In the hearts of civil rights and MSM leaders. Over a certain usable aspect of the boy’s killing.
Yeah, Shelby Steele is taking no prisoners in his latest:
In fact Trayvon’s sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America’s civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the “poetic truth” that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.
As dynamite:
So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today’s Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America’s racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.
It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.
Too much? What say you?
April 5th, 2012 | 12:20 pm
For anyone that is interested….
I am an audio guy..
I took the 911 call with the most audio informatiion regarding screams, compressed it, ran it at half speed and pitch corected it 100 percent.. even though it runs slower (just a tenth over half speed) anyone with an ear for music can tell not a note has been changed.. Digital affords you this luxury. In the analog days we had to physically slow the tape/medium down and you lose pitch and clarity.
Anyway, what I find most interesting is the sound at about 1:12 right after the final shot. Stretched and pitched it matches the wav form footprint of the screaming, whomever screamed made that last sound. I don’t know what any of it means though.
THIS AUDIO IS NOT ENHANCED per sey.. not like enhancing a photo.. the only enhancing has been to adust volume levels so you don’t hurt your ear listening to everything at relative volume levels.
There are a few swirling artifacts in this copy because I had to compres the wav file to a 128 kbps mp3 to fit on my page so you had a player to hear it on.. These artifacts are slight and will not distract.
The 911 call as you have never heard it before, draw your own conclusions. Listen for the scream after the shot.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11548279
This exercise is just a way to access the call and hear things you would not of as easily (but everything is still there) just listening to the raw recording.
April 5th, 2012 | 12:31 pm
To get a feel of what went on the night Trayvon Martin was killed, you need to listen to that 911 call made by a neighbor. The fatal shot is heard in the background.
Just listen to it.
You don’t need any experts.
You don’t need to know anything about the case.
You don’t even need an open mind.
But you need to listen to that heart-wrenching call.
Then draw your own conclusions.
All you need are your ears and a heart not made of stone.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11548279
April 5th, 2012 | 12:56 pm
I thought Mr. Steele was rather understated. However, what does one expect of a ‘movement’ whose primary “leader” smears the blood of the fallen MLK on his shirt in order to gain street cred?
Between the Treyvon incident and the OWS anarchists, look for a hot, violent summer of uprisings, murder, and looting.
I’m glad I don’t live near a city.
April 5th, 2012 | 3:37 pm
Spot on Mr.Scott. This political crime, which is the only reason it has been brought to our attention, is meant to reinforce the stereotype that southern “white” men will always be equivalent to racists and these men vote Republican so you shouldn’t. That is why the story blew up first on social media and then made it to national attention and then turned into a discussion about Florida’s Gun Laws. It has been so inconspicuously blatant as to be offensive: Certain groups have just cried “Witch!” and the media started running around looking to dump said witch into the nearest pond to see if she’ll float.
April 5th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
This is a good article, and I think its argument is basically correct, but one statement lends itself to misconstrual–or else it is probably just wrong. Steele says,
“There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled.”
I’m not so sure that those who took a stand during the civil rights movement were ennobled by “posture alone.”
I may be reading too much into this, but when I hear a term like “posturing”–let alone “posture alone”–I tend to think of terms like “hype,” “grandstanding,” “demagoguery,” and self-serving righteous expressions of “correct opinion” and “pure intention” and “abstract justice.”
So it is true that Sharpton and Jackson like to posture, and much posturing has been going on in the Trayvon Martin case. Much of that posturing is probably due to these aging leaders’ nostalgic adherence to the “poetic truth” of an incorrigibly racist America, but earlier black civil rights leaders and their white liberal supporters surely put more on the line than their posture.
April 5th, 2012 | 8:04 pm
Thanks folks for the audio links…but I’m not going to get into that here. What we wind up believing about what happened once the Zimmerman version and Martin version (via his family’s lawyers) of the story have adequately clashed is an important question, but one I’m going to leave to others to analyze in-depth. Steele and I are more concerned about the behavior of journalists and political leaders on this.
John, I agree that Steele’s use of “posture alone” is problematic here. A fine writer, Steele, but you catch the one obvious flaw here.
April 5th, 2012 | 9:13 pm
The devil moves much faster than these people, makes them pathetic anachronisms. The devil has long he inhabited and perverted the political liberalism the establishment sucks on. This latest spectacle just makes it blindingly obvious. The fools try to extract the last dregs of moral capital, trade/wield whatever influence they think they possess. They’re being abandoned already – soon they’ll be left completely desolate – unable to even function in a world bereft of the statist liberal settlement. The money crisis dam is breaking – the political clients of liberalism will soon flee like rats. The young libertarians (if we look into Galadriel’s mirror) show clearly where the concentration of power and violence will end up – in tribal big-man-Soros type corporations. That is, radical fragmentation and civil discord plays right into the hands of men like this. It is why he is so OWS. As for the liberal statists putting their faith in human power “and great was the fall thereof”.
Happy Good Friday.
April 6th, 2012 | 10:23 am
[...] deal socially. I have a low opinion of the motives of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and I think Carl gets at some of the truth. When something gets this big, a lot of different kinds of people and a lot of different interests [...]
April 12th, 2012 | 7:08 pm
A couple of you have found “problematic,” Steele’s comment that “there is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled.” In truth, it is merely revealing. The critical comments made about Jackson and Sharpton by Steele(and posters on this website) echo the comments of those who–whether in sheets or suits–characterized MLKJr and other civil rights leaders as disingenuous, self-serving rabble rousers. Such comments emanate from a belief that blacks are treated fairly, and equally(at least), a dismaying denial of white privilege, and a bewildering arrogance(which ignores history) that asserts “I am the best qualified, and most conscientious arbiter of fairness and equality.”
April 12th, 2012 | 7:19 pm
So Shelby Steele = those who–whether in sheets or suits–characterized MLKJr and other civil rights leaders as disingenuous, self-serving rabble rousers? Do tell.
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