Surely you recall the Nick Sandmann episode? That’s when a young Catholic school student visiting the Lincoln Memorial was confronted by a Native American activist who got in his face while the high school student’s group was trapped between protesters, and because a single photograph appeared to show Sandmann “smirking” (and because he was wearing a MAGA cap), he was called a racist by various pundits and reporters on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN,The Guardian, Huffington Post, NPR, Slate, The Hill, Gannett News, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Several alleged comic, like Bill Maher, also tarred the boy as a racist. CNN, the Post, NBC and others ended up settling laws suits after Sandmann’s lawyer sued for defamation The full video showed conclusively that the Native American activist was the aggressor, and that.Sandmann’s “smirk” was simply a momentary expression of discomfort while he was placed in a difficult position.
As in the cases of the Mike Brown shooting, the George Floyd death, Kyle Rittenhouse, and now Daniel Penny, currently facing a possible manslaughter trial for killing a black, mentally-ill homeless man who was threatening subway passengers in New York City, the media’s reflex attitude in any ambiguous confrontation between a white American and a member of a currently sanctified minority group is to assume the white individual is at fault and indulging his or her racist beliefs. After all, as the late Leslie Gore might have sung if she were an anti-white racist, “That’s the Way Whites Are.”
Now we have another example, the Saga of “Citi Bike Karen.” The video above went viral on social media showing a pregnant woman named Sarah Comrie arguing with young man about a Citi Bike that he was trying to take away from her. As Comrie protested and cried for help, she is heckled and intimidated by a group of five blacks surrounding her. Finally, she gave up and rented another bike.
Without any evidence but the video, attorney Benjamin Crump, the same race-hustler who helped launch the destructive Trayvon Martin narrative (with the help of Barack Obama among others) tweeted, “A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC. She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past!” Comrie quickly became known as “Citi Bike Karen.” She was called a white supremacist; one particularly reckless pundit compared her to the recently deceased white woman whose false accusations led to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. Then NYC Health + Hospitals, where Comrie was employed, similarly assumed that as a white woman in a dispute with blacks, she must have been at fault. With no more than the video to go on, hospital administrators called the video “disturbing”,” and announced that it had put Comrie on leave pending an investigation.
Now Comrie is in hiding, fearing the George Zimmerman treatment. It turned out that like Sandmann, she was completely blameless, a pregnant white woman being harassed by five young black men. Her lawyer went on multiple media outlets to show that she had receipts for the Citi bike. A GoFundMe started by her uncle has raised about $117,000 so far. Even Ben Crump decided that there was no money in this one: he took down his accusatory tweet, essentially saying, “Never mind!”
Good job everybody!
Let’s talk about that “systemic racism”….
Ethics Alarms 
Can Crump be sued for his defamation. He is a well known figure making unfounded claims.
Curious as to whether he think “Never mind” qualifies as a legal retraction.
-Jut
Well, to be fair, that was me, not Ben. He just quietly deleted the tweet.
Considering you are 1-0 on defamation claims, maybe Ben Crump should give you skads and skads of money to defend him from defamation claims.
-Jut
Crump was not, is not, man enough to apologize so he skulks away hoping no one will notice just how prejudice of a fool he is.
Real men do not let their children grow up to be wokesters.
So, you are saying he destroyed the evidence to obstruct justice.
When “victimhood” and “outrage” become the currency of society, expect counterfeiting to run rampant.
What would be unethical about executing those who participated in her defamation?
I mean, why limit the death penalty to murder, espionage, and treason?
A theater guy college friend was adamantly in favor of capital punishment for aesthetic crimes.
Careful what you say here Michael, not everyone who visits this site is as intelligent and well-adjusted as we are.
Your not setting the bar too high, my friend…
Not so long ago, a co-worker told me bluntly that there were two kinds of white people: racists and racists who hide it, so don’t try to claim you’re not a racist, because then you’re just lying.
I wish I’d been there. The go-to principle of applied existentialism is “concept is as concept does.” In this case, “racist is as racist does.” Therefore, I’d ask them what “racist” means to them. What would they say a racist does, observably? How would they predict the behavior of a racist? Enforcing the rationalist practice of tabooing words, I’d have them describe the behavior of a racist functionally, without using words that mean “racism”, because that’s circular logic.
Then they still have to establish that what they describe is unethical or otherwise bad for society or individual people, rather than assuming that whatever they personally disapprove of must be morally wrong.
I’d even help with the process, because once we’re done then we have a solid definition of what they’re actually concerned about, which means we can start figuring out constructive approaches to address it. The Visionary Vocabularies toolbox of concepts makes the process much faster and easier than it’d be for the average human.
Humans get into a lot of trouble when they lose track of why they believe things, whether empirically or normatively.
I can’t help but wonder which political party this nurse voted for. I may be mistaken, but I will venture a guess she voted for the very politicians who allowed and even encouraged the type of behavior and mentality that those punks exhibited.
Maybe there’s a red pill for her at the end of this rainbow…
The only way this “cancel disease” ever stops is with multiple large verdicts against the miscreants and the businesses who quickly cave to them. It’s easy to see Sandman’s situation as a one-off until a few more high-profile racial cancellations get litigated with favorable verdicts.
Until the danger of personal bankruptcy becomes sufficiently high, this nonsense will continue.