But that’s not all. In fact, it’s only the beginning:
The other great racial cause célèbre of the past year was, of course, the Trayvon Martin case. Here too, as in the prior Duke-lacrosse matter, there was a zealous effort to turn unlikely circumstances into touchstones of contemporary racism, and by extension to add a few more embers to the sputtering fire of racial complaints against society at large. Implicit in postmodern America is the understanding that falsely alleging racism not only earns little opprobrium, but establishes the narrative that if racism was not the culprit it could have been.
Afterwords
Hanson quotes exactly one “leftist” by name—Fox News commentator Marc Lamont Hill—who, according to Hanson, found Dorner’s murder spree “exciting.” Well, at least Vic got a column out of it. That’s the important thing.
Vic is supposed to be a military expert. He used to write columns like this one, casting a cold, bold eye across the centuries to compare Donald Rumsfeld with, yes, Alexander the Great and—wait for it—Xerxes (Vic’s Rummy verdict: no Alexander, but better than Xerc). Well, Rummy’s in retirement, and Bucephalus’s in his grave, and all the mighty deeds of Dubya’s Excellent Middle East Adventure have crumbled into dust, and ole Vic just ain’t got much to talk about no more. But he does keep on a-yappin’.
*For those under the age of 67½, the “Southern Manifesto” was a declaration of segregationist principles by 97 Southern Democrats and two Virginia Republicans.
