Here’s the thing: Stories like this happen all the time.
People get shot to death on a daily basis in America, and if I was required to express an opinion every time somebody died in a shooting, I’d never have time to comment on anything else. The only reason that the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has become The Biggest Story in History of the Whole Freaking World is that (a) Brown was black, and (b) the cop who shot him was white.
That’s it — the whole story.
Criminal suspects getting shot by cops isn’t really unusual. Brown was unarmed, but the policeman who shot him — identified as Darren Wilson — didn’t know that. There was a robbery, and Brown matched the description of a suspect. I don’t know the details of Brown’s encounter with Officer Wilson, and can’t say why he drew his gun and fired. If you forced me to speculate, I’d guess that Officer Wilson believed Brown might be armed, and that Brown made a sudden move that caused Officer Wilson to believe Brown might be reaching for a gun, at which point Officer Wilson made a split-second decision that turned out to be completely wrong. But that’s just speculation, as is nearly 100% of what idiots have been saying about this story.
It's fair to wonder, I think, if this would have escalated quite so much without all the outside agitators flooding in. And I don't just mean the race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who always show up, and those whose intent was to use the unrest for an excuse to loot and burn. I mean all the earnest analyzers (i.e. "idiots") who need this kind of story to advance whatever narrative they've bought into -- the black and white divide, poor in America, police militarization, etc. etc. etc., and the journalists who keep promoting their crappy agendas. I think we've stirred this pot as much as anybody.
This is, at heart, a confrontation between and cop and a suspect that went horribly wrong for the suspect. We don't know what happened yet, and there will be an investigation, and then maybe we will know. Until then, let the people involved do what they do (including legitimate pushing of the authorities by Brown's relatives). It's not our business, so let's just shut up a little.
Last word:
Cops shooting unarmed suspects is bad. Looting is bad, too. The media, and certain bloggers, seems to have decided that this case deserves to be tried on cable TV news shows. Because we don’t have courts or anything like that in this country, I guess.
So there’s my Official Commentary: Stop watching cable TV news. But if you find a lesbian feminist angle to this story, let me know.