Hipster Liberals Excuse Sean Bell's Lynching

(A photo of the lynching of Will Brown outside the Omaha courthouse in 1919. One suspects that today's hipster liberals would make excuses for this, too.)

I have always had a love-hate relationship with The Gothamist. On the one hand, it's one of a few blogs that's had its finger on the rapid-fire pulse of New York City. On the other, it openly panders to the class of gentrifying hipster colonists and their "Love me, I'm a liberal" politics. As such, it's outdone the Village Voice in both its good and bad aspects.

Case in point: Gothamist's coverage of the Sean Bell murder case. Gothamist breathlessly repeats the racist Daily News's story on toxicology reports from Sean Bell's autopsy (that supposedly demonstrate Sean Bell was drunk when murdered). Gothamist gives an obligatory quote to the Detectives Endowment Association's head (as shown last post, he's been on a P.R. tear lately) in which he states

"[This report] gives some insight into why Sean Bell acted the way he did behind the wheel. His behavior was reckless and life-threatening to the officer he hit. If the reports are true, his judgment was impaired."

Showing that the Gothamist know fully well that this is an attempt by forces within the police department to smear Sean Bell and his friends so they can evade justice, Gothamist includes this paltry line toward the end:

Sanford Rubenstein, a lawyer for the Bell family, says, "No matter what his blood-alcohol level was, he is a victim." And let's not forget that there are questions about how much the police were drinking that evening.

On the whole, the article stinks of liberalism and its excuses, enough so that you can play it out in your mind: some hipster from Gothamist seated at her Mac (in a converted loft, of course), trying to figure out how to be as inoffensive as possible, concluding "You know what? I'll be fair and balanced! Let me show how both sides were equally drunk!"

This hipster liberal willingness to bend the rules of the game lets them show moral equivalence in any number of ways, by comparing X-vice cop with Y-member of Sean Bell's clique -- thus letting liberals play the game of "a pox on both houses" in which they stand for nothing. The problem, of course, is that they bend the rules exactly the way the pigs want them bent: to show that the late Sean Bell wasn't a saint, etc.

This has been a part of the liberal press game that has been played since the Emmit Till lynching, in which the press renders everything a Shakespearean tragedy -- complete with tragic character flaw in the victim. Emmit Till whistled at a white lady, and should have known that was wrong. Rodney King was high on PCP and should have known better. Patric Dorismond struggled with a vice cop who tried to entrap him, but he shouldn't have done that.

The problem with this aspiration to make Shakespearean tragedy out of racist attacks is that it is always immaterial to the case. What is material to the case is this: an undercover pig pulled a gun on Sean Bell. Bell, justifiably fearing for his life, attempted to drive away. For this simple act of self-preservation, Bell and everyone else in the car were sprayed by bullets from a number of undercover pigs.

If blood-alcohol levels mattered at all to this case, Bell would have gotten a breathalyzer exam rather than sprayed with bullets. There are no excuses here, no matter how hard you look for them. This was a lynching, pure and simple.

Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb