The thought of a la carte pricing being required for cable networks never quite sat well with me, but I wasn’t sure why. For me, it was probably just a knee-jerk reaction against additional regulations. CoyoteBlog, though, explains why the regulation hurts niche channels.

Dafydd ab Hugh has a post up about the Jena Six. Somehow, I’d not heard much about this case before. Reading Dafydd’s post, I couldn’t figure out what, exactly, was being protested. Six young adults beat up another young adult, and people are rallying… in support of the six?!

Convinced there must be something else going on here, I decided to go look for a source that would give me the story from the perspective of the Jena Six defenders^[a].

From what I can tell, based on the timeline from that site, there were a series of racially charged incidents since September of 2006, culminating in the beating of Justin Barker in early December. The protesters seem to believe that, because no charges were filed against whites in any of the other situations, the Jena Six should be released as well. (All quotes below come from the timeline site linked, unless otherwise noted.)

I’m going to start at the end of the story:

Monday, December 4th, 2006, a white student, Justin Barker, was attacked at school by a group of black students for taunting them with racial slurs and verbally supporting the nooses that were hung on “the white tree” and also supporting the white students who beat up the black student at the party. He was treated at a hospital and released the same day, attending a social function that evening.

Six black students were arrested for beating Barker, and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. These charges hold a possible sentence of twenty to one hundred years in prison. They were all immediately expelled from school.

17-year-old Robert Bailey Junior -bail was set at $138,000
17-year-old Theo Shaw – bail was set at $130,000
18-year-old Carwin Jones – bail was set at $100,000
17-year-old Bryant Purvis – bail was set at $70,000
16 year old Mychal Bell – bail was set at $90,000 (a sophomore in high school, was charged as an adult)
There remains another unidentified minor

Mychal Bell remained in jail from December 2006 until his trial because his family was unable to post the $90,000 bond. Theo Shaw has also remained in jail. Several of the other defendants remained in jail for months until their families could raise the money for bond.

I’m confused by the charges in this case. Conspiracy to Commit Murder means that they agreed to and took some action toward committing murder. But, the murder they (allegedly) tried to commit was second degree murder. That, by definition, means it wasn’t planned. How can you be charged with planning (Conspiracy) an unplanned (Second-Degree) murder? Any lawyers want to clarify?

The fact that the murder in question was only attempted means they didn’t actually kill their target, but that they tried. Whether he was home from the hospital that evening or not isn’t really a part of the equation, so I’m not sure why that fact is included here. Regardless, the charges were lowered to battery and conspiracy to commit battery.

Anyway, the gist here seems to be that Justin Barker supposedly taunted his attackers with racial slurs and support for the nooses in a previous incident (see below), and that they attacked him. If the entire incident had been a single punch in retaliation, I’d be inclined to say that it should have been overlooked if the accusations are correct. The incident was allegedly much more than that, though; Barker was beaten into unconsciousness by six attackers. That makes the attack on him considerably more severe, and the allegation that he was acting like a racist idiot is not exculpatory. On the face of things, I don’t see any reason to protest for the Jena Six based solely on the incident itself, so let’s look at the events leading up to the attack.

In September of 2006, a black student asked ‘permission’ from the school administration, if he could sit under the tree. They said he could sit anywhere.

The very next day, three nooses, in the schools colors, hung from “the white tree”.

Three white students were identified as being responsible and the principle recommended they be expelled from school. However, the white superintendent said, “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune, “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody,” and gave them a three day suspension instead.

This may or may not have been intended as a serious threat, but it was definitely intended to, at least, spark fear or incite anger in the black students. It was more than a prank, and officials should be ashamed of themselves for portraying it as such. Given our country’s (supposed) respect of individuals’ freedom of expression, I don’t think the noose-hangers should have been a crime, but if there was an applicable statute in the law (unconstitutional as it would have been), I reluctantly believe the issue should have been pressed, if only because it was imperative that the school district do everything in their power to denounce the racism inherent in the expression.

I can’t say whether the three day suspension was sufficient or not without context (how does the school deal with similar threats, etc.), but the superintendent’s (and school board’s?) reducing the punishment from the principal’s recommendation does seem questionable.

A few days later, the entire black student body protested the no-nothing ‘punishment’ and sat under “the white tree”. …

Assuming this is as peaceful a protest as the site makes it sound, good for them! Again, I can’t speak as to the appropriateness of the punishment, but a peaceful protest against both the punishment and the racism inherent in the noose hanging is absolutely appropriate for these students.

…That day the white District Attorney came to Jena High School for an impromptu assembly, with back-up law enforcement. It has been reported that the DA threatened the silent black students who were sitting under the tree, saying if the did not stop making a fuss about the “innocent prank…I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” The school was then put on lockdown for the remaining week.

That’s a pretty extreme statement to deal with non-violent protestors who’ve been doing nothing but sitting under a tree.

The Town Talk, in Alexandria-Pineville, Louisiana, reports on the speech as follows (the article discusses the incident in context, not just the speech):

Although students have claimed there was a “peaceful protest” at the tree following the noose incident, Washington said he could find no proof of that claim. As opposed to a peaceful response, Jena police officers were called to the school to respond to a number of fights — white on black and black on white — in the days after the noose incident, Washington said.

In response to the growing violence at the school, the principal called an assembly. The Jena Police Department asked Walters to attend and speak. Washington, who spoke to Walters about the assembly, said Walters wasn’t very happy about the request because he was in the midst of preparing for an aggravated rape case.

When Walters spoke to the students, he said they weren’t paying attention to what he was saying or being respectful, Washington said. Washington said the information he received confirmed that Walters made statements about being able to affect the students’ lives with the stroke of a pen, but said that reports that the speech was directed toward black students after peacefully demonstrating aren’t true.

This take seems to make more sense to me: the DA was called in to help defuse some of the growing violence, probably felt himself too busy and/or too important to deal with disciplinary incidents at a local high school, and made remarks he shouldn’t have. The timing with the non-violent sit-in at the tree (giving the students the benefit of the doubt, I’m assuming such a thing happened, but being a completely legal protest, there’s no official record) is probably coincidental, I’d say.

That said, we see an official once again referring to the nooses as “a prank”, which is entirely inappropriate, but an assembly to address some of the rising racial tensions probably wasn’t a bad idea. It appears that it wasn’t directed solely at the black students, but I can see why they would believe that it was, especially coming from a white district attorney.

Back to the timeline:

Thursday night, November 30th, 2006, a fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School. This incident is still unresolved.

Not knowing who was involved or even whether this was arson (I can’t find mention of the fire elsewhere), I’m just going to ignore this one.

Friday night, December 1st, a black student was beaten by a group of white students at a “white party”.

The Town Talk gives more information, saying that the black student who was beaten up “by a group of white students” also had a group of fellow black students with him, and that one of the white men (not students) was arrested and pleaded guilty to battery.

Saturday, December 2nd, at the Gotta Go convenience store, the black student who was beaten up the night before, along with his friends, ran into one of the white students who beat him. A confrontation broke out and the white student went to his vehicle to get his shotgun. The black students wrestled the shotgun away from him and brought it to the police department and told them of the incident. The black students were arrested for stealing the gun. The white student was not charged.

The white student wasn’t charged… for what? Owning a gun? See: The Second Amendment. Brandishing a gun? He was being confronted by a group of men who apparently wanted revenge for a previous incident — if that’s not a reason to wield a gun in self-defense, I don’t know what is.

I’m a little surprised to see this paragraph in the timeline for the group supporting the Jena Six. Most of the other incidents have been described in a way to highlight potential racism against blacks; I’m not sure how “A group of black men confronted a white man, he fetched a gun to defend himself, and the black men took it from him” is supposed to make anyone except an extreme hoplophobe think that the white man was in the wrong here.

Anyway, we’re now back up to the incident itself. Let’s summarize:

• Nooses were hung in the “white tree” after a black student asked permission to sit under it. No one was charged^[b], but three students were suspended. Officials minimized the incident, calling it a “prank.”
• Subsequent to the noose incident, several racially-divided (and presumably racially-motivated) fights broke out in the school. There is no mention of any charges being pressed on either side of those fights.
• A black student (and his friends) fought with a group of white men at an invitation-only party after they tried to crash. The white man who beat up the black youth was arrested and charged with battery. He pled guilty.
• The black student beat up in the previous incident, along with some friends, confronted one of the men who was a part of the fight the night before. The confronted man retrieved his shotgun, which was taken from him by the black students, who were later charged with stealing it. The white man was not charged in this incident^[c], probably because it’s unclear if he broke any laws.

When the charges were Conspiracy to Commit Murder and Attempted Second Degree Murder, I could’ve understood the outcry; other incidents were recorded as “battery”, so it would appear on the surface that the black students were getting more severe charges than their counterparts (though the argument could be made that the six-on-one beating was more severe than the previous attacks). Whether those charges would stick would have depended on knowing the intent of the Six, and without any specific reason to believe murder was intended, I think that bumping the charges up to Murder was probably unwarranted. Still, the protests are on-going despite the reduced charges. What do the protesters want?

Do they want to let the Six off the hook? “Oh, well, you know, there was lots of racial tension around, and we should just let them go. All they did was beat up a white boy, after all.” If they agree that the attackers in this case should be punished, but they feel that white attackers in similar incidents against black victims were given lesser punishments, let them point out the incidents. None of the incidents I’ve seen mentioned are particularly similar. We have a non-violent (though threatening and offensive) form of expression in the nooses, a series of schoolyard fights (none of which have been listed as six-on-one or leading to unconsciousness for the victim), a fight between two groups that led to one man being charged with battery, and a later confrontation where a man pulled a gun (presumably in self defense). These incidents give us a feel for the environment in which the assault occurred (though, arguably, those of us outside the area can’t get a real sense of the environment), but they are not comparable to the incident in question now.

I invite any of the Jena Six supporters to come and explain exactly what the goal of these protests is.

[UPDATE: I finished a sentence that I had apparently forgotten to complete in the initial writing of this post.]

1. That is, incidentally, a poorly designed page. I’m against links that pop up in a new window (unless it’s something like comments to a blog post, where the new page isn’t really stand-alone information) in general, especially in the modern age of tabbed browsers, but that site uses pop-up links not only for external sites (which tends to be the way they’re used most often), but for links to other internal pages. It’s extremely annoying. [↩]
2. Supposedly, anyway. According to The Town Talk article, the only charges that could’ve been pressed were Federal, but the feds rarely prosecute juveniles, and when it does, it does so in a closed hearing that would not be made public. [↩]
3. The JenaSix.org website says he was later arrested for bringing a hunting rifle onto a high school campus. [↩]

I have a habit of reading things I intend to blog about, putting them aside to be written about later, and then forgetting about them. More accurately, I suppose, I put them aside, and when I pick them up again, I decide the post would be too untimely now. One item, on the verge of being “too old”, is the Sept. 12 editorial from the Charleston Gazette, titled “Shift?”.

The editorial discusses the “loosening of the bond between the GOP and hardline believers who denounce gays, abortion, sexy movies, stem cell research, evolution, sex education and the separation of church and state.” For some reason, the Gazette’s editorial staff (in their decidedly liberal-skewed view) seems to feel this is a good thing for Democrats. I don’t believe they’ve thought this through.

First, where does the Gazette think the Religious Right is going? The editorial doesn’t say that the “hardline believers” are becoming less hardline. Instead, it quotes a Voice of America treatise that said: “Republicans in Congress have not lived up to their commitments on issues such as restricting abortion or banning gay marriage.” If that is the major cause of the “break”, I’m not sure why the Gazette would consider it a win. Much like conservative-leaning libertarians who have been opting out of the Republican party in recent years, it sounds like these evangelicals are choosing to leave the party because it’s become too Democratic.

It seems unlikely that they are going to leave the Republican party for not being socially conservative enough and then run straight to the arms of the Democrats. After all, the Gazette quotes the Toronto Star’s analysis, “Is the Christian Right Withering?”, which said: “…Democratic contender Barack Obama, for instance, has accused the Christian right of promoting hate and challenged its contention that strict Christian values are integral to American society….” I’m pretty sure that’s not the way for the Democrats to win over these voters disillusioned by the Republican party.

Of course, it is possible that some of the former Religious Right will jump to the Democrats; if both parties are seen as too-liberal socially, then there’s nothing to stop these evangelicals from skipping over to the party that will provide liberal economic policies that Christ commanded^[a]:

“The Religious Right’s Era is Over” was the title of a recent Time commentary by Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine. He said American religion “has had a negative image in the past few decades” because of fundamentalist politics, but now “we have entered the Post-Religious Right era.”

“Evangelicals — especially the new generation of pastors and young people — are deserting the Religious Right in droves,” the Time essay said. Churches are returning to more compassionate political goals such as helping the poor, increasing medical care, opposing war and similar humane ideals espoused by Jesus, Wallis wrote.

If Wallis (whose full article can be found here) is right, this shift could indicate a levelling of the playing field, making the issues the topic of debate, rather than the (often unrelated) religious beliefs of those on either side.

Liberals need to be cautious about celebrating the demise of the “religious right”, in that case. They’ve gotten by for quite a while now by attacking the Religious Right strawman, which allowed them to avoid any real debate. Imagine if they actually had to discuss partial-birth abortions (or abstinence^[b] education, voluntary prayer in schools, or education vouchers, or…) without their usual, shrill outcry about the Religious Right’s attempts to legislate Christian values Without the Religious Right strawman to beat up on, liberals may find themselves facing a much more formidable opponent. They may actually have to argue against the facts ^[c].

1. Whether Christ’s example really calls for Christians to forcibly rob from our neighbors to give to ensure equality of outcome and stand idly by, allowing atrocities to continue indefinitely, because we “oppose war” is debatable, I think, but that’s not the topic of this piece. [↩]
2. Note that I didn’t say abstinence only education [↩]
3. Actually, they probably won’t; the lack of a religious element to the gun rights debate hasn’t really forced them to face facts, come to think of it. [↩]

There’s an interesting question included in September 13th’s “Dear Prudence”:

Dear Prudence,
My younger, 13-year-old sister is having a slumber party for her birthday, and invited three or so of her 13- to 14-year-old girlfriends to our house. Shortly after, “Sara’s” mother suggested that my sister’s party should be held at “Tammy’s” house. Why? Because Tammy has a single mother. Sara’s mother is concerned that my father will be in his house during the festivities. There is no reason to be concerned about my father doing anything inappropriate to any of the girls (all the parents have met each other), but she is just uncomfortable about the idea of her daughter sleeping in the same house with another nonfamily man. She has also convinced the other parents that a change of venue would be a good idea. Although Tammy’s mother is willing to host the event, my family is offended that the situation has come to this. Since when is it a crime to have a happy two-parent household? Should we cancel the event altogether, at my sister’s expense? Ask my dad to go on a mini vacation? Go along with the venue change? Tell this lady she is overreacting?

—Befuddled

In her response, Prudence points out some of Jeff Zaslow’s articles about our culture’s tendency to demonize men. For example, in his September 6th article, Zaslow writes about a father who was reprimanded by his son’s day-care center:

In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son’s day-care center called him in to reprimand him for “inappropriately touching the children.” “I was shocked,” he says. “Whatever did she mean?” She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man’s lap.

The first Zaslow article linked above, from August 23rd, includes this snippet:

Virginia’s campaign was designed to encourage people to trust their instincts about possible abuse, says Rebecca Odor, director of sexual and domestic violence prevention for the state health department. She stands by the ads^[a], pointing out that 89% of child sex-abuse perpetrators in Virginia are male.

Just because most sex-abuse perpetrators are male does not mean that all males should be feared. That eighty-nine percent of child sex-abuse perpetrators in Virginia are male does not imply that eighty-nine percent of males are child sex-abuse perpetrators. This is the same sort of logic that says, “100% of the perpetrators of mass shootings on college campuses in Virginia are of East Asian descent, therefore we should avoid all individuals of East Asian descent.” It’s ignorant bigotry, and it should be denounced as such.

It’s completely advisable to not leave your children in the care of anyone that you’re not familiar and comfortable with, but if the sole reason that you are uncomfortable with an individual is because of that person’s gender, you are a sexist, and should be ashamed of yourself.

( þ Instapundit, via Electric Venom )

1. The ads in question show the hands of a grown man and a young child, with the quote “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together”, implying that a man holding a child’s hand (even, for example, a father with his daughter or even his son) is automatically an abuser. [↩]

The Munchkin Wrangler on a pet peeve of mine.