Nearly everyone involved has a stake in the game - not the outcome of the game, but the game itself. Impassioned rants on national television serve justice not at all but are very good for a career. Social programs can be very remunerative. Celebrity is its own reward. Sensation is the foundation of journalism. Public outrage can be turned into electoral participation. Consequence-free theft speaks for itself. And there is the apparently irresistible desire simply to break things and raise hell.
In none of these does any regard for the actual participants in the seed incident play a part. I doubt most people in the Ferguson street could name them both. They no longer matter.
