The Nurturing Of Race Hate And The News Media’s Complicity, Part One: The False Lessons of Nick Kristof

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When it was reported that Vester Lee Flanagan II had accused one of his victims, Alison Parker, of making racist statements,  Baltimore BlackLivesMatter activist Kwame Rose tweeted that he hoped the accusation would be investigated, because it is white racism that causes blacks like Flanagan to turn against society. Now we have Rose’s answer (not that he’ll accept it, being a professional race-baiter): the shooter had been offended when the white reporter had talked about “going out into the field,” taking it as a reference to cotton fields. When a watermelon was bought by a TV station exec for the staff to share on a summer day, Flanagan thought it was a racist gesture aimed at him.The race hate that many in the black and progressive community have been working overtime to embed in the nation—brings out the base to vote, you know—bore deadly fruit in Vester Lee Flanagan. And he will not be the last.

A man with a successful and famous father who could never find success, Flanagan had absorbed the false assertion being aggressively pushed by political leaders and activists in the black community that the United States is so hostile to African Americans that none of his failures were due o his own choices, problems or conduct. His expanding racial paranoia made it impossible for him to keep a job, and ultimately led to murder and suicide.

Well done Continue reading

Ethics Observations On The WDBJ Shooting

Shooter

As you know by now, a reporter and her cameraman were shot and killed Wednesday on live TV in Roanoke, Virginia. The shooter was a a former reporter at the same station his victims, 24-year-old WDBJ7 reporter Alison Parker and 27-year-old photographer Adam Ward, worked for. Another woman was shot at the scene and apparently will recover. The shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, fatally shot himself in his car after fleeing. He had used Bryce Williams as his professional name.

Later it was learned that Flanagan had successfully sued the station (it settled), which had fired him in 2013 after he had worked there briefly. Earlier he’d been employed at several other stations across the country, and had sued some of them as well. He tweeted prior to his rampage that Parker had used a racist term in his presence.

ABC then reported:

“A man claiming to be Bryce Williams called ABC News over the last few weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and wanted to fax information. He never told ABC News what the story was.This morning, a fax was in the machine (time stamped 8:26 a.m.) almost two hours after the shooting. A little after 10 a.m., he called again, and introduced himself as Bryce, but also said his legal name was Vester Lee Flanagan, and that he shot two people this morning. While on the phone, he said authorities are “after me,” and “all over the place.” He hung up. ABC News contacted the authorities immediately and provided them with the fax.”

The 23 page fax included such comments as…

  • “MY NAME IS BRYCE WILLIAMS. Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15”
  • “What sent me over the top was the church shooting,” referring to June’s mass shooting at the  Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
  • “And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them.”
  • “As for [Charleston shooting suspect] Dylann Roof? You [censored]! You want a race war [censored]? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE …[censored]!!!”
  • “I was influenced by [ Virginia Tech shooter] Seung–Hui Cho….That’s my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin.”

A few observations: Continue reading