My buddy Frank, from Rural Minnesota, was very angry with the Dean Obeidallahs of the world this past weekend. He slapped this meme up on Facebook and commented something very Frank-like, like Damn Straight! or F-ing Liberals.
Hmmm. Mass shooters do not exactly look like what I have been led to believe they look like by the media conglomerate CNN....
Purely guessing, since the meme-creator used the term "mass shooters," but let's take a leap and say that some of the young people above are residents of Chicago. Let's go to the Chicago Shooting Page Hey Jackass! (Yes, there is such a thing.)
Hey Jackass has all kinds of Chicago Shooting Statistics.
How many people shot and wounded inside the Chicago City Limits:
This Week. This Month. This Year.
Race of Victim/Race of Assailant.
Gender of Victim.
How many people shot in the genitals.....wait, what?
Chicago's on pace to have over 2 dozen people shot in the junk this year?
Apparently so.
Here we go, here's what we're looking for. How many times, as of August 15, 2019, has there been at least 5 people shot in a single incident in Chicago alone? The answer to that would be 11 times in the first 8 months of 2019 alone. As a matter of fact, according to the website, a person is shot in Chicago about every 3 hours and someone is murdered every 17 hours or so.
But let's return to the task at hand. Five is a nice round number. A news agency would simply say Mr. John Doe shot 5 people today. Now Hey Jackass has funny graphics, but the website is simply presenting crime statistics in an easier to digest fashion.
Now our old friend at CNN/The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah, would start typing away at the first shots.
Muslim shooter? Headline at The Daily Beast: NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS.
White shooter? Headline at CNN: TRUMP MUST ADDRESS WHITE SUPREMACY.
Black shooter? Global Turmoil Trump Stirred now Threatens Re-Election Chances.
In that Philadelphia shooting above, 1 black man shot 6 cops. When is the last time one man shot so many cops? Al Capone? There was little national outrage and the Philly locals actually cheered on the gunman. One day earlier, I had read the story of the Female, Chicago-Teen Assassin. Now in both cases the gunman was black. If the headlines at Beacon of Speech screamed BLACK TERRORISM, would you click on the article? (Obviously you did.) I could enter this theory into the national conversation, WHY DOESN'T TRUMP DO ANYTHING ABOUT BLACK TERRORISM. Then some horrible websites would probably pick up my article. "Yeah, Fred Hunt is on to something. You never do hear Trump talk about Black Terrorism." Then when whites commit the same crimes, I would just brush it off, "goddamn mentally-ill teens, whatchya' gonna to do?" It would take you about 2 f*&^ing seconds for you to see what my agenda was:
What if my next 10 articles in a row were:
Why doesn't Trump use the words Black Terrorism?
Jay-Z: Protects Black Terrorists.
Chicago War Zone
Urban Areas You Don't Go To
Colin Kaepernick: Black Terrorist
The Cult of Maxine Waters
It All Goes Back to Malcolm X
Exporting Black Terrorism to Canada
Global Black Terrorist Movement
Dems Fail to Purge Black Terrorists
Some people would praise my courage of speaking the truth.
Some people would condemn my hate speech.
But you could clearly see what I was selling you.
Do I really think what happened in Philadelphia/Chicago was Black Terrorism? Of course not. I'm trying to make a point. More whites shoot people. A higher percentage of blacks shoot people. You can take statistics and make a story out of any of them. How you report on those statistics reveals your bias.
Don't believe me? Today Dean Obeidallah has a lead story at the Daily Beast about the hotbed of "White Nationalism" at the New York Young Republicans club. He is CONSTANTLY beating a drum. Some people believe him. Some don't.
Let me be clear, let me be concise. This is a free speech website. The older I become, the more jaded I become on what people are trying to sell me.
I don't believe anything Donald Trump tries to sell me.
And I don't believe anything Dean Obeidallah tries to sell me.
You think one of them are right?
That's where you're wrong.
Finally, returning to the meme at the top, if it is factual, (I'm still not sure that it 100% is,) does it matter if it was created by a kid in his Mom's basement in Minneapolis, or if it was created by Russians trying to divide us? If it is true, does the messenger matter?
Editor's Note: All of those 10 articles are fake. I don't want to be known as the Black Terrorist Guy.