What's Race Got To Do With It?

Are racial tensions and divides a part of the New Orleans story?  One might think so.  Here, for example, is a story from the UPI telling us that the suburban police blocked the bridge leading from New Orleans across the Mississippi River to Gretna.  Two paramedics from San Francisco described the incident as racially motivated, and, from Memeorandum, we see that lots of folks (including Glenn Reynolds) agree that race may have been a factor in the police conduct.

So how does the NY Times cover the racial dimension?  With the same confidence and candor that they cover race-based stories in their Metropolitan section, which is to say, they totally whitewash it.

Gone, from the Times reporting, is this editorializing from the San Fran paramedics (as found in the UPI version, or in their original account:

We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor and Black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not getting out of New Orleans.

Instead, the Times limits themselves to this:

"The police kept saying, 'We don't want another Superdome,' and 'This isn't New Orleans,' " said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing."

I am not opposed to "just the facts" reporting.  However, it is a fact that an eyewitness to the event claimed that it was racially motivated; the Times ought to address that.

Now, is the allegation credible?  If the Times concluded that it was not, they should include that too.  Instead, we get this "Lots of the News That's Fit to Print" tapdance around a story that might typify the class, race, and geographic divisions in and around New Orleans.

A bit of reporting would have helped.  For example, the two paramedics from San Francisco claim to be able to understand to coded language of the southern cop, so they know that "We don't want another Superdome" means "We don't want black people here", rather than, for example, "We don't want to take in 5,000 people with no food, water, shelter, sanitation facilities, or police protection, thereby reprising the debacle at the Superdome".  Is the decoding provided by the Californians plausible?  They were traveling with a group that had been guests at a downtown hotel - was this group mostly white?  Were the paramedics white?  One is named Lorrie Beth Slonsky, which sounds, well, Polish.

If the Times had simply reported that the police turned away a group of mostly white people led by white people, this story might have presented a different complexion.  Instead, we may never know.

Or the Times might have given us more on the make-up of Gretna, LA.  The UPI describes it as "a bedroom community".  Fine, what kind of bedrooms - is this a yuppie enclave, a gated community, or what?

Lacking the resources of either the Times or UPI, I am forced to rely on Google, from which I learn that Gretna is about 35% black, that it has a median income that trails Louisiana as a whole, and that about 11% of the adults have a college degree, or higher, a percentage which also trails both Louisiana and the country.  A yuppie enclave?  Hardly. 

Well, working class homeowners want to protect their property too, I have no doubt.  And keep in mind - people will be more inclined to evacuate if they believe they can rely on the police to protect their property in the homeowner's absence.

So what happened in and around Gretna?  Was this just one more example of the complete confusion that developed under Mayor Nagin, or did brutal, racist cops compound the misery of the (mostly black) refugees in New Orleans?

The Times will be on this, I am sure.  Meanwhile, if the disaster in New Orleans was going to trigger a national conversation about race, the Times has turned it into a pantomime.

MORE:  Naturally, I can't find an example just now [But here are 1, 2, 3 in the continuation], but regular Times readers are regularly entertained by stories that read, roughly, "Two pedestrians were assaulted outside a subway station last night.  Police are looking for a man between 5' 8'' and 5' 10" wearing jeans and a blue Nike warm-up jacket, with a gold earring in his left ear".

Whether the two witnesses were astute enough to notice their assailant's skin color is normally left unrevealed by the Times.  However, if the crime is sufficiently heinous they will finesse the editorial policy by printing a police sketch or photo.

Or, on the subject of New Orleans, an example of the Times tapdancing is here - "In Tale of Two Families, a Chasm Between Haves and Have-Nots" describes the plight of two families evacuating New Orleans.  Only the photos illuminate the race issue.

On the other hand, the Times did run a Week in Review article, "What Happens To A Race Deferred", which directly admits that race is a factor in New Orleans.  Groundbreaking.  Now, if race would be allowed to creep into their other reporting...

UPDATE:  Via Memeorandum, Digby delivers from the left:

Picture for a moment young women with their children, old people, families, single people gathered together in a make-shift community in the middle of chaos approaching police officers on a bridge begging for help. Picture them being white. Do you think the police would shoot over their heads and push them back?

For the reasons noted above, I can easily picture them being white.  And if that turns out to be the case, it does not lessen my outrage at this police behavior.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder whether a reporter will actually report on this.  Or perhaps some lefty blogger could track down the two Socialists who started this:

LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are emergency medical services (EMS) workers from San Francisco and contributors to Socialist Worker.

"The Real Heroes and Sheroes of New Orleans" is their title - how PC are these two?

EDITED FOR EFFECT:  Hmm.  The San Francisco Chronicle quotes a slightly different version of the parmamedics story.  They are describing their plight at the hotel:

At that point, we had not seen any of the TV coverage or looked at a newspaper, but we guessed there were no video images of European and white tourists, like us, looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter,'' the couple wrote in an eight-page account of their experience.

The phrase "like us" does not appear in the version of the story offered at the Socialist Worker.

And here in the Independent, we get this:

The following day Mr Bradshaw said they tried again to cross and directly witnessed police shooting over the heads of a middle-aged white couple who were also turned back. Eventually, late on Friday evening, the couple succeeded in crossing the bridge with the intervention of a contact in the local fire department.

The links may fade, but a smile is forever:

(1)  Sept 12, 2005:

QUEENS: MAN FATALLY SHOT OUTSIDE PARTY A man was shot outside a party on 128th Street in Jamaica early yesterday, the police said. The man, Edwin Morrissette, 19, of 391 Crescent Street in Brooklyn, left the party about 2 a.m. and was confronted on the street by four men dressed in blue, friends said. Mr. Morrissette was shot three times by one of the four men, the police said, and taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Mr. Morrissette's neighbors said the teenager, a senior at Franklin K. Lane High School, immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republican in 1986. He worked as a delivery boy at a neighborhood grocery store, his family said. His father, Martin Morrissette, said his son was interested in computers. Michael S. Schmidt (NYT)

(2)  Sept 14, 2005

WEST BABYLON: POLICE SEEKING PROWLER The Suffolk County police are searching for a man wanted for a series of at least 10 break-ins, some involving sexual attacks on girls, the police said yesterday. The most recent attack in a series that began on Aug. 29 occurred yesterday morning in North Amityville, the police said. In each attack, the prowler entered through an unlocked door or window in the early morning. The other break-ins have occurred primarily in the Wyandanch area, Detective Lt. James Maher said. In some cases, the prowler has touched or groped girls before fleeing. In one case he displayed a knife; in two, he was seen fleeing on a bicycle.(NYT)

CBS TV NY added this:

The suspect makes efforts to conceal his identity but police have released a basic description. He is a dark skinned male, approximately 6-feet tall, in his teens or early twenties. He has been seen fleeing on a bike.

(3)  A comedy classic from April 7, 2005.  A blogger actually contacted Times Public Editor Okrent, who admitted it was ridiculous.

April 7, 2005

Woman Is Mugged in Central Park as She Walks With Child

A woman walking with her child in a carriage near one of the most popular spots in Central Park was accosted by a man with a gun about 10 a.m. yesterday and robbed of her gold jewelry, the police said.

No one was injured in the incident, which occurred on a pedestrian path just south of the Central Park band shell, but a robbery and a threat of violence, coming as thousands of people were drawn to the park by the year's first uninterrupted burst of mild weather, provided a reminder of more sinister days.

The authorities declined to identify the robbery victim, saying only that she was in her 30's, but a report on WNYW-TV, Channel 5, in New York, identified her as Catherine Collins and her 3-month-old son as Jackson.

In the report, Ms. Collins said that she was walking through the park tending to her son in his carriage when she realized that someone behind her had edged closer. She turned, and the man pointed a gun at her and demanded a ring, she said. Then the robber pointed the gun at her son before fleeing with her engagement and wedding rings, she said.

The police said the man, who was about 30 years old, about 5-foot-10, wearing a tan waist-length jacket and dark baggy pants, displayed a black semiautomatic gun and ran away to the south...

Comments

[Jim E.]

So you -- a Times bashing conservative -- is upset that the (so-called) "liberally biased" Times *didn't* push the race and class angle in the story?

[buzz]

You should probably re-read what he wrote. Kind of a stupid question. Even without the scare quotes.

[Nathan Lanier]

Or maybe, *gasp, he's calls it simply as he sees it without letting desultory political dichotomies get in the way.

[The Zero Boss]

Tom, I think I heard this exact same story on This American Life last night. I can't swear it's the same woman telling it, but in the TAL story, the woman noted that she and her husband were white, but that most of the rest of their group was black.

Does that prove it was racially motivated? No. but does that even matter? It was heartless and callous even if race wasn't a factor at all.

[M. Simon]

You have to wonder why there are so many poor black folks in Louisiana. A state run by compassionate Democrats who care about black folks and want to raise them out of poverty.

[Jim E.]

"Naturally, I can't find an example just now,"

Naturally.

[MaDr]

OK, I'm sold - it was a completely racist policy that Gretna officials adopted and implemented. Their claims of not having the resources to take in refugees, hurting not only the refugees but their own local citizens is total BS if not heartless Republicanism. Let's expose these Bushtown Chimpies - which party do they belong to? Oops! Never mind. No story here. Move along.

[mark]

Limbaugh,(on Friday/last hour) reported that the spokesman from NO pd, who killed himself, had actually done so after he came home from helping find survivors, to find both his daughter and wife rape/murdered. He also reported that a female 'Neville' (charmane?) was a victim of rape while trying to help.

I take this with a big grain of salt, but even if this was a rumor that was believed at the time, I'm quite sure that the Gretna sheriff had it as a mitigating factor.

IF Limbaugh is wrong, he deserves flack for saying this, but if he is right...the survivors will be talking, I wonder what they have to say...

[corgimom]

Those two EMT's whose report this was based on write for the Socialist Worker. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

[Jamie]

This story reminds me of the awful scene in Titanic after the ship goes down and the few lifeboats retreat from the people in the water because they're afraid too many will try to climb aboard and swamp their boats and they'll all drown...

I don't know what the Gretna police ought to have done - where their responsibility should have been: are they responsible to Gretna alone, with a duty to protect it from being overwhelmed with refugees, or should they answer to a more overarching moral responsibility to aid and succor? You can make a case either way. Another piece of this tragedy, if the racism angle turns out not to be true.

I have an extremely hard time believing that a couple of San Francisco EMTs were able to "decode" the "coded language" of the Gretna police. My husband is always telling me to stop "interpreting" what he says because it's much easier and more accurate just to listen to what he's saying than to read hidden meanings into it, and that's just the old Mars/Venus divide. I'd argue that the San Francisco/Deep South divide is somewhat more of a bottomless chasm. In seven adult years in California and my continuing visits there every year, I have yet to hear anything like an assignment of positive motives to anyone from the South. Or at least any white Southerner. There's a starting assumption that all white Southerners are throwbacks to Huey Long and that all Southern locales are Hazzard County, except maybe New Orleans which is just "all that jazz."

[JorgXMckie]

C'mon Jamie, *everyone* just "knows" that all white people who grew up in the Deep South are hateful, racist rednecks. In fact, some people who didn't grow up in the Deep South move there because they're hateful, racist rednecks at heart. In fact, the only white people you can trust not to be hateful, racists are those few in compassionate (but almost entirely non-black) enclaves like the People's Republic of Berkley, The People's Republic of Ann Arbor, The People's Republic of Madison and similar safe havens for the liberated Marxists of our day. You can tell them in person by their compassionate head tilt and the fact that they're wearing all-natural clothing that costs more than a poor black person makes in a month.

I bet if we could see Jim E. he have his head sympathetically tilted, be wearing all-natural hand-woven clothing from Nicaragua, Birkenstocks that cost over $200, and designer sunglasses to protect his sympathetic eyes, perhaps as he stood by his $1700 bicycle he uses when it's convenient.

Of course, he could spend less on himself and more on the poor, but then he'd be way too like the rightwing Bible-pounders.

[D. Gorton]

I know Gretna, Louisiana, relatively well. It is a "bedroom" community in the sense that most of the people work in New Orleans. However, it is an old, working class, community and mostly white. The sheriff, and all of his predecessors are Democrats, though that means something different in Lousisiana than, say, Massachusetts.

However, there is something more here. Growing up along the Mississippi River, I know the history of "Shotgun Quarantine".

New Orleans was the commercial center of the Mississippi river Region -extending as far north as St. Louis. From time to time there would be epidemics, like cholera and Yellow Fever, that would sweep up the Delta from New Orleans. The merchants in New Orleans would always hide the fact that the epidemic had started - otherwise trade would dry up- and they would go broke. The river boats operating out of New Orleans would carry the diseases with their passengers passing on the illness before they died. The only defense that people along the river had against the epidemics was to impose "Shotgun Quarantine". I learned about this as a child. The men of the town would patrol its outskirts and they would refuse entry to anyone from outside the town.

There were terrible scenes of refugees from the plague walking along country roads, escaping New Orleans, and meeting up with the patrols. The men would shoot shotguns over their heads and turn them around, regardless of race. It was the only way that they knew to protect their families from contagion. In most cases it was a futile effort since the mosquitos didn't worry about shotguns.

But, I think we saw the "Shotgun Quarantine" resurrected at the bridge.

In the deep south, history is not history. Its not even the past. It is what you live with, and how you act.

[richard mcenroe]

D. Gorton — Well, yeah, but the Gretna cops didn't think the people from New Orleans were carrying a disease. They thought they were the disease.

[Lonewacko]

What the NYT is whitewashing is the socialism angle. The original screed is written from a rather skewed perspective.

The NYT's job should be to report on that original perspective and tell us what's true and what's false. Instead, they only briefly mentioned where the article first appeared and then they cherry-picked the non-socialist quotes.

More on this at Katrina Coverage

[J_Crater]

The folks at the NYT know we can't have any deviation from the Bush bashing by getting the police in Gretna into the fray.

[TangoMan]

Now, if race would be allowed to creep into their other reporting...

Nicholas Wade did a pretty decent job reporting on Dr. Bruce Lahn's research that the brain is still evolving and that two alleles associated with cognition have differential distributions across populations:

They report that with microcephalin, a new allele arose about 37,000 years ago, although it could have appeared as early as 60,000 or as late as 14,000 years ago. Some 70 percent or more of people in most European and East Asian populations carry this allele of the gene, as do 100 percent of those in three South American Indian populations, but the allele is much rarer in most sub-Saharan Africans.

With the other gene, ASPM, a new allele emerged some time between 14,100 and 500 years ago, the researchers favoring a mid-way date of 5,800 years. The allele has attained a frequency of about 50 percent in populations of the Middle East and Europe, is less common in East Asia, and found at low frequency in some sub-Saharan Africa peoples.

I'd say that there's little sugar-coating there. Sure, the torturous caveats abound, but the science is reported.

So, I think it really depends on the reporter, their editor, or perhaps the beat they're on, rather than the whole organization.

Crime and disaster reporting probably aren't as objective as science reporting.

[RufusLeeKing]

Usually the Times subscribes to the common All the News Politically Correct Enough to Print ethic of the Left to expunge the high amount of African-Americans who turn up in routine crime reports.

Here, however, they would seem to be covering up an anti-black racist allegation. Why? Because of NYT sympathies with anti-black racial attitudes? More likely, because of the pro-local Demo, anti-Washington GOP spin being put on the Katrina response in order to tar Bush with maximal effectiveness.

Its the marching order of the day. One that Hillary is running with, signalling the entire Demo appartus to follow.

[Steven J.]

Well, working class homeowners want to protect their property too, I have no doubt.

Here in the tiny town of St. Gabriel, nearly 70 miles from New Orleans, FEMA has turned a massive, 125,000-square-foot warehouse into a morgue to process and identify the bodies. Medical examiners have now started round-the-clock operations to X-ray, photograph, fingerprint and take DNA samples from the victims.
THERESA ROY, RESIDENT OF ST. GABRIEL: I'd rather have them here dead than alive. And at least they're not robbing you and you have to worry about feeding them.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/08/pzn.01.html

[Steven J.]

Usually the Times subscribes to the common All the News Politically Correct Enough to Print ethic of the Left to expunge the high amount of African-Americans who turn up in routine crime reports.

It sure wasn't that way when I was there, '78 to '86.

[Steven J.]

Those two EMT's whose report this was based on write for the Socialist Worker.

They don't write FOR the Socialist Worker, that's just where it first appeared.

You can also find it at the EMS site:

http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18427.shtml

[Steven J.]

MY BAD -

THEY do write fairly regularly for The Socialist Worker.

[Steven J.]

The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said.

[snip]

Cathey Golden, a 51-year-old from Boston, and her 13-year-old son, Ramon Golden, yesterday confirmed the account.

[Steven J.]

Limbaugh,(on Friday/last hour) reported

PigBoy doesn't report, he lies.

[Jim E.]

TM wrote: "Naturally, I can't find an example just now, . . .Regular Times readers are regularly entertained by [such] stories . . . [The] assailant's skin color is normally left unrevealed by the Times."

Since this is such a "regular" and "normal" (and entertaining??) occurance at the NY Times, I'm wondering when you're going to get around to posting six or seven recent examples of the NY Times failing to correctly identify the known race of a violent, on-the-loose suspect.

[Les Nessman]

Seven comment posts in a row?

Gosh, we are always so worried that Steven J. won't have something to say about each and every post and comment and point.

Not sure it's exceedingly polite to do it on someone else's blog, though.

[jane haigh]

for your info, ira glass on NPR had an interview, Ira glass this american life-style with the two socialist paramedics from san franciscokept out of gretna at gu-point. this is the katrina story with legs.

[DeputyHeadmistress]

I think there must have been more than a few other whites with them because of the fact that they report that they and those with them grew hungry and thirsty, so the window to Walgreens 'gave way to the looters,' and then they conclude: We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter."

They also claim to have seen no relief workers, yet that claim is at odds with the photographs at this photo essay (h/t Mudville):
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=14ewb3ap.b147fdut&Uy=nyvoby&Ux=1

They also say, in the Socialist paper story, that they camped for some time "in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway--on the center divide, between the O’Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits," and that the media noticed them and talked about them to officials. There was supposed to be a group of some 90 people with them, including many children. Surely some of the media took a photograph of this large group?

And does it matter that Harold Veasey, 66, is a witness in this article on Sept. 10th(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10emt.html) and this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05medical.html on September 5?
Or is it just that he was easily available?

[Cecil Turner]

"We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway . . ."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but a quick look at a map, suggests the bridge is not a feasible "self evacuation" route. After crossing the Mississippi eastward, one has to circle around the city clockwise to rejoin I-10 (about a 20-mile jaunt), and then there's still ~50 miles to Baton Rouge. So the choice is to let a mob string itself out (many of whom undoubtedly wouldn't make it), complicating evactuation efforts, or keep them where they are. The Gretna police chief's statement suggests he had little choice:

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.

If that's so, police actions were clearly warranted, including shooting over mobs of people who refused to follow orders. Starting a mass exodus from the Superdome was a bad plan, and if allowed, would undoubtedly have caused more deaths. It looks to me that not only is the racism angle silly, but the Gretna police were right.

[kim]

The border of anarchy and civil disorder. Imagine that point, because it is both poignant and ironic. On one side chaos, on the other, destruction but civil order. Did the mob of refugees obey ititial orders? Were they civil?

Tough, tough questions, probably reported in a very inadequate manner by these two socialists. It is worth a book, though to look at that incident.
=============================================

[TexasToast]

ISTM to be a case of a larger "us as Americans" vs. nature becoming a small "us folks in Gretna" vs. "them folks in NO". Society seems to have devolved to a smaller tribal unit, so the racial aspect is part and parcel of the tribal aspect. Some sociology grad student will probably produce a dissertation on the point.

Sounds like Cecil is with the sailor on the boat in Titanicwho prevented the lifeboat from going back at gunpoint. I hope to God if Cecil is anywhere around with a gun that I (and my family) are already in the boat.

[kim]

Second Amendment, Ho!
======================

[Steven J.]

This American Life has interviews with people involved in the Gretna incident. As Jane pointed out above, there were white people in the crowd and the Gretna cops would only allow whites to enter.

The clip isn't up yet but will be available here:
http://www.thislife.org/

[Cecil Turner]

"ISTM to be a case of a larger "us as Americans" vs. nature becoming a small "us folks in Gretna" vs. "them folks in NO"."

According to the Police Chief, there were no folks left in Gretna: "All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.

"Sounds like Cecil is with the sailor on the boat in Titanic who prevented the lifeboat from going back at gunpoint."

That was fiction. However, the survivor stories had many like this one:

Her lifeboat was so full that as she held her hand on the edge of the boat her fingers got wet up to the knuckles. For the first five or ten minutes in the water they had to beat people off who were trying to get into the boat. They were in the lifeboats for eight hours.

In any event, the analogy is a bit strained, since the reason I gave was to save the lives of those who thought they were going to walk out of the disaster area. And I'd note the paramedics survived to tell the tale.

[TexasToast]

So I guess its the "property" of us folks in Gretna vs them "black folks" in NO.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said.

There were no supermarkets in Gretna that were still stocked? Could they not have gotten the food ane water from those stores?

...."If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does
now: looted, burned and pillaged."

Not if they had gotten the food and water out of those stores and given it to these people.

Yep. That was it. Property is worth more than lives. I doubt very seriously that the Gretna "law" was thinking of these folks safety on the long march - so to speak. That's some defense their Cecil. It’s even uglier.

[kim]

Well, remember, they had legal, civil, order and feared preserving it. What was the behaviour of the refugees?
===========================================

[kim]

And I might add, TT, that burning and pillaging quite commonly include lives, not just property.
==============================================

[kim]

And, of course, just so that everyone sees the syllogism on square one is allowed to defend life with lethal force; one is not allowed to defend property with such.
==========================================

[mrsizer]

Society seems to have devolved to a smaller tribal unit,

"devolved"?!? It's normal, which is not to say "good".

[Cecil Turner]

"That's some defense their Cecil. It’s even uglier."

TT, your ad-hominems are tiresome. Your dishonest refusal to acknowledge my twice-stated rationale (saving lives of would-be trekkers) makes me disinclined to continue. Cheers.

I see Glenn has an updated link to the eminently sensible Bruce Rolston, who has an even better update with a good map overview. He comes up with the same 20-mile figure for circumnavigating the city, but notes that the aid collection point was there, so it wouldn't have been quite as difficult as my initial estimate. He also notes a much shorter route that many in fact took.

I differ with part of his conclusion, however (that authorities should've sent able-bodied along the shorter evacuation route). I'm sure he (or any other lanky reserve officer who does that sort of thing for recreation) would have no problem with the hike. The average joe might have a more difficult time of it, especially self-selected "able bodied" after a couple days on short rations. And if a large number had been sent, I suspect the death toll would've risen.

[TexasToast]

Its not an ad hom to attack your rational, Cecil. Sorry you took it that way. I'm not suggesting that you personally have a racist bone in your body. I acknowledged your "long march" rational/defense of the Gretna "law's" action, and rejected it as unlikely, given the quotations cited.

If true, its quite disturbing that white folks were allowed to cross the bridge and black folks were not. Further, its quite disturbing that the reasons stated by those in charge were "property" and "order" related with no hint that I've seen of the "saving lives" spin that you are applying. Somewhat like the first words out of the President's mouth about Katrina warned us all about the dangers of "insurance fraud".

There is some real history about black folks being left behind or forced to stay behind after floods in the Mississippi valley. Looks like the beat goes on.

[Jim E.]

Uh-oh, Texas Toast really blew it. By writing that clear and thoughtful and impossible to misconstrue sentence -- "I'm not suggesting that you personally have a racist bone in your body" -- Texas Toast will in fact be misconstrued: he will be accused of calling CT a racist (by JorqXmckie, most likely).

[Cecil Turner]

"Its not an ad hom to attack your rational, Cecil. "

The "I hope to God if Cecil is anywhere around with a gun . . ." bit had nothing to do with rationale, and was pure ad-hominem. The latter "uglier" defense bit was a strawman as well.

"If true, its quite disturbing that white folks were allowed to cross the bridge and black folks were not."

If true, it's quite amazing that the detail was left out of the socialist paramedics' tale, since it would have bolstered their case immensely.

"Further, its quite disturbing that the reasons stated by those in charge were "property" and "order" related with no hint that I've seen of the "saving lives" spin that you are applying."

Nonsense. The Chief never used the word "property" . . . and shooting looters isn't a property issue, it's to save lives (though obviously not of the individual looters). I'm not sure what you think he should have done, but leading hundreds of people away from the evacuation route and telling them to break down the door of the nearest grocery store has some fairly obvious drawbacks. Among those is that people are very likely to die in the ensuing disorder.

[TexasToast]

It looks to me that not only is the racism angle silly, but the Gretna police were right.

Well, Cecil, when you are right, you are right. Unfortunately, you are not this time. If it "looks to you" that the Gretna police were right, than it is not an ad hom to attack the argument by saying that it looks to me like you would use a gun, as they did, to defend your lifeboat/city.

Further, why didn't the Gretna police get the food themselves and distribute it? I'm not sugesting they invite folks to break the windows, but they could have commandeered the food and water themselves and used it to help these folks they were shooting "over the heads" of.

Finally, the argument that property rights in food and water outweigh human life is ugly. I know, I know, its preventing "disorder", but it seems that it was more preventing NIMBY disorder, not disorder as such.

[Dogger]

Cecil, you keep using that phrase 'ad hominem'. I do not think it means what you think it means. It means judging the quality of a person's argument by their biographical background to make it, thus impugning the suitability of their character to even make an argument on the subject.

Simply being sarcastic or claiming that your opinion would lead you to unacceptable or evil actions does not qualify as 'ad hominem'. Nor is it necessarily a brilliant rejoinder, but that's besides the point.

I personally think there should be another term for people who cry 'ad hominem' at the drop of a hat whenever they feel insulted -- it's simply an alternative method of avoiding addressing the opponent's argument.

DB

[Jim E.]

"I hope to God if Cecil is anywhere around with a gun . . ."

This is not "pure ad-hominem." It's not even impure ad-hom. It's not ad-hom at all.

[kim]

JimE, I'll not accuse TT of calling CT a racist, but I will accuse him of bringing race in as an issue where it probably didn't belong.
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[Marco]

Harry Shearer (Le Show NPR) started his show today with the Gretna welcome mat story. True Southern hospitality!

[kim]

Journalistes sans frontieres, mais il y a des gendarmes aux douanes.
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[Jim E.]

kim,
Then how come no accusations by you against Mr. JustOneMinute, Tom Maquire? Look at the main post again.

[Jim E.]

Since you might miss the subtlety of my last remark, this ENTIRE thread is about race.