Steven Taylor strikes back...and wiffs

Steven Tay­lor is appar­ently upset at the atten­tion his last post got and is strik­ing back.

He, of course doesn’t hit on the pri­mary point I made: that the same media that turned the Trayvon Mar­tin case into a race bait­ing extrav­a­ganza is ignor­ing inci­dents of vio­lence said raised racial tem­per­a­ture has let to. Nor does he let up on his asi­nine attempt to ascribe dis­hon­or­able motives to my friends which was the rea­son for my out­rage and ini­tial post. Instead he attempts to de-​link that Mobile case to the Mar­tin case.

It is an inter­est­ing move since the point my friends mak­ing con­cern­ing the Mar­tin case doesn’t have to rely on just Mobile, there is Chicago for exam­ple:

An black 18-​year-​old sus­pected of a vio­lent attack on a white teen told Chicago police the beat­ing was moti­vated by his anger over the Trayvon Mar­tin case in Florida, MyFox­Chicago reports.

Or Bal­ti­more where the per­son who video taped the attack actu­ally tweeted out:

[cap­tion id=“attachment_36494” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Image via Ironic Sur​re​al​ism​.com”][/​caption]

As the link­age to the Mar­tin case is indis­putable in the above exam­ples which to be fair Mr. Tay­lor might not have known about (I won­der why not?) lets instead play in his ball park and exam­ine his four points con­cern­ing the Mobile case that he draws from some local coverage.

1. At least one arrest has been made already and the inves­ti­ga­tion continues.

Sim­ple state­ment of fact, no prob­lem there.

2. The nature of the assault was not the mob attack of 20+ peo­ple that early reports indicated.

Well this this is a lit­tle harder, lets look at one of the arti­cles he links to:

The 40-​year-​old patient has been in the hos­pi­tal since a group of angry peo­ple beat him with paint cans, lawn fur­ni­ture and other objects on Saturday.

A “group of attack­ers” I won­der what how “group” is defined or “active par­tic­i­pants” How active is active? Let’s look at the lat­est update to the base story:

Owens was beaten by a mob of 20 peo­ple Sat­ur­day night across the street from his sister’s house on Del­mar Drive…

…Deputy Chief Lester Har­grove says inves­ti­ga­tors believe only four peo­ple, includ­ing Terry Rawls, were directly involved. They believe the rest of the mob just watched. empha­sis mine

Note that both of those state­ments come from the very same update marked Wednes­day 6:30 p.m.

It’s fair to say then that the actual num­ber of active con­tin­ual beat­ers is in doubt but lets ask another question.

If you are part of a crowd egging on those doing the beat­ing (after all only so many peo­ple can fit around a body) are you con­sid­ered part of the mob? Are the only ones guilty in a lynch mob those who tie the rope and pull it or do those in the crowd back­ing them up count?

3. We do not have any evi­dence to this point that this was a Trayvon Mar­tin inspired revenge attack (which heav­ily dam­ages the asser­tions that this was media dri­ven attack as per the Jim Treacher post I noted the other day).

3. I don’t doubt there might be more than meets the eye on this par­tic­u­lar story, just as there was more than meets the eye on Zim­mer­man business

Though civil rights demon­stra­tors have argued Zim­mer­man should not have pre­judged Mar­tin, one black neigh­bor of the Zim­mer­mans said recent his­tory should be taken into account.

“Let’s talk about the ele­phant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declin­ing to be iden­ti­fied because she antic­i­pated back­lash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys rob­bing houses in this neigh­bor­hood,” she said. “That’s why George was sus­pi­cious of Trayvon Martin.”

How­ever lets look at the Treacher post that he referred to again:

What Parker says hap­pened next could make the fall­out from the bru­tal beat­ing even worse. As the attack­ers walked away, leav­ing Owen bleed­ing on the ground, Parker says one of them said “Now that’s jus­tice for Trayvon.” Trayvon Mar­tin is the unarmed teenager police say was shot and killed Feb­ru­ary 26 by neigh­bor­hood watch cap­tain George Zim­mer­man in Sam­ford, Florida.

Those aren’t Treacher’s words, they are the words form the report he is quot­ing from WKRG Chan­nel 5 CBS which we all under­stand is a bas­tion of right-​wing pro­pa­ganda and an unre­li­able source for Treacher and any other blog­ger who might have linked.

4. Not only is there no evi­dence of this being Trayvon Mar­tin related, the assailant and the vic­tim have an estab­lished prior his­tory of con­fronta­tion (which rather takes the air out of the hypoth­e­sis that this was a media dri­ven revenger-​for-​Trayvon attack, again à la Treacher and his harp­ing on NBC).

Yes the there was his­tory between the neigh­bors whose ori­gin might not have been specif­i­cally racial (just as the Mar­tin was not until the national media took grasp of it) but to say no con­nec­tion ignores the fact that a dis­pute between neigh­bors became much more.

But don’t take my word for it, lets look at an actual reporter Quin Hill­yar who lives in Mobile dis­cov­ered:

Sev­eral wit­nesses (not just Owens’ sis­ter in the ini­tial TV report) told me and other reporters that at least one of the attack­ers, a woman, said as she was leav­ing the scene that “This is jus­tice for Trayvon,” refer­ring to the nation­ally dis­cussed tragedy in Florida that took a black 17-year-old’s life and led Sharp­ton to start his usual race-​based histri­on­ics and the New Black Pan­thers to put a bounty on the shooter, George Zimmerman.

Hmmmm mul­ti­ple reporters on the scene were told by a wit­ness that a woman said as she was leav­ing the scene “this is Jus­tice for Trayvon” includ­ing the writer of this piece, but what about the police report?

the Mobile police depart­ment, at least in pub­lic, has been ludi­crously behind the curve. Its spokesman said as late as Tues­day that the “Trayvon” state­ment could not be inde­pen­dently cor­rob­o­rated, even though it took this reporter less than five min­utes on the street to find mul­ti­ple peo­ple who say they heard it, and other news out­lets reported the same.

Cripes it sounds like the Mobile police are tak­ing lessons from their friends in Adamsville Macon mob stab­bing all over again.

One can cer­tainly believe that an ini­tial fight started as just a fight, and one can even ques­tion if the mul­ti­ple wit­nesses talk­ing to Quin Hillyer on the scene are truth­ful or not, but one can’t in hon­esty say there is “no evi­dence of this being Trayvon Mar­tin related” after read­ing his report from Mobile.

In other words the attempt to turn this into a “gotcha” moment for blogs on the right and to immune peo­ple honor remains well, weak at best and self-​righteous at worst. Where does Mr. Tay­lor fit in this? You the reader can read us both and make up your own mind. As for me I don’t know the man, he might be a nice and fun guy worth hav­ing on the show some­day but I’ve got to tell you this last bit isn’t inspiring:

And yes, I have almost cer­tainly started another round of Ridicu­lous Com­ment Thread The­ater, so my apolo­gies to the regulars

How dare Mr. Taylor’s reg­u­lar read­ers have their serene iso­la­tion dis­turbed by those uncouth peo­ple of the right who dare defend their friends honor. Sheesh.

Update: Bre­it­bart reports there has been a 2^nd fir­ing at NBC over the Mar­tin case, but the real story is this tid­bit from the Miami Her­ald:

The net­work is very sen­si­tive about the whole Al Sharpton/​MSNBC issue, so when the right-​wing blog­gers started ham­mer­ing, they needed to throw them fresh meat,” said the sta­tion source, who requested anonymity because he was not autho­rized to speak about the controversy.

You mean the cov­er­age of the Mar­tin case might have been tilted because of Race and Al Sharp­ton? Wasn’t that the point of what every­one was saying?

Update 2: James spots a missed link above, it’s now inserted, thanks for the catch.

Update 3: Tom McGuire notes what is and isn’t news­wor­thy to the NYT.

Matthew Owens fits no tem­plate the Times finds com­fort­able. Sum­mer Moody fits their very long term gun con­trol agenda, but rifles were employed and only the most ardent gun con­troller thinks we will be mak­ing “progress” there any time soon.

And obvi­ously, their lat­est ‘why isn’t this news’ story has them Free­dom Rid­ing again in the South. What kind of world are we liv­ing in when young black men can’t smoke dope in an old white guys house, have sex with a four­teen year old, and beat the old guy up when he squawks? Mys­te­ri­ous. To the Times.

The story he is refer­ring to is over a year old yet some­how made the front page of the NYT today.

Tell me who is play­ing polit­i­cal games with race and news again?