Posted on 05/03/2015 6:14:18 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In its coverage of Baltimore, the Fair and Balanced network had its world turned upside down.
When there’s a riot going on, what channel do you turn to? Watch MSNBC if you want information packaged in the language and symbols that echo the story you already know to be true. Watch CNN for the bland dilution of information into items of mild interest, always footnoted to the official story.
But, if this past week, you wanted to see the clash between the official story of white America and the actual lived experience of black Americans, watch Fox News.
In prime time, as the protests turned to riots at the start of the week, the network’s on-the-ground reporter, Leland Vittert, gamely tried to find black Baltimore residents willing to testify to what the coiffed hosts back in New York alleged: That the looting and destruction in their city was somehow a greater tragedy than the systematic violence of the police against the populace.
Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, their studio guests, bedazzled by fire and broken windows, sought validation that the riots were the story, and whatever moral high-ground that came with almost 400 years of oppression was lost when people start stealing liquor and throwing rocks. Surely, the producers thought, these neighborhood residents, those standing silently in the wake of the shouting and smashing—debris visible on camera, fires burning in the background—surely, they would attest to the inappropriateness of the uprising. These civilized black neighbors will stand in for the real victims—the white audience at home—and indict the criminals and thugs with borrowed righteousness.
Fox tipped their game plan for these person-on-the-street interviews early in the evening, when Vittert paused from his narration of a liquor store looting to note, “There’s a couple of gentlemen in suits, they might be worth us talking to.”
Because obviously, when you’re in the middle of a massive popular uprising, the people you want to talk to about why it’s happening are the ones wearing suits. (What can you expect from a network that teased one segment with, “Plus, Brit Hume is here to explain the protests we saw in Ferguson.”)
Instinctive as his response to chaos might have been (SUITS! THEY WILL RESTORE ORDER!), Vittert’s saviors of civility turned out to be subversives in mufti, black city officials on the ground doing their own form of reporting. One of the men was city councilman Nick Mosby—husband of newly minted folk hero and state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby—and his response visibly frustrated Vittert.
Vittert zeroed in on sentiment first: “Does it break your heart to see this happen?”
“Definitely,” Mosby replied, before taking advantage of the unclear antecedent: the “this” Mosby saw happening wasn’t stealing or arson but, “What it is, is young folks in this community with decades’ [worth] of anger and frustration for a system that has failed them.”
But, “Is this right?” Vittert demanded. A subtle eye-roll signaled that Mosby was already tired of blacks-plaining: “Is it right for people to loot? No. I think you just missed everything I tried to articulate to you.”
Mosby wound up walking away, mid-interview. Vittert’s tenacity though, in repeatedly corralling passers-by and asking the same stupid questions, is almost admirable—and their persistent rejection of the handed-down talking points was an unstoppable force meeting an immoveable object.
There was the middle-aged woman who seemed flabbergasted by the widely-cited statistic that the Baltimore’s police department is “majority minority.” She begins to explain, with earnest patience that whatever Vittert is talking about, it’s not true in her neighborhood, “They bring in whites from different counties… Westminister County—” Vittert interrupts again, “Like, a few months ago?” She is shocked: “This occurs on a regular basis…”
In another circumstance, another network, this piece of information might be considered a scoop: certainly, the idea that whatever the racial make-up of the police force, it’s still mostly white cops in black neighborhoods would explain a lot about what Fox finds apparently baffling and hypnotizing in the “majority minority” statistic. Which they seem to think means the real problem in police brutality against blacks is, as Vittert puts it, “it’s about how they act toward their own.”
Instead, Hannity cut to commercial.
But perhaps the most incredible moment was when Vittert found a resident in a hoodie and not a suit. Here, perhaps he thought, was a real, live “thug,” who interjected “yo, yo, yo!” into sentences and made most of his comments with a spooky middle-distant stare. He said his name was Keith Watson.
“Tell me why you’re angry,” Vittert began.
“I’m angry because of everything we go through,” Watson said, “You killed my man Freddie. … You really dragged my man who was already out. You’re shooting people out here for nothing. ... We got a mayor who don’t do s**t about it.”
Vittert admonished, “We have to watch the language,” and then Watson translated it, Airplane-like, directly from “jive.” “We have a mayor who isn’t doing anything about it.”
“You’ve obviously had a run-in with the police?” Vittert ask-accused. Sure, Watson said. “They hit me with three bean bags.”
Back in the studio, Megyn Kelly was either incredulous or titillated: “Let’s see the injuries.”
And so, Watson lifted up his shirt to reveal three different bloody wounds, with Vittert’s disembodied and ghostly-white hand pointing helpfully into the frame.
“Oh, wow. There you go, Megyn.”
White America usually only sees its violence written to plainly on the bodies of black men in sports arenas. We only see the injuries as collateral damage, or as a single festering wound—that part of the city we don’t go to, the part of history we ignore. And Fox News usually is a core part of the apparatus that helps hide that violence—puts a sheet over the body, or dresses it up in mythology and legend. Fox News usually doesn’t show the physical toll of any of the various wars the America is engaged in, unless the injury can be used to justify continuing them.
But in that live shot from Baltimore, because of Freddie Gray, the unblinking eye was forced to see. The raw evidence of Keith Watson’s bloody torso was right there, itself prompted by the soul-sickening immediacy of Gray’s own injuries.
To be shot to death, in America today, is a tragically clinical media event. It is too common to inspire visceral reaction. It is too ingrained in a narrative of justified force—cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys—to summon immediate sympathy.
For white Americans, dying by gunshot means you must have been doing something wrong. (That almost 90 percent of adult white male firearm deaths are suicides complicates this comforting thought, so it has to be ignored.)
But a severed spine. A broken neck. The mere repetition of those words conjures queasy fidgeting, and there is no other way to describe what happened to Freddie Gray.
Late in the game, some tried to paste on the phrase “voluntary head injury,” a euphemism of such laughable ineptitude and clumsy deflection that I have to think it was done on purpose. I hope it was, because in a nation this polarized, only the total bankruptcy of one line of thought can bring people around to the alternative.
Our national conversation is too bifurcated to hope that the arguments and rationale of MSNBC and other progressives reach the ears of Fox Nation. Those viewers will not be swayed by appeals to reason—they have to see that their own reason has failed them.
I am probably overly optimistic to think that Fox News’ universe can stand only so many epistemological assaults. Last week was a logic-quake stronger than the one caused by Karl Rove’s temper tantrum on Election Night 2012. In the face of so many failures, we have to ask how sturdy that ideological framework really is.
After watching the brutal cognitive clash from the streets of Baltimore, I think it is possible that “We Report, You Decide” could go from Fox News’ slogan to its epitaph.
I watched MSNBC and learned the riots were all the fault of whites, only obama can say the word “thug” and that if only the government would spend more money in cities we could stop these riots...
Under the "leadership" of the Democrats no less, and pointing it out was the real crime to these liberals.
In all honesty, they have covered Baltimore at the exclusion of other worthy news items. In fact, it took Hillary, and the new allegations of pay to play, completely off the radar. Good job FNC, you dopes took the bait. Now, when you finally get around to reporting on things, it will be brushed aside as “old news, dude”.
Yeah one of the things that I learned that the only solution to black on black crime and murder is black and black rioting....who knew?
More whining from subhuman feral thugs and their apologists.
“almost 400 years of oppression”
...where do I give to such a noble cause? Oh. That’s right. I just wrote a big fat check to the IRS. How many of the hoodlums in Baltimore wrote a check on April 15?
And .. for all the years the left has been whining about this situation .. the left has been saying the same thing.
Nothing is new .. it’s still all the white people’s fault.
I’ve known and worked with so many really great black people; I never considered them less than me .. and quite a few of them were more educated and more knowledgeable than me. The reason they were successful; they never blamed other people for their condition. They made themselves responsible for their results.
If any of the news agencies wanted to report some relevant facts, here are some stats from the FBI that are enlightening:
2014: Blacks killed 431 Whites
Whites killed 193 Blacks
4 yr. period: Blacks raped 22,534 Whites
Blacks raped 24,730 Blacks
Whites raped Zero Blacks
Ana Marie Cox apparently believes that the only “authentic” blacks are the criminals.
Typical “progressive” racist...
As FR's resident 10,000 year-old white man, I am offended by the low-balling of this figure. I have been oppressing black people for at least 9000 years.
According to the libs, since they know for sure (without any evidence) that Grey was "murdered" by the cops, that justifies burning down buildings and businesses where blacks worked and creating a general mess.
Diamonds are the hardest objects in existence? No, the skulls of libs are the hardest objects in the universe.
close the loop and cite how many blacks killed other blacks... Oh, right, that statistic is not available from the FBI.
Of those 193 “whites” who murdered blacks in 2014, quite a few were probably Hispanics who get lumped in with whites by the people in gov. who are responsible for creating the statistical record.
The other day during the rioting, I heard that in Baltimore there had been 12 blacks killed by other blacks since Gray’s arrest and 9 others had been shot by other blacks. If they want to do responsible new reporting, they should be citing these facts at every opportunity. I’m sick of the race baiting, shakedown mentality that is being promoted as “justice”. Time for some truth telling up in here!
2014: Blacks killed 431 Whites
Whites killed 193 Blacks
4 yr. period: Blacks raped 22,534 Whites
Blacks raped 24,730 Blacks
Whites raped Zero Blacks
>Why don’t whites rape blacks? Obviously. It’s because of discrimination. In contrast, blacks rape lots of whites as well as lots of blacks. Proof that blacks do not discriminate.
MS. Cox.
Laz?
What Ms Mosby apparently doesn't know is those decades were under control by blacks in all the power positions for Baltimore. Perhaps she was too busy in her multi-year higher [I use that word very facetiously] education learning about whitey's racism that permeates all through society everywhere.
She's gotten her props and cred with the rabble in Baltimore now. It's up to a judge and jury to see if she can keep it.
Dismayingly, this is the one time where I am on the side of a Union. Life is like a box of chocolates................
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