Kudos, a bit belated, to Radley Balko for punching up (or perhaps down) against the “black people are just as scary as ever and it’s all Obama’s fault!” meme being pushed by the Right in the wake of the brief Baltimore riot, during which, to the disappointment of many “conservatives”, I suspect, no one was killed.
Naturally, the Right wants to blame it all on Obama. He took the lid off! He criticized the police! He practically handed out a license to kill!
As Balko points out, the facts contradict everything the Right has to say about crime, which climbed under Nixon, declined under Carter, then rose again under Reagan and Bush I, before falling under Clinton, and then Bush II and Obama as well. Going out on a limb, Balko even suggests that the current push for criminal justice reform, recently endorsed by tough old broad Hillary Clinton, may not suffer significant damage.
Richard Cohen, one of Balko’s main targets, responded quite testily, saying, in effect, “I didn’t say black people are scary! I said Americans think black people are scary! I’m just the damn messenger!”
Well, half of this and that. Complimenting New York City Mayor William de Blasio for being “smart” to switch to anti-cop to pro-cop is not quite the same thing as complimenting him for being “right,” but it’s almost the same thing (and in politics it is the same thing).
Yet there’s a happy ending. Cohen, who often seems to be doing an unfunny riff on Mel Brooks’ 2,000 year old man, hit a winner this Monday, punching up (or down) on Rush Limbaugh, for his massively racist attack on Michelle Obama for daring to point out that being black in America is something different than being white in America, which will always be news to Rush.
