Hate Crimes and Liberals; Only Able To See It One Way...

[NaptownChief]

'Hate Crimes': A One-Way Street?
Wes Vernon
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
A pattern has emerged in the mainstream media in dealing with "hate crimes," i.e., violent criminal acts motivated by bigotry. The unspoken, unwritten ethic appears to be: If a white commits a violent crime and the victim is a minority, that is by definition a "hate crime" and worthy of front-page headlines, complete with lead stories on the national TV news shows.
On the other hand, if a minority commits a violent crime and the victim is white, that does not make it beyond the local media.

That is the inescapable conclusion of a NewsMax.com survey of events over a period of months.

The Wichita Rampage

The most egregious recent example concerns a crime rampage in Wichita, Kan.

Two young black brothers, Reginald and Jonathan Carr, have been charged with a quadruple homicide.

The Shreveport Times, one of the few out-of-state media outlets to give this story any publicity at all, described the chronology of the crime in which the two men abducted five white young adults and shot them execution-style, according to the allegations in police reports.

According to police:

It began on a night in mid-December when the brothers kicked in the door of a home shared by three young professionals. Two women were there for an engagement party. While one held the five people at gunpoint, the other loaded up a van with two TVs, a computer, dishes, bedding, luggage, credit cards and wallets.

They also found a diamond ring.

"That was for you," Jason Befort told one of the young women. "I was going to ask you to marry me."

The Carr brothers then forced the young people to take them to automatic teller machines and withdraw money.

So that’s a sheer case of robbery, right? Where’s the "hate crime"?

There’s more. Apparently not at all satisfied with the heist, the Carrs then drove their victims to a soccer field and took turns raping the women while the three men were forced to watch. Then the men were forced to commit homosexual acts on each other. Then each was forced to have sex with the women while the Carr brothers drank beer and laughed.

Still nude, all five were ordered to kneel in front of the car’s headlights in the snow. Each was shot in the back of the head execution-style before the brothers drove off and left them for dead.

Four of them did indeed die. But the fifth, Jason Befort’s fiancée, feigned death, then got up, bleeding from head to toe, and walked a mile in subzero weather to the nearest house, where an elderly couple called 911.

It was later learned that this was the last stop on a crime rampage wherein the two black men had robbed a convenience store, kidnapped a man the next day and pistol-whipped him after forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM before letting him go, and violently robbed a 55-year-old cellist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and shot her in the spine. She died about three weeks later.

The district attorney in Wichita has concluded none of these crimes was motivated by racial hatred.

That has drawn a howl of protest from many in the community. Aside from the fact that the victims were of a different racial group from the perpetrators, they note the following:

1. The extreme sadism and violence went way beyond what was necessary to successfully complete a robbery.

2. As far as anyone knows, there was no warrant issued to search the residences of the accused to determine if they may have been motivated by racial hate literature.

3. There is no record of questioning close friends, family, neighbors or associates to determine if the two brothers had at any time expressed anti-white bigotry.

NewMax.com asked the local newspaper, the Wichita Eagle, to send us the original story of the violence involving the Carr brothers, which was done. However, when we later asked for any information as to possible controversy on the "ethnic" or "cultural" angles to the crime, the newspaper did not respond.

The question is relevant in light of the coast-to-coast, wall-to-wall, night-after-night coverage of the outrageous murders of Matthew Shepherd, a gay man in Wyoming, and James Byrd Jr., a black man in Texas. In both of these cases, law enforcement authorities went the extra mile to establish that a "hate crime" had been committed. Why, critics wonder, has there been no publicly acknowledged similar investigation in the Wichita case?

Ignored by the Media

Other examples of a news blackout of reverse "hate crimes" include:


In Arkansas, two homosexuals were charged with sodomizing and killing 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising. The boy died from suffocation after being bound, gagged with underwear in his mouth, blindfolded, taped to the bed, and sodomized by one gay man while the other gay man watched.
This happened shortly after the Matthew Shepherd killing. The latter was big national news. For months, the former did not get beyond the borders of Arkansas. Even after the Washington Times ran the story, the rest of the national media did not give it significant coverage.


On Feb. 28, a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Mardi Gras or "Fat Tuesday" celebrations in that city wherein 72 people were treated in hospitals, including two with "life-threatening" injuries. The PI story makes no mention of a racial angle. But one of its accompanying photos shows at least five black men surrounding a white woman in what appears to be a threatening manner. Has a "hate crime" investigation begun in this case?

A convicted child molester, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, was released by Massachusetts authorities only to be nabbed a few years later in Montana, charged with butchering a 10-year-old boy in Great Falls and dining on his remains with unsuspecting friends. Was the nation informed by the national media of this possible "hate crime"?

Most of the world is well aware of the New York City police officers charged with shooting a black man whom they mistook for a wanted rapist. The officers were ultimately acquitted, but not before a long trial filled with political ramifications.
Later, when another police officer shot a minority who was not guilty of a crime, the heat of the New York media was turned not on the police officer but on Mayor Rudy Guiliani, a perennial target of racial demagogues such as Al Sharpton. Little, if any, attention was paid to the police officer in this case. I learned later, in reading a column, that this particular officer was himself a minority, a Hispanic man.

Question: Does the uneven "justice" meted out to the officers in these two cases in and of itself constitute a "hate crime" of sorts?


In 1999, a gunman entered a Fort Worth Baptist Church and massacred seven people, shouting, "I can’t believe you believe this junk!"
ABC’s Dean Reynolds said the FBI found "writings that condemned religion and law enforcement." But did the media that had tried to connect Matthew Shepherd’s murder with religious conservatives now use that same standard to make a connection in this case with those who castigate religion?

No national media outlet mentioned this as a "hate crime." Instead, this was an opportunity to beat the drum for the old left-wing chestnut, "gun control."


In June of last year, New York City’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade was the scene of violence against more than 50 women.
The Electronic Telegraph reported: "Reeking of alcohol and marijuana, 15 to 25 men surged through the busy south-east corner of the [Central] park … spraying their victims with water and beer, tearing off their clothes and sexually abusing them."

Later, National Review would comment that "the New York Times and liberals in general are bending over backwards to avoid the simple observation that the young men who harassed and assaulted women in Central Park were all blacks and Hispanics."

No national TV outcry about "hate crimes" here.

The New York police, in this case, were accused of not moving aggressively enough to rescue the women and dealing with the perpetrators. Some believed that with the battering the police had taken from racial demagogues in the city, police officers did not relish another political assault accompanying TV videos of the uniformed police night-sticking minorities. It was as if they were saying, "Next time you need a cop, call Al Sharpton."

The double standard has extended beyond "hate crimes."

The Unabomber-Gore Connection

The Oklahoma City bombing, which was, in reality, mass murder, resulted in a Clintonian assault on conservative talk show hosts and the Republican House leadership, notwithstanding the lack of any connection whatsoever.

But when the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was collared in Montana and found with Al Gore’s "Earth in the Balance" heavily underlined, no dots were connected there in any national news stories or, of course, at the Clinton White House.

Examples are endless. Many thoughtful Americans are wondering when and if we are going to get back to considering a violent crime an abominable act regardless of who is the perpetrator or the victim.

Columnist Paul Craig Roberts says the assault on white males has been going on for three decades. He compares it to the assault on Jews by German intellectuals during the half century before the rise of Hitler.

There are those who note that George W. Bush drew 27 percent of the black vote when he sought re-election as governor of Texas in 1998. This is phenomenal for a Republican and perhaps a sign that the president who says he is "a uniter, not a divider" can finally bring the country together despite his failure to do as well with the black vote in his run for president.

His opposition to a Texas "hate crimes" bill indicates President Bush considers this kind of legislation to be divisive. Judges and juries have the responsibility of determining, case by case, when a violent crime merits extra punishment for an especially evil motive.

Many who have ventured to speculate on the outlook for the 21st century see a picture that is not pretty. They see terrorism on the rise on American soil, to say nothing of threats of nuclear and biological warfare.

It can be argued that at this juncture of our history, Americans need each other as never before, and that we can best help each other with a de-emphasis on "tribal prejudice" and an increasing emphasis on the commonality of our experience as Americans.

[Baby Lee]

Query - do 'environmental protest' crimes qualify as hate crimes? For example PETA folks throwing blood, paint, etc., on people wearing fur, spikes in trees slated for logging.

[Archie F. Swin]

jl80,

where do liberals fit in your thread?

[NaptownChief]

Pants,

The media...They are the ones that sensationalize this stuff to play towards the groups that they know they can get a big stir from...

[DanT]

CR Pants,

I believe us liberals fit into the thread as those folks who somehow think that the Wichita District Attorney is not a part of "the Media".

Boy, are we liberals silly!

[Edited by DanT on 03-06-2001 at 02:47 PM]

[NaptownChief]

Prosecutors have a tough enough time getting convictions as it is...They don't like having to make it even tougher by throwing "Hate Crime" charges on top of it...They usually only pursue Hate crime charges when there is huge public outcry and that out cry is usually determined by the media stirring up certain groups based on their presentation of the news...

[BIG_DADDY]

DAN T,

I'll tell you were they fit into this. Who has been the biggest supporters of this HATE CRIME legislation? There is your answer.

[Archie F. Swin]

it has been argued in the past that where the television media is considered "Liberal" the print media is considered "conservative". I would go as far to say the internet has a wealth of conservatively slanted news sites, whereas liberal news sources are sparse. Either that, or my search engine is programmed by E.I.B . . . holy shnikies!

I think its all a bunch of hooey myself. With the exception of a few big newspapers, and some cable TV networks, I'm a firm believer in the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" concept.
The News Directors of any legit news source know what is headline material and what is not, I doubt there is much in the way political bearing.

[keg in kc]

"The media" is not liberal, my friends.

"The media" is a multi-billion dollar industry run by multi-billionaires. "The media" has no agenda, political or otherwise, beyond making money. "The media" does not care about the validity, honesty or clarity of the stories they provide, nor do they care about the ramifications, ethical, moral, or otherwise about their content.

"The media" only cares about one thing, and one thing alone: ratings - how many of us are watching, listening and reading.

That's all.

That's the bottom line.

Don't buy into the hype.

[BIG_DADDY]

Keg,

All that power and no intension on using it. Please

[keg in kc]

I did not say they didn't use the power - I said they aren't liberal.

There's a difference...

They supercede the black and whiteness of "liberal" vs. "conservative". The media is a big milky greyness of self serving goals goaded by nothing more than that which drives us all, to some degree: greed.

Politicians are the same way.

You're fooling yourself if you think that the media, or Washington for that matter, is as simple to comprehend as "conservatives on the right" and "liberals on the left".

[BIG_DADDY]

Keg,

Yes, I realize that would be a very limited thought pattern. However, there are still very left wing agendas being pushed by many large media sources, CNN being the worst. Fox is the only one that is at least trying to use a balanced approach. Their ratings have skyrocketed while the other majors have dropped, some significantly. If what you say is true they would try and balance out their shows but they continue their left-wing freindly agenda as well as continueing their all out assault on guns.The media definately has a left-wing socialist biase, if you cannot see it I don't know what to say.

[keg in kc]

You see it because you want to see it.

I don't see it because it isn't there...

[BIG_DADDY]

Keg,

Funny, even my liberal freinds all admit to media being heavily liberal in their bias. I have also noticed posts on this BB and the other by Liberals also acknowledging the same. I suppose they all want to see it too. I don't think that I am the dillusional one here.

[Clint in Wichita]

As far as the Wichita crime goes, I agree that it wasn't racially motivated, and it wouldn't matter if it was. It was totally sick, & I hope those bastards die a slow, painful death.

The people of Wichita are not "howling" about it. It's already old news here. I haven't heard a word about it since they arrested the suspects, and probably won't until the trial begins.

If people around here were howling, they'd probably be conservatives, since the overwhelming majority of people in the city belong to the Republican party.