Politics/Law/Government

Bush comments on Jena and proves that 59,054,087 people ARE that dumb…

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All of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice. -George W. Bush

Bush did not comment on the specifics of the Jena case. Vegas will not offer odds on whether he knew them….

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  2. I think it’s actually a good bush quite.

    Everyone wants there to be fairness when it comes to justice being served, not only in America, but in the whol world.

    On each side there are victims if justice isn’t fair.

    -Smiley

  3. Smiley: You’re giving him more credit than he deserves. I admire your generosity – but he still sounds like an idiot. Which is how he usually sounds. 😉

  4. I’m white, middle aged (ok, a little past middle), and have a good income. So what do I have in common with Jena, LA. – discrimination exists in this country and no matter how many different perspectives I read about what is happening in Jena, it stinks of discrimination.

    And as expected, Bush just doesn’t have the time to devote important domestic problems.

    Jena citizens you’re in the news, show us what you’re made up and offer your hand to your fellow residences in the brotherhood of humanity and show the world, that sometimes things get out of hand, and when they do, extend that hand in understanding and move on.

  5. when did it become racist to arrest thugs for assault by 6 on one . all you people are insane if it were 6 whites kicking the hell out of 6 blacks not one of you would respond .

  7. And Jerry, you’re not alone buddy.

    Here’s David Duke on his radio program commenting about the Jena march. . . .
    “This is David Duke, and this is the David Duke internet web radio broadcast, broadcasting to the entire world with news and information of vital importance to Europeans and people of European descent, no matter where they may live around the world. Today, I have an important program. Today, the city of Jena, Louisiana is being besieged. It

  8. Oh for goodness sakes – a comment about 6 on 1 is perfectly fair. To ascribe a racist ideology to such a comment and then linking up with a known racist crackpot is a low shot and stupid to boot.

    Jim has covered this pretty well, but I do not believe he ever wrote that IT WAS A RIGHT AND PROPER THING TO BEAT SOMEONE UP. As soon as base thuggery is advocated in response to a racist environment then ALL BETS would be off whereever the races met if you were so inclined.

    If you are a white liberal, a white Prof or white anything if someone was coming at you from a racist perspective then they would not give a moment’s thought to your character, politics or intelligence. It would be hey he’s white – they’re racist round here – go get him!

  9. Take a look at all the other things in the whole story, not just one part of it. Before the fight, one of the white kids had a gun taken away from him in another instance. The nooses and the characters including the DA have made this story what it is, and that’s where the racism comes in, as well as it being in the Old South.

    Democracy Now!’s been doing features on it this week with interviews. Read them and you can draw your own conclusions.

    IMO, it’s should have been handled by school board, but it wasn’t. And having Al Sharpton involved doesn’t help. But neither should a kid go to jail for ten months for a shool yard fight.

    In the end, he facts matter.

  10. Excuse me no one was discussing sentencing or what the punishment. A comment was made about 6 on 1.

    No matter which way you swing that it does not mean the PERSON WHO COMMENTED is on the same platform as David Duke.

    You were being insulting…

  11. No I was not being insulting and I didn’t mean to be if you took it way.

    As I said before, there’s more backstory to this than just one fight. I also recommended a site where you could get some interviews with people from that area.

    Having lived in the South myself for a long time, I know pretty well what’s it’s like. Afterall, the Little Rock Nine wasn’t just a story about getting kids into school either.

    But you probably shouldn’t be so thin skinned either.

  12. I’m not particularly thin skinned but it annoys the hell out of me that a comment that SOMEONE else made about 6 on 1 thuggery by teenagers being unfair has the tacky response of placing the guy on the platform of Duke The Racist. It is that type of attitude that p*sses off fair minded individuals.

    Racism exists in the black and white community…and I am sure the Oprahs, Obamas, Powells and Rices of this world have lost count of the number of times they have been accused of being white or having betrayed their African American brethren because they are getting on very nicely…

    …and if I was going to teach someone a lesson it would always be one on one.

    Fight fair. If you do not then don’t be surprised when gangs of the far right start to gain currency in the mainstream of life. Victimhood is not the preserve of one race only into infinity.

  13. Elaine: if people were threatening the health and well-being of you, your friends and family, would you “fight fair”?

    Here’s how I see it. If I’m fighting at all, it’s because I have been left no choice. There is a NEED to fight. And in those circumstances there is no fair. There is only fighting to WIN.

    I’m not offering a verdict in a case where I haven’t seen all the evidence, but I have serious issues with the principle you’re setting forth. It suggests that I have to accord a set of concessions to somebody who clearly has no intention of playing by those same rules.

    Fairness is wonderful thing to believe in, but I’m not willing to suffer or to see those I care about suffer because I’m too high-minded to do what it takes to solve a problem.

  14. Sam:

    This was a school…not a war zone. One sure way to perpetuate generations of conflict like this is to support/excuse thuggery by teenagers who choose to act in a violent manner and seek safety by going out in numbers.

    Everyone in the whole world knows the story of Africa, slavery, segregation, racist behaviour (on BOTH sides). Individuals should NEVER be forgotten in the story.

    Perhaps, you should ask why women do not gang up on men more often and hand out beatings. Their history in this world has often been horrific.

    There is no question mark over there being a black and white issue in this particular school. But you will never get me to agree with the principle of going out to hunt down a whitey in revenge. Because if you do then as I see it whatever semblance of civilization a country has is gone…and that is when I will believe that the USA is no longer the country that many of us still see as some sort of leading light.

    ….regardless of liberal, leftist views.

    You are then left with groups/gangs where the strongest will survive with no recourse to law or right and wrong. Then you will have a real war.

  15. Elaine,

    You’re getting me all hot and bothered with your prosecution of your side of the point. I might let you buy drinks and dinner. If you’re nice of course. Nothing personal, but I do like a good debate. 😉

    Now, as I’ve said previously, Democracy Now! has spent Wed, Thur, and Fri looking in detail at how it all came about. The fight was only a subset of the WHOLE STORY, but the Deep South and places like Jena are steeped in racial problems even if it’s just beneath the surface. When incidents happen which started the whole chain of events, then it brings it right to the top. But it’s always there even if people are polite to each other.

    So to look at it as one singular instance, is what people like David Duke are doing.

    Once again, I’ll say go read the interviews and the content over at Democracy Now for this week (Wed-Fri). It’s pretty even-handed since they take an independent journalist’s eye to the story.

  16. Just wondering – has anyone here taught in a high school? Or spent a great deal of time around teenagers in a school setting?

  18. As hazardous duty? Yes, of course. 😉

    I’ve never taught college, so I can only compare my war stories with those of my professorial friends. It seems that the workings of educational bureaucracies are all depressingly similar, which is why I ignore them whenever possible, but I see two major differences that might relate to this story: the influence of the surrounding community on the school itself and the distribution of power (actual decision-making authority) among students, administration and parents/community members.

    I don’t want to hijack the thread, so let me just say the people who rise to power in a local system tend to reflect the majority values and opinions of that very specific locality.

  19. I taught high school for several years before I became a college professor. Your sense of how local administrators and officials reflect the values of the surrounding community is on the nose, euphrosyne. The attitudes of the superintendent who ordered that the noose hangers get a 3 day suspension reflects a community attitude about accusations of racism.

    The fact that the DA (as documented by eyewitnesses) aimed all of his threats at black students in the audience at a school assembly (whites on one side, blacks on the other – tells one a lot about conditions in Jena, LA) says volumes about community attitudes toward blacks asserting themselves in defiance of white authority.

    High school kids are adolescents with high levels of both testosterone and immaturity. That plays a role in this story.

    As for those who keep pointing at the 6 against 1 issue: just remember that a black high school kid was jumped and beaten by 4 whites – grown men in their 20’s – a few days before this incident. This isn’t justification – but it offers explanation of the sort of “vigilante” mentality on both sides at that point in time.

    So there is plenty of blame to go around. All anyone should ask in this case is a level playing field and similar treatment for similar crimes.

  20. What he said.

    Long memories, small community, no outside oversight – too much concentrated history for blame to be neatly divided up and parceled out. Looking for that level playing field almost has to get ugly.

  22. DP:

    I would not wish to give you cause to become hot and bothered…but if you only wish to take me out to dinner as a result and not do dastardly things then I guess I’m safe. 🙂

    Vigilante mentality should be properly addressed whenever or wherever it raises its head. There were sepapate wrongs and each should be dealt with properly – justification for vigilantism is not acceptable in First World Countries.

    Jena is a local place but sits within a larger framework. If the locals feed into a local system that is “seen” (and perception counts for so much does it not) to be acting in an unfair manner towards blacks then by all means march about it. By all means send in inspectors. By all means use the full weight of the LAW to overturn a too brutual a punishment or set of charges that were overly harsh in the first instance. By al means move a trial out of the distrusted community…

    It does not mean thuggish behaviour (and that is exactly what this was) is to be recommended as a way of solving disputes. What lesson do you want to send out to people? That in life when bad things happen to someone else you are able to legally go out and find anyone who “looks” like the enemy and assault him/her? None of us would rest easy in our beds…

    Ideals, Laws and doing the right thing only work when everyone (or rather the majority) buys into the philosophy. If you start making exemptions then you begin to slide down a slippery slope….

    I like a good debate too…but I really should not be commenting so much as it makes me think.

    Elaine

    P.S. Thinking is not illegal but maybe commenting is…

    Have a good weekend.

    😉

  24. The hanging of those nooses was treated by the government as a harmless prank. It was not a harmless prank. It was a terrorist threat, one made all too chillingly credible by history.

    The people who did it are terrorists. They, and people like them, have been terrorizing the South this way for well over a century. The pattern is very well known. No one down there sees a noose hanging from a tree, and doesn’t know what it means, or what comes next in the pattern.

    The government failed to arrest, let alone prosecute, the perpetrators. This is a de facto, tacit approval of their crime. The DA claimed he could find nothing to charge the perps with. He lied. Making terrorist threats is a crime. He could have prosecuted. He knew that. He didn’t do it.

    The message this sent to the people of Jena was crystal clear. Not only does the government (at least tacitly) approve of white vigilantes employing terror tactics to “keep African Americans in their place,” it can also be expected do nothing whatsoever to protect the victims from these terrorists in the future. Au contrair, it can be expected to protect the perps from their victims.

    In other words, when it comes to protecting us, the government is worse than useless, it’s in the way. There is a name for people who rely solely on the government for protection. They are called “victims.” Want to be a victim yourself one day? No problem. Depend solely on the government for your safety. Then wait.

    What if you yourself the target of terrorists, and you knew that the government wasn’t going to protect you? What would you do? Situations like this do occur sometimes. Jena is living proof. If you found yourself in one of them, how would you deal with it?

    When the terrorists struck their next blow, you could reasonably expect it to be in the form of some escalation. History is abundantly clear that this is the pattern.

    History is also clear that when terrorists are tolerated, rather than prosecuted, they will strike again, and again, and again, for as long as they can keep getting away with it. So, sooner or later, you would have to decide what to do about them. Inaction is not an option. Options themselves, are severely limited. Basically, you would have only four.

    You could submit to terrorism, do what the terrorists tell you to do, and hope they don’t just go ahead and lynch you anyhow, just because they know they can get away with it.

    You could run away as fast as you could, leaving your home, your loved ones and everything that you have ever known and loved behind you forever, and hope against hope that the terrorists don’t catch up with you because you ran too slow, and lynch you anyway. Even if you get away, their success in terrorizing you almost certainly guarantees that they would then go on to terrorize someone else, perhaps someone you love.

    You could refuse to be terrorized, stand your ground and defend yourself against their next assault as best you can.

    Or you could just wait for their next assault, and when it came, as the old saying goes, “lie back and enjoy it.”

    Which would you choose?

  25. Elaine: Okay, maybe I need to better understand exactly what your argument is. Earlier I thought I heard you lobbying against “unfair” fighting, but now it seems you’ve migrated closer to a position that says violence is always wrong. But not quite – you say I could “stand my ground,” and one assumes I can swing back so long as I let them swing first?

    This seems ludicrous to me. If I know somebody is coming for me, I can’t imagine why I’d wait and let them get in the first shot (either literally or figuratively). If they’re burning a cross in your yard and tossing a noose over a low limb, do you wait until they kick in the door or do you go grab the gun NOW?

  26. So Justin Barker, the victim, is now a terrorist ? Also the kids who hung the nooses deserve a good kicking and then tried as terrorists? Let the whole community pile in and treat the kids as adult terrorists…and if they die so what.? If they survive then the government can send them to jail because they hung nooses. How about a lifetime spent in Jail. Meanwhile decorate those fine soldiers who are standing up so proudly with their fists. Do you seriously think the majority of citizens would feel safe and support such a stupid non-system of government and accountability?

    Violence is not the best answer and if you ever want to educate people out of it you have to draw a line somewhere and make a stand. I have yet to read sensible reporting stating that no punishment should have been brought in the Jena 6 case. Are you saying they should not have been punished at all?

    Some people write with sweeping strokes about black and white violence and initimidation. By doing so one always run the risk in a vigilante atmosphere of treating the innocent in the same way as INDIVIDUALS who commit violent acts. When people walk in fear then everyone starts joining gangs. Hardly a recipe for promoting integration and understanding. But there are people on both sides who do wish to reach out but will not.

    The whole point about civilization is to learn how to be civilized. You learn that in the home and in school. Considering the violence that is prevalent in schools I doubt many figures of authority will be applauding yet more violence and advocating that using your fists (the street response) is how you get on in life.

    Got to get my grievance in first better go in tooled up is always an option but the more people who use it, the less likely you are to have a country that views neighbours with trust, respect and humanity.

    …of course I can see WHY they beat up a white guy. Just the same as I know why white guys have beat up a random black guy. Neither is right. Both can and do happen. Good governance does not condone it though now…or ever.

  27. I’m not sure what Elaine and Sam are debating, but the effect of a “vigilante atmosphere” is one of the factors I was thinking about, and which Jim did an excellent job of elucidating.

    I don’t know what Justin Barker is, except that he is both a victim of one crime and the perpetrator of another. And a teenager. As is Mychal Bell.

    “Use every man after his desert, and who would ‘scape whipping?” In order to even begin examining individual cases and administering equitable consequences, the Jena school system pretty much has to start from scratch. Good luck getting everyone involved on board with that – but you’re right, Elaine, it’s what we should strive for.

  30. >>DomPierre, on September 21st, 2007 at 12:57 pm Said:
    Take a look at all the other things in the whole story, not just one part of it. Before the fight, one of the white kids had a gun taken away from him in another instance. The nooses and the characters including the DA have made this story what it is, and that

  31. >>elaine, on September 21st, 2007 at 1:26 pm Said:
    Excuse me no one was discussing sentencing or what the punishment. A comment was made about 6 on 1.

    Translation: and that is the emotional/intellectual nexus upon which my pedantic dialogue rests, until I do start to consider punishment or sentencing, if I ever do. Watch when that happens! As one of the magicians used to say in the movie ‘The Prestige’: “Are you watching closely?”

  36. >>>Sam Smith, on September 21st, 2007 at 3:35 pm Said: (Something rational, that doomed him in the same manner as it did DomPierre) …Fairness is wonderful thing to believe in, but I

  39. >>>Jim Booth, on September 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm Said:
    I taught high school for several years before I became a college professor.

    (Sigh) if it was only relevant here. (For explanation, simply insert into the Estrogenometer)

  42. >>>elaine, on September 22nd, 2007 at 3:09 am Said:
    DP:
    Vigilante mentality should be properly addressed whenever or wherever it raises its head.

    (like on this blog perhaps?)

    >>>>Jena is a local place but sits within a larger framework

    Of racism

    >>>>If the locals feed into a local system that is

  43. >>>>Sam Smith, on September 22nd, 2007 at 7:05 am Said:
    Elaine: Okay, maybe I need to better understand exactly what your argument is.

    No my dear brother Sam, you’re just not getting it. What you really need, as I and all other men do as well, is to be be beaten across the head with a tholus dipped in the perpetual Effervescent pool of estrogenic intelligence. Only then will you have the capacity to fully appreciate that there is not argument here, at least not one that leads to any real coherent conclusion based in anything remotely resembling reality. It is nothing more than a Siren song leading one down the garden path toward the shaprd crags of a pointless philosophy based in the n’th dimension.

    I won’t even try to contrast the paternal instinct of paternal protection with the maternal one.

  44. THIS IS THE LAST COMMENT YA’LL!!!!

    >>>elaine, on September 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 am Said:
    So Justin Barker, the victim, is now a terrorist ?

    Now Sam, if you’re wondering where the term ‘terrorist’ entered into the argument, it was inferred from your comment…

    I>>>f they

  45. >>>elaine, on September 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 am Said:
    So Justin Barker, the victim, is now a terrorist ?

    I think she inferred this from your previous comment Sam, of:

    >>>Sam Smith, on September 22nd, 2007 at 7:05 am Said:
    If they

  47. Pingback: Jena Six and the Emasculating Nature of Society « Plantation Life

  48. Just now read nessie’s post – how could I have missed it?

    For what it’s worth, I can tell you that overtly threatening, recurring acts of racism, sexism and homophobia occur every day on public school campuses, often witnessed by teachers and administrators who collaborate by refusing to act. Been there. Seen it. And more often than not, the victims refuse to report the abuse to school authorities, because they are acutely aware of who is usually believed and who is usually blamed, as well as the danger if the persecutors get away with it once again and come looking for them…

  49. True euphrosune1115. In dealing with the headaches of ensuring fairness in the faculty/student relationship here on campus, most of the students feel the same way, and these are, technically, ‘adults’ who have every opportunity to hire an attorney.

    It’s a wild world we live in eh?

  50. MOST OF YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT. the point is that when it occurred, these high school boys (jena 6) were being charged as adults. ADULT. SO, why do black boys get charged as adults as most white boys with the same type of incident, WHICH IS A HIGH SCHOOL FIGHT, do not get charged as adults.

    if you agree with that, then ALL HIGH SCHOOL BOYS AND GIRLS ARE ADULT ENOUGH TO MAKE DECISIONS. if they are, then all men can date all the 15 year old girls they want as long as they consent because THEY ARE ADULTS.

    america has to make up its mind about what is an adult once and for all. it can’t be made up along the way. does american put a boy in a man’s prison for a fight????

    if the answer is yes, then all the white boys must go too, and all the girls too. hell, let’s start at six years of age and put the little sobs in adult prison.