Solved. But the Left likes school shootings,” Todd Kincannon, former executive of the South Carolina GOP tweeted.
Kincannon is not a nice man. Some of his earlier tweets include suggesting transgendered people be put in camps, and lamenting to an Iraqi veteran that the enemy did not have better aim. It should be mentioned that he was pushed out of his leadership role with the South Carolina GOP. Still, the gunnies love him, and he definitely has his followers.
“I bet gun-hating commies are just giddy that a bunch of children got shot in one of their 'gun free zones.' More propaganda for them,” he continued.
And still more:
“Obama started the day using Christmas to push socialized healthcare. Now he can use children killed by gun control to push gun control.” Guns don't kill people, gun control does?
One of his followers chimed in that since the left likes abortion so much, it only stands to reason that they like school shootings too.
See, this is just another example of how when it comes to fighting dirty, Democrats, progressives, the left, is totally, well, out-gunned.
7. Gun lobby uses Newtown anniversary to raise money.
While the parents and family members of the 20 children and six adults massacred in Newtown a year ago celebrated the sad anniversary of these horrific murders by urging others to perform acts of kindness for their fellow humans, the gun lobby celebrated in its own way: by using the anniversary as a way to raise money.
On the eve of the anniversary, Gun Owners of America, one of the most aggressive pro-gun lobbies, posted a message on its website celebrating all of its achievements in the past year. They failed to include that, by Mother Jones’ estimate, at least 194 children have been killed by guns in the year since Newtown, many of them at home, by family members, many by accident, simply because there was a gun around.
More guns is the solution. And more money for Gun Owners of America, in order that they may attain their goal of a fully armed America, and the defeat of this naïve notion that schools should be gun-free zones. A fully armed and cocked nation—that will cut down on the gun violence.
8. Eric Cantor calls Capitol police to bully singing children away.
Some children gathered outside GOP leader Eric Cantor’s office last week to sing Christmas carol tunes with immigration reform lyrics. They were pretty cute, and of course, their singing carried a poignant message about not tearing their families apart. Apparently, Cantor was unmoved. Instead of coming out and talking to them and the adults who were escorting them—or even giving them lip service like most politicians—he called the Capitol police to come and bully them away. That they did. Large men with booming voices came and told those kids to stop their caterwauling, comprende? Or else. They did stop singing—the littlest among them looking a bit frightened. Two minutes later, the big men reappeared and told them that arrests were going to start happening.
What was Cantor doing during all this? Speculation is that he might have been reading the GOP White Paper on how to talk to women without offending them, soon to be followed by the GOP White Paper on how to talk to children without scaring them.
9. Wait, did the head of the Virginia GOP just threaten Obama’s life?
What’s a little humor among friends? Well, if the friends are Virginia Republicans, it can be vaguely incoherent and a little menacing. Last weekend, Pat Mullins, chair of the state’s Republican Party joked to about 450 party members at a party retreat that President Barack Obama was “so close to death” that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) needed to buy a life insurance policy.
You might have thought such a gathering would include some soul-searching about the drubbing Virginia Republicans recently received in all three statewide races, for the first time in 24 years.
You’d be wrong. It was the media’s fault Ken Cuccinelli lost, Mullins said, because they keep hammering away on that whole fictitious “war on women” thing when all Cuccinelli wanted to do was ban abortions and oral sex.
“This is false narrative by false prophets… Republicans do not win when we are mini-Democrats or Democrat-lite,” he said. Or even, reasonably modern people-lite.
But the certain failure—or should we say, fervently wished-for failure—of the healthcare law is the hook on which Republicans like Mullins will continue to pin their hopes. And that was when he made this creepy pronouncement.
“Obama’s so close to death that Terry McAuliffe is about to buy life insurance on him,” Mullins joked. “I’m looking forward to taking the gloves off!”
Oh those Republicans. Such cards.
10. Steve King: Don’t vote on immigration; keep fruitlessly fighting Obamacare.
Elsewhere in the country, similarly delusional Tea Partying fools continued to rally supporters despite the fact that there does not seem to be any more tea to dump into Boston Harbor.
Iowa right-winger, rabid anti-immigrationist Steve ("cantaloupe calves") King remains desperate not to let the nation or President Obama move on to immigration reform, which he fears will further divide the Republican Party. (On that he might be right.) “Only bad can come from passing anything in the House that has to do with immigration,” he portentously told the far-right birther site WorldNetDaily. The bad he fears the most? Those immigrants who will "erode the law" by voting Democratic.
Why this would be illegal, he does not say.
He would prefer just to keep debating Obamacare forever, refusing to acknowledge that that ship has sailed.
The United States of Crazy: You Can Now Go to Jail for a Sarcastic Facebook Comment
Read the original version of the following article on Reader Supported News
Update: An anonymous donor has posted a $500,000 bond to allow Justin Carter to leave jail as he awaits trial.
On the Fourth of July - Independence Day - the Wall Street Journal ran a freedom-oriented story with a headline that began: "Teen Jailed for Facebook Posting …"
In Texas last winter, a working 18-year-old was jailed, and is still being held on $500,000 bail, because a Canadian woman reported a single, frivolous Facebook post that he had marked "LOL" (laughing out loud) and "jk" (just kidding). Ignoring those cues, local police went ahead and charged him with "terroristic threatening." Really? That is darkly humorous even in post-terrified America.
The Journal didn't frame the story as a First Amendment travesty however, even though by any rational measure a Facebook posting is speech, and the Journal, like most of the rest of us, has a thing about free speech sometimes.
In all too typical mass media fashion, the Journal framed the story with an irrelevant, sensationalist, semi-hysterical reference to the real shooting of real kids half a continent away, two months earlier, in a school in Newtown, Connecticut. The Journal omitted the possibility that Justin Carter was hardly aware of Newtown, but maybe that's more dark humor.
Maybe He Was Unaware of the News, or Maybe He Was Referring to Syria
"Justin was the kind of kid who didn't read the newspaper. He didn't watch television. He wasn't aware of current events. These kids, they don't realize what they're doing. They don't understand the implications. They don't understand public space," his father, Jack Carter, told KVUE-TV in Austin on June 24. This was the first significant news coverage of the case, which has now gone national.
To be fair to the Journal in its unfair framing and lazy journalism, the Austin Police bought into the "Newtown Massacre" framing from the start, not bothering, apparently, to investigate whether that panic-reaction had any basis in Justin Carter's reality. Or maybe the Austin police were being darkly humorous, too, since they didn't bother to interview their "terrorist" suspect for a month. The New Braunfels police waited about the same length of time to search his apartment, where they reportedly found no weapons or any other incriminating evidence.
This sorry story of law enforcement overreaction and incompetence began innocently enough in February 2013, when Carter and a friend, as they often did, were playing an online video game called "League of Legends." The game involves other online players interacting in real time. It is in the nature of the game, apparently, to talk trash to anyone involved, including strangers.
One Person's Trash Talk Turns Out to Be Terrorist Threatening in Texas
This time the trash talk spilled over onto Facebook, where someone apparently called Carter crazy or said he was "messed up in the head." Carter's mother, Jennifer Carter, talked about the event on freetoplay.tv on June 29:
Lynching Is Easier with Limited Evidence and No Context
The nature of that online exchange is all there is to this case. Facebook has removed the full exchange from public view. The police and prosecutor have chosen to cherry-pick the exchange in their court filings, omitting any context and perhaps part of the post itself.
As CNN reported it: "According to court documents, Justin wrote 'I'm f---ed in the head alright. I think I'ma [sic] shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them.' "
None of this would have mattered any more than the billions of other Facebook posts except that a Canadian woman, self-described as a "concerned citizen," launched into vigilante mode and discovered that there was apparently an elementary school close to an address in Austin where Carter once might have lived. So she called the Austin police and made her accusation.
At the time, Carter was 18, working in San Antonio, and living in with a roommate in New Braunfels.
The Authorities Arrested Him at Work, Then Acted as if It Were All Over
"The next day, February 14th, he (Justin) went to work," his mother explained. "The Sheriffs came to his job and arrested him. Then he was transported from San Antonio to Austin because the woman in Canada found his father's address where he used to live which is 100 yards from an elementary school. At that point, he sat in jail and bond set at $250,000. His father and I don't have that kind of money. We thought honestly that yeah that was a pretty bad thing that he said and we can see why they would be concerned after the shooting in Newtown happened a couple months before. So ya everyone was on edge."
Not unreasonably, Carter's parents expected the police to question him, investigate, and figure out that their son had a smart mouth, but wasn't a threat to anyone.
"We thought that once the police talked to him, which we thought would be that day, they would understand it was a stupid comment that he made, a dumb joke, and once they searched his home they would see there were no weapons and he wasn't a threat."
Why Would Anyone Expect Police to Be Conscientious or Thoughtful?
Instead, the police did nothing. The prosecutor did nothing. No one in the government did anything, except let an 18-year-old kid sit in jail where he was frequently attacked by other prisoners.
There was only one exception to the state doing nothing according to Jennifer Carter: "They went to his father's house [in Austin] a week after he was arrested and asked did Justin live here which his father said no, and they asked if he had any guns or permits for guns which Justin's father said no and that was it."
No one questioned Justin Carter at all for almost a month. He remained in jail, essentially ignored, and no one explained why. His parents advised him not to talk to the police without an attorney present, but he ignored that advice. Eventually, according to Jennifer Carter:
Waiting a Month for a Search Warrant - Standard Police Practice?
Also on March 13, the police in New Braunfels applied for a search warrant to go into Carter's apartment there. In the search, the police found no weapons, explosives, manifestos of violence, or anything else to support the idea that the Facebook post was a real threat. The only evidence the police took from the apartment was Carter's computer. A week later, the Comal County Court in New Braunfels issued an arrest warrant for Carter, who was still in jail.
During that same period, the state transferred Carter from jail in Austin to jail in New Braunfels, because that's where he lived on February 13, and that's where he was when he made the critical post. The state also asked the court to raise Carter's bail to $500,000, and the court granted the increase, even though Carter's parents were unable to raise enough to meet bail at half that level.
At some point, the court appointed an attorney to represent Carter because he couldn't afford one. On April 10, a grand jury indicted Carter for making a "terroristic threat," a third degree felony under Texas state statute 22.07(a)(4-6), even though there's no credible evidence that he meets any of the law's six criteria for intent. Without intent, as defined by law, there is no crime. The charge carries a potential penalty of 2-10 years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000.
Some Indictments, as Is Well Known, Are Works of Fiction
The indictment claims that Carter intended - with a trash talk Facebook post to a stranger - to "cause impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service; place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury; or influence the conduct or activities of a branch or agency of the federal government, the state, or a political subdivision of the state."
In May, Carter's court-appointed lawyer waived formal arraignment and a few weeks later Carter turned nineteen.
The prosecutor in the case, the Comal County Criminal District Attorney, is Jennifer Tharp, the first female prosecutor in the county. She was elected with about 81% of the vote in an uncontested race in 2011. The second oldest of 11 children, she described herself this way in campaign literature:
County Prosecutor Jennifer Tharp Seemed to Want to Look Tough
She has taken a hard line on the Carter case, avoiding public comment and showing little sympathy for any of the case's anomalies. At some point she offered Carter a plea bargain: a sentence of only eight years. Carter turned it down.
Carter tuned it down even though he continued to be assaulted and battered in jail. His father Jack Carter told NPR on July 3:
Justin Carter is currently being held in solitary confinement, on suicide watch.
And Then County Prosecutor Tharp Seemed to Soften a Little
On July 3, Yahoo News reported what might be a softening in the prosecutor's office: "District Attorney Jennifer Tharp would not comment on the details of a pending case but said in a press release that the charge carries a potential penalty of two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. A defendant never previously convicted of a felony may be eligible for 'deferred adjudication community supervision,' which, if served successfully, would not result in a criminal record."
That's better than eight years, but it's not the same as dropping charges that should never have been brought.
One apparent result of Carter's parents' efforts to publicize the case is that Justin Carter now has a new attorney, Donald H. Flanary III, who has taken on the case at no charge. On his San Antonio firm's web site (Goldstein, Goldstein & Hilley) Flanary's statement begins: "I believe that when a citizen is accused of a crime, the best defense is a relentless offense."
Flanary filed his notice of appearance and promptly filed six motions in the case. Two days later he made another flurry of filings, including an application for writ of habeus corpus. A hearing on that writ is scheduled for July 16, and one of Flanary's goals is to get Justin Carter released.
Flanary Might Hold the State Accountable for Excessive Charges and Bail
"I have been practicing law for 10 years, I've represented murderers, terrorists, rapists. Anything you can think of," Flanary told NPR on July 3. "I have never seen a bond at $500,000."
New Braunfels police Lt. John Wells tried to sound sympathetic, calling the situation "unfortunate," but then went on to proclaim Carter guilty of the terrorist threat. "We take those very seriously," he said, although the interviewer didn't ask why he hadn't taken it seriously enough to investigate it carefully.
Instead, NPR's Elise Hu concluded with a comment that serves as a paradigm of the soft-headed unctuousness of most mainstream media coverage, tagging the story like this: "A painful reminder of how online comments can have real-life consequences."
At Least the National Review Showed a Bit of Moral Muscle
Getting it right was an Englishman, Charles C.W. Cooke, writing for the National Review Online. He opened by noting that Justin Carter was "ruthlessly stripped of his freedom for making an offensive joke."
He closed with: "Carter must be set free and this insidious precedent smashed to pieces. Our liberty depends on it."
In between, he noted that "it is not the place of authority to judge what is and what is not acceptable [speech], and it is certainly not the place of the state to designate casual discussion as 'terrorism.'"
He also pointed out that the universal application of sentimentalized pathos, referencing real tragedies like the Newtown killings, is as specious as it is irrelevant, and "does not come close to excusing the Texas police."
Cooke's critique applies equally to the Texas prosecutor, Texas jailers, Texas lawmakers - and all their ilk in other states - as well as most of the media, who can't seem to perceive injustice except, sometimes, when it happens to them.
Published with permission from Reader Supported News.