Posted on 09/06/2003 11:27:59 PM PDT by Mark
Los Angeles Daily News
Liberals won't admit Rodney King is a loser
By David Horowitz
Thursday, September 04, 2003 - If you're not a news junkie, you probably didn't notice that Rodney King was arrested again. He was speeding at 100 miles an hour, high on PCP, when he ran a red light in Rialto, Calif., on Aug. 27.
It is just a matter of luck that King hasn't killed someone yet. This was his fifth arrest since a kangaroo court awarded him $3.8 million some years ago because the Los Angeles Police Department had "violated his civil rights." Or perhaps it was because the court was afraid that rejecting King's claim would spark another riot that would kill 58 people and cost the city $16 billion in destroyed homes and stores.
One of King's post-riot arrests was for beating his wife, just in case you thought he was a nice guy harassed by police simply because he was black.
Apparently, in addition to going to jail again, Rodney King is now broke. Which is one of the reasons you haven't heard much about his latest bust. Because the post-riot life of Rodney King gives the lie to virtually every liberal nostrum for improving society, eradicating poverty and making us all equal.
How can you go broke on $3.8 million?
Let's say, for the sake of this example, King had to pay his lawyers a million dollars in legal fees. If he had put the remaining money in the bank in a long-term savings account, it would have netted him a six-figure income for the rest of his life -- without requiring a stitch of work to get it. But if you give money to a self-destructive lout like King, all you are going to get for your money is trouble.
Poverty, as a friend of mine has said, is different from being broke. Being broke is when you're out of pocket. Being poor is a dispiriting and disabling state of mind. Giving money to dysfunctional people is not a way to make them rich or even comfortable. It's a way of enabling them to pursue their self-destructive behaviors at an even higher velocity.
If Rodney King had obeyed the orders clearly given and had laid down in a "prone position" on the night of his famous encounter with Los Angeles police, 58 people would be alive today, $16 billion would be circulating in the economy and four dedicated Los Angeles Police Department officers who were working to the book that night would not have been forced to endure two trials (the first had acquitted them) and had their careers destroyed to appease the liberal conscience.
But liberals had to make their point. They had to roll out the racial melodrama, insisting that every time a black man is arrested -- even one fleeing and refusing to be cuffed -- a hate crime is committed by the police themselves. Liberals had to wring millions of dollars out of Los Angeles taxpayers to pay reparations to a man whom everyone knew then and knows now is just a pathetic bum.
Will Rodney King's fifth arrest teach anyone anything? Hardly.
First, because no one wants to even talk about it. But second, nothing will be learned for the same reason that liberals reading this column will consider it mean-spirited and lacking compassion.
Of course, the same liberals have already forgotten the 58 people who are dead because of Rodney King and the criminals he and his supporters inspired. Nobody cares about the innocent victims of the protesters for social justice -- the 2,000 Koreans who lost their businesses to "black rage"; the four cops who lost their careers because they beat a reckless criminal who was resisting arrest and refused to go prone.
And so is the inspirer of it all, Rodney King, forgotten, too. But he is forgotten because remembering him would tell a liberal culture more than it wants to hear.
David Horowitz is the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles and editor of www.frontpagemag.com.
That's one of the worst (and saddest) things I've heard in my life. Reminds me a little of the Portland Trailblazer a few short years back (his name escapes me now) who got busted with a bunch of stolen car stereos in the trunk of his car. This guy was one of the the NBA best offensive guards, and must've been making at least $4 mil/yr at the time.
An ex-girlfriend of mine lived in Ojai (about 1 1/2 hours away from L.A.) during the riots, and she overheard her nextdoor neighbors - a family of about 10 - calmly discuss their plan to head down to L.A. to do some looting. She did hear one or two of them argue against doing the deed, but they were in the minority. She doesn't know if they ever did it.
Isaiah Rider
A better question to ask them would've been "why don't you already have your own guns?"
or did they spot the 'group of heavily armed "white" citizens'?
Maxine Waters and all the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America; the Black Caucus and Mrs. Clinton's Third Way, are demonstrating one more time how they will go out on a limb to protect a known crook as they did the impeached president WJC. Rodney King is the poster boy for their failures.
The same thing that happened to the CA corrections officers association. They became a powerful special interest group in a state that reaks of political coruption. I have no axe to grind with the CA correction officers, some of them are my ex students or old neighborhood friends. That's where I heard this stuff from.
About 15 years ago, I was driving my little Fiat X/19 through Venice, California. All of a sudden, from both sides of the road came bunch of gang-bangers -- all armed with bricks, baseball bats and 2x4s.
I floored it and watched them all jump out of the way (I think I clipped one of 'em). Even an itty bitty car is enough to get the job done.
When I was watching the riots unfold, it never ceased to amaze the me the number of well-meaning idiots that allowed themselves to be put in direct harm by not doing what I did.
Especially if you remind them that George was a "Black Power" bigot early in his career. He had anti-white paranoia like many of his race. But he saw the light and not only is he now a great financial success but has the wisdom to write the following:
"The real answers you are looking for are inside of you. The hard part is being able to hear them."
We can all learn from that.
'Round these parts, they're known as the "JailBlazers"... Hardly a one of 'em ain't been in...
I don't know if this is funny or outrageous, but to me the most newsworthy item in this story is that King has only been arrested five times since then. I could have sworn that these incidents have occurred with such boring regularity that I lost count after about a dozen of them.
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