SAY THEIR NAMES AGAIN

Ah, the ol' Apollo in East Meadow.

I am writing this from under a curfew. Yep. A curfew. The last time I had a curfew, my mother claimed sitting in the Apollo Diner until 3 in the morning drinking coffee and eating rice pudding with my high school girlfriends broke my curfew even though my friends and I were all over 30, married, with husbands and kids. But she insisted that none of us should be out past midnight, and that at midnight, we had all had enough coffee and rice pudding to make us comatose. Good thing we didn't have cell phones in those days. 

Here in town we had some quasi-curfews last spring in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, but we were kinda far from that so whether or not the curfew applied to us was a bit hazy. Not this time. My iPhone issued all sorts of siren warnings that a curfew for the Twin Cities had been ordered by Governor Walz, and they were serious about it. I even got the dreaded "Phone Call Chain Message" from Dakota County Public Safety. Not that I was going anywhere anyway. It is, after all, Monday....Blog Night at the Not-So-Okay Corral. 

I can make light of this, but this is no laughing matter. We are under a curfew because across town, a cop killed a 20-year old Black man in a traffic stop for expired plates and an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror. When they ran his plates, he had a gross misdemeanor warrant for carrying an unlicensed pistol and running away from police last May...which would probably mean during the riots.

Daunte Wright called his mother as he was pulled over. He was scared. She heard it all.

Watch the body cam footage for yourself:

Brooklyn Center's Chief of Police believes that the officer shouted "Taser. taser" but fired her service revolver in error. 

In error?

Just unpack that scenario for a moment. Holsters with revolvers are strapped to a cop's dominant side...which means if you're right handed, the holster is on the right side of your body. A taser is on the left side, the side that is not dominant. How does a reputedly senior officer yell "Taser!" and fire a revolver?

Daunte's crime wasn't a gross misdemeanor violation; it was felony driving while Black aided and abetted by a nice car. He was a young man, driving a late model car, with an air freshener. The part about the misdemeanor came later. 

Katie Wright, Daunte's Mother

By the way, Daunte's mother is white, not that it matters. But how many times do you think she had the walking/driving/shopping while Black talk with her son? She had to learn that reality to protect her child. My guess is she had that talk many, many times, and even more after last spring's riots. The sad part is, it didn't matter. He called his mom, and he still was shot by the police. That sound will be with her forever. She will relive it in her dreams. She will second-guess herself, wondering if she could have done more, something, anything that would've stopped that bullet until the day she dies. 

I am the mother of boys. I know their dad had any number of "talks" with them about a variety of issues. But I don't believe he ever had a walking/driving/shopping while white talk with them. We both worried about guys with cars, but not in the same visceral way Daunte's mom or Philandro's mom did. I worried about drunk drivers, driving while distracted, driving while on ice....but never about a cop pulling my kid over and "accidentally" shooting him. 

So, yes, there is anger and looting. I don't know what looting is going to accomplish, but there is violence in the area where Daunte Wright was shot, so everyone is inside tonight. 

Meanwhile, Derek the-cop-with-his-hands-in-his-pockets Chauvin, is a few miles away on trial for the murder of George Floyd. I heard one reporter question as to whether or not this will result in a mistrial for Chauvin since the jury undoubtedly heard the news and will now fear for their lives if they don't convict. Huh? Really?

Can we just ratchet back the bullshit for a while?

Whatever happened to just reporting the news, straight on, no spin? More and more, I think the media is responsible for bad behavior through misleading supposition. Here's a non-relevant example: tonight Lester Holt on NBC nightly news said "Prince Harry is in the UK to attend his grandfather's funeral. His wife will not be attending." Simple statement? Or negative spin?  Ol' Lester made it sound like she was either not invited or boycotting the festivities. Not so, grasshopper. She's very pregnant and her doctor did not sanction the long flight. 

But that's a great example of spinning the tale. Why stir that pot? What important piece of information did Holt provide? He took news and made it negative without saying too much. 

Katie Wright will spend the next few years hearing that her son was a mastermind criminal trying to kill cops instead of the scared kid she heard on the phone asking her for insurance information. Her child will be dragged through the muck because that's what news organs do these days. We studied the evils of Yellow Journalism when I was in junior high. I used to believe newspapers like The New York Times were past that bit of nonsense. I believed in Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Tom Brokaw and that they would tell it to us straight. That seems to be a dying art these days. Meet the Press and Face the Nation are both succumbing to fictionalized news. Chuck Todd is just a moron who by his very presence chips away at the long established gravitas of Tim Russert. And after the august presence of Stahl, Schieffer, and Dickerson, Margaret Brennan gets shriller each week. 

Which, I firmly believe, leads to if-it-bleeds-it-leads kinda national news, the likes of which actually damage the fabric of our country instead of informing us. Propaganda masquerading as Fake News is winning. The gist might be a real story, but the headline sure isn't. I long for the days of Who, What, Where, When, and How....the cornerstones of reporting. The assumption was that if you answered those questions, your story was likely to be true and contain enough information to draw a reasonable conclusion. 

Once. Just once I would like to turn back the clock to the days of Huntley, Brinkley, and Cronkite. I want to hear news delivered as news on the network. I have taken to watching PBS Newshour each night because they come the closest to that ideal. But theirs is a program that makes its own set up assumptions: that the audience has the ability to participate in critical thinking. Most of America is happy to half-listen to pablum before drawing idiot conclusions. You know: garbage in/garbage out.

Of course, none of this will help Katie Wright, or the families of Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, Philando Castile, Treyvon Martin, and the dozens of others killed by cops who did not understand their job is to protect and serve ALL citizens of these here United States. 

Today, there was a shooting inside a Knoxville, Tennessee high school. The kid fired at the cops and the cops took him out. I'm guessing there is an element of appropriate response in there. But, you gotta see this statement:

"This wasn't a school shooting, this was an officer-involved shooting inside of a school, much different. At this point, the student hadn't done anything with the firearm until the officers engaged."                               Tennessee Bureau of Investigations (TBI) Director David Rausch 

Excuse me, but a kid had a gun and discharged it inside the high school. I'm not 100% sure I grok the difference. 

Face it. We are a nation of gun violence, whether it's cops or bad guys. Let's just say that right out in the open. The GOP assholes in congress are screaming about their rights not to wear masks or socially distance, but they don't give a flying fuck about We, the People getting gunned down by homemade guns, bump-stocks, and AR-whatevers. They cherish their twisted version of the second amendment more than their families. They cheered the insurrection because they did not get what insurrection meant, or what it would do to this nation. Of course, this past week, Feckless Loser described the January insurrection at the Capitol as a love-fest gone wrong. They were, after all, he said, "just hugging and kissing" the Capitol police. Sure they were. If you think for one New York minute that those words paired with those actions are not harmful, you have another think coming. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Police shootings, rioters looting, school shooters, insurrectionists in the Capitol 

are not unrelated. A single thread runs through them all. 

If you cannot figure out what that thread is, you need to watch PBS Newshour more often.