"A Capitol Police lieutenant was suspended for wearing a MAGA cap during the Jan. 6 riots but told his colleagues he did it to get fellow officers out of harm's way."

"For many congressional staff members and Capitol workers, in particular people of color, the damage wrought on Wednesday was visceral."

"It will be a long time before they feel safe again at work, they say, knowing that a building once thought to be among the most secure in Washington could be breached by a mob carrying, among other things, a Confederate flag and displaying anti-Semitic iconography.... The Capitol Police have come under fire for seeming, at times, to offer little resistance to the pro-Trump mob. While some experts defended their actions as prioritizing the protection of lawmakers over the securing of the building, many congressional staff members, along with custodial and food service workers, were left wondering whether they were safe.... Black staff members in particular said the rampage had reminded them of the struggles they had often had to come to terms with in order to work for Congress.... One Black congressional staff member who also took a walk through the Capitol to survey the aftermath on Wednesday night said that despite all the damage, he had been stopped in his tracks outside Representative Steny Hoyer’s office, where a poster honoring John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights leader who died in August, had been displayed. It was missing. He looked for it feverishly and found only a broken piece on the ground next to a trash can. The image of Mr. Lewis was gone. All that remained of his celebrated quote, 'Get into good trouble, necessary trouble,' were the final two words — smudged by a boot print."

From "Rampage Weighs on Congressional Staff Members and Capitol Workers/The violence caused by a pro-Trump mob on Wednesday has shaken many who work at the Capitol. And some people of color say the law enforcement response reopened old wounds" (NYT).

"The disturbing breach of security at the U.S. Capitol is raising serious questions about the safety of lawmakers and staff who work there..."

"... and drawing criticism toward the security services who are meant to keep them safe. Images of a mob scaling walls, breaking down fences, and storming the seat of the country’s Democracy have led to criticism that the Capitol Police should have been better prepared for the possible assault. 'What the hell was law enforcement on Capitol Hill thinking by not having secured the Capitol today?' former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asked on CNBC... 'Everybody knew that there would be a disturbance, everybody knew that there would be people who were interested in doing nothing but creating havoc in the Capitol, and very frankly it was the responsibility of the law enforcement and the Capitol Hill Police to secure the Capitol.'" 

From "Capitol Police face heat following mob breach" (The Hill).

It has been demonstrated how insecure the building is. What happens next time? 

This is not unrelated to the way the police were ineffectual when mobs broke into storefronts last summer. We live our lives as if buildings protect us, but they only protect us until they don't. 

"In a surreal scene of chaos and glee, hundreds of Trump loyalists roamed the halls, taking photos and breaking into offices."

"No police officers were in view. In a room where there were images of mountains and maps of Oregon on the wall, a man in a leather jacket ripped a scroll with Chinese characters. A young man put a framed picture of the Dalai Lama in his backpack. 'We’re claiming the House, and the Senate is ours,' a sweaty man in a checked shirt shouted, stabbing his finger in the air. Nearby in the first-floor Crypt, the heart of the Capitol building, the police appeared to be overwhelmed. One wiped tear gas from his eyes. When a man approached to ask where the bathroom was, he said softly, 'We just need you guys to get out of here safely.'... Another officer stood by a stairway, watching everything unfold and answering a few questions, including directing a woman to the bathroom. One protester came up to him and shouted in his face, 'Traitor!' When another man approached to apologize to the officer, the officer replied, 'You’re fine.' 'Everybody’s been OK today, except that guy,' he said, motioning to the yeller. Most of the crowd in the Crypt just milled around. A young man in a red Trump hat smoked a cigarette. Several men shouted and screamed. A man in a backpack with two American flags jumped underneath a chandelier, yelling, 'Whose house,' as the crowd answered, 'Our house.'"

From "As House Was Breached, a Fear ‘We’d Have to Fight’ to Get Out/What unfolded on Wednesday was a tableau of violence and mayhem that shocked the nation, one of the most severe intrusions of the Capitol since the British burned down the building in 1814" (NYT).

The chant "Whose house/Our house" is very familiar to me from the Wisconsin protests in 2011, when opponents of the newly elected governor, Scott Walker, lay siege to the Wisconsin Capitol building (which looks a lot like the U.S. Capitol building):

 

The text at that video says:

That's In February, I was deeply moved by the fact that in spite of there being 13,000 Protesters at the Capitol, everyone was allowed to enter. I asked my girlfriend how this could be. She replied that the Capitol was "our House." When I returned from a road trip a couple weeks later I, and the rest of the public were all barred from entering Our House though lobbyists could enter without much problem. Walker had stolen the most profound Democratic feeling I've ever had. He had stolen Our House. The "Whose House? Our House!" chants outside Our House grew as did the crowds (to over 100,000). I felt moved to write this song....

"It's really evidence about the perspective of Officer Sheskey at each moment and what would a reasonable officer do at each moment. Almost none of those things are answered in that deeply disturbing video that we’ve all seen."

"Officer Sheskey felt he was about to be stabbed... All the discussion that [Blake] was unarmed contradicts what he himself has said to investigators," said Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley, quoted in "Prosecutor: No charges against Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey in Jacob Blake shooting" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). 

Blake's lawyer B’Ivory LaMarr said: "We believe all of the elements of attempted homicide were met and we believe the city and community is being deprived of their constitutional right to be the trier of fact. In 2021, it shows one very important thing, and that is that there are three justice systems in America: There’s one for Black and brown people, one for police officers, and one for the rest of the America. And we won’t stop until there is truly one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all."

"Minneapolis police shot and killed a man who allegedly opened fire on officers during a traffic stop Wednesday night..."

".... sparking new tensions in a city still deeply on edge since the police killing of George Floyd in May and the fiery unrest that followed. Scores of protesters quickly arrived at the site of the shooting, a gas station parking lot in South Minneapolis, about a mile from the intersection where Floyd was killed, facing off in below-freezing temperatures with police officers clad in riot gear, some clutching batons and cans of pepper spray. The tense scene, reminiscent of clashes between police and demonstrators in the aftermath of Floyd’s death, continued into early Thursday and prompted calls for peace from Minneapolis officials anxious to avoid a repeat of the May unrest that left parts of the city burned and destroyed. On Thursday evening, dozens of people began gathering at the gas station again for a vigil.... The body-camera footage appears to show the driver fire a shot through his window.... Word of the shooting quickly spread on social media, including rumors about the race of the suspect and how many times he had been shot and where...." 

From "Fatal shooting by police sets off protest in Minneapolis, the city’s first police-involved death since George Floyd" (WaPo).

You have to read the long article carefully to see that we're not told the race of the man who was shot dead by the police. We're not told, even though the writer of the article seems to have watched the video — "The body-camera footage appears to show the driver fire a shot through his window." Can't we hear what the race the driver "appears" to be? Is it simply that it's a delicate matter, guessing what race a person is? Or is it that if they say he appears white, people will say different things that if they're told he appears black? 

We're not even told what the "rumors about the race of the suspect" were! It seems most likely that the rumors were that he was black, since people were drawn out to a protest. But what if the dead man turns out to have been white? Would protest leaders shift to saying the problem is police brutality against all races? I note that they could say the police only kill a white man when he's actually firing a shot right at them. 

"Years ago, while working on a story for Rolling Stone about why so few white-collar offenders went to jail..."

"I realized I needed to better understand why the criminal-justice system worked with such monstrous efficiency to put poorer people in prison. What I thought would be a short detour to tackle that question ended up consuming five years, ending in two books about structural inequities in modern policing: The Divide, and I Can’t Breathe, the story of the brutal killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island. There are obvious similarities between the Garner case and that of George Floyd. Both victims were African American men in their forties, grandfathers trying to put troubled pasts behind them. Both were approached over minor offenses.... Both Garner and Floyd died of asphyxia from being sat or knelt upon by police officers with long abuse histories. In both cases, numerous other officers and/or medical personnel refused to stop this clear abuse, or even administer aid long after the suspect had been subdued and stopped breathing.... s I learned through years of talking to brutality victims and police alike, and by following cases like Garner’s through the courts, episodes like the Floyd killing happen thanks to a variety of interlocking bureaucratic and political imperatives. The individual racism of officers (and the structural racism underpinning police departments) is clearly a major part of the picture. But there are more immediately fixable problems at play as well. Here are four troubling logistical reasons these tragedies keep recurring...."

Writes Matt Taibbi in "Why Policing Is Broken/Years of research on brutality cases shows that bad incentives in politics and city bureaucracies are major drivers of police violence" (Rolling Stone). Read the whole thing. The 4 headings are "Time Works Against Victims," "Abuse Records Are Secret," "Juking the Stats," and "‘Law and Order’ Wins Votes."

"Hours after the Fulton County district attorney announced felony murder and other charges against the former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks... a number of Atlanta police officers called in sick just before a shift change Wednesday evening."

"The city was left scrambling to cover absences as the Atlanta Police Department tried to tamp down rumors of a mass police walkout that spread widely on social media.... 'We do have enough officers to cover us through the night,' Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) told CNN. 'Our streets won’t be any less safe because of the number of officers who called out.'... 'This is not an organized thing, it’s not a blue flu, it’s not a strike, it’s nothing like that,' Vince Champion, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, told NBC News. 'What it actually is is officers protesting that they’ve had enough and they don’t want to deal with it any longer.'... Champion added that many officers felt prosecutors had not publicly shared sufficient evidence to back up the charges leveled against Rolfe, in part because the district attorney only released a video still that appears to show the former officer kick Brooks rather than the full video itself.... Although the quick action in Atlanta has been praised by civil rights advocates and hailed as a victory for activists, some in the police department have decried the quick process. Bottoms said that morale in Atlanta’s police department was at a low.... 'The thing that I’m most concerned about is how we repair the morale in our police department,” Bottoms.... 'and how do we ensure our communities are safe as they interact with our police officers.'"

WaPo reports.

In the comments over there, somebody says:

They harassed the guy for 45 minutes and when he panicked and grabbed their taser, they shot him when he was running away. Then kicked him. Sorry guys, if you think that's what policing is, you should be calling in sick.

Why do these cops think someone like Dylann Roof should be gently apprehended (and given a cheeseburger) but a black guy should be harassed? And that he isn't expected to panic? And that those cops couldn't let him run, and go after him later?

That draws this sarcasm:

Cops should wait until 0.1 milliseconds before the stun gun barb pierces the cornea of the eyeball before shooting the perpetrator in the kneecap of their non-dominant leg to slow him down and then snuggle him into compliance.

Can the cop cry?

I'm going to take a contrarian position on this: a lot of us have tremendous stress in our lives right now and it comes out in different ways. We're assuming the worst about her just like she's assuming the worst of McDonalds. No need to shame her. https://t.co/hQkhnisQoM

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 17, 2020

"We will not sell facial-recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology."

Said Microsoft President Brad Smith, quoted in "Microsoft won’t sell police its facial-recognition technology, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM" (WaPo).

How shocking is "And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter"?

Trump used that phrase yesterday at the Roundtable on Justice Disparities in America (transcript). Context:

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything.... I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have [the National Guard] go in.” And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter, right through, boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road wherever it may be in the city, Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom. They just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things and the crowd dispersed. And they went through it by the end of that evening. And it was a short evening. Everything was fine.... So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control, but we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

As I drove home from my sunrise run this morning...



... I had "Morning Joe" on the satellite radio, and he was riffing emotively on that phrase "it was like a knife cutting butter." Joe acted as though the phrase connoted murderously cutting into human flesh, and Who talks like that?!! In Joe's vivid nightmare, Trump is unfathomably evil. Joe said it's as if Trump were "running for President of the Confederacy" and Trump has decided to speak only to "angry white men — angry old white men."

Joe is 57, by the way, so that's a bit old, and he is also white and angry, so maybe he knows whereof he speaks, and yet he does not mean that he hears the siren call of Donald Trump.

But let's look at this phrase "like a knife cutting butter." It's an idiomatic expression! It means it was easy. You see the context. It doesn't mean the National Guard was sadistically injuring people. It means all they had to do was show up and walk straight in and everything worked out just fine.

It wasn't even a hot knife....



The inability to understand metaphor is, of course, highly selective. A commentator like Joe has to use what Trump gives him. He must scan the transcripts every day, looking for something to pretend to be anguished about.

"We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. Got to have some strength. You have to have strength."

"You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle. We just came in. We just see over the screen and we’ve been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it. The law and order, look at what happened in Seattle. They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen. That couldn’t happen here I don’t think in the state of Texas. I don’t think so. I don’t think so."

Shockingly short sentences and sentence fragments began Donald Trump remarks at the Roundtable Meeting on Justice Disparities in America yesterday in Dallas, Texas (full transcript).

A city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen.

I wonder why he's doing that. Perhaps he can't help it, but I think he's choosing it. It's political poetry. It says: LAW AND ORDER. It's the simplest theme for a politician. He's there. On that theme. You know it. It's everything. Got to have law and order. Or you have nothing. Nothing.

The speech becomes somewhat less staccato:

Politicians make false charges and they’re trying to distract from their own failed records. They have some very bad records and these are usually the ones that cause the problems or can’t solve the problems. These are the same politicians who shipped our jobs away and took tremendous advantage of all Americans, but African American middle class. So much of that wealth and that money and those jobs went to China and other countries and they get trapped. They get trapped. They get trapped in a government morass. They get trapped in bad government schools. So I’m going to be announcing four steps to build safety and opportunity and dignity.

There had better be 4 steps. The steps involve law and order ("safety"), economics ("opportunity"), and something more psychological ("dignity"):

First, we’re aggressively pursuing economic development in minority communities. We’re doing it very powerfully. We’ve done it with opportunity zones, but we’re going to go above that. At the heart of this effort is increasing access to capital for small businesses and that’s with minority owners in black communities and we’re going to get it done and it should have been done a long time ago. It’s been very difficult, very, very difficult for some people, been unfairly difficult.

Second we’re confronting the healthcare disparities, including addressing chronic conditions and investing substantial sums in minority serving medical institutions. We have medical institutions in some areas of our country that are a disgrace. I was going to say not up to standard. They’re much worse than not up to standard. They’re a disgrace. Take care of it.

Third, we’re working to finalize an executive order that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards for the use of force, including tactics for deescalation. Also we’ll encourage pilot programs that allow social workers to join certain law enforcement officers so that they work together. We’ll take care of our police. We’re not defunding police. If anything, we’re going the other route. We’re going to make sure that our police are well-trained, perfectly trained, they have the best equipment.

The solution for the police is to "make sure" they're "perfectly trained." He's picked up the Democratic candidate tic — "make sure." They purported way to do something it to state the desired goal and then insert the phrase "make sure" in front of it. But these are 3 good, moderate ideas about "justice disparities."

He never says "fourth" or "four," but maybe the fourth step was in this somewhere. What I see in the transcript is a switch to talking about the violence...

There are violent people around, Pastor. Even, you will admit that, right? We want to think the best, but you have some very violent people. And when they’re breaking into your house at 12:00 in the evening and you’re sitting there and you don’t have a police force, they’re actually talking about not having a police force. Well, that’s not happening with us. We’re going to have stronger police forces because that’s what you need. In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell.

And the answer to the violence is LAW AND ORDER — provided by Trump:

And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything. It wasn’t really their fault, but they were running down the street. They weren’t allowed to do what they’re trained to do. And they took over the precinct. They burned it, essentially burned it down.

And the answer to the destruction is CONSTRUCTION — and Trump is the expert....

I’m pretty good at construction. I want to tell you that was almost what we call a complete renovation, if you’re lucky.

Hmm. Is that some kind of construction industry joke? Demolition = renovation?

I'll stop here. It's a long transcript. Read it yourself. Or did you actually watch the event? I tried for a couple minutes.

"On the new rebel state’s first night, the atmosphere was festive and triumphant. Hooded men spray-painted the police station with slogans and anarchist symbols..."

"... renaming it the 'Seattle People’s Department East Precinct.' Raz Simone, a local rapper with an AK-47 slung from his shoulder and a pistol attached to his hip, screamed, 'This is war!' into a white-and-red megaphone and instructed armed paramilitaries to guard the barricades in shifts. Later in the night, Simone was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders, informing them that he was the 'police' now, sparking fears that he was becoming the de facto warlord of the autonomous zone. A homeless man with a baseball bat wandered along the borderline and two unofficial medics in medieval-style chain mail stood ready for action."

From "Anarchy in Seattle/Antifa-affiliated activists seize control of a city neighborhood and declare an 'autonomous zone'" by Christopher F. Rufo (City Journal).

At least it's an example: Don't do this in your city. (Can I trust this not to happen in my city?)

ADDED: Here's the NYT article on the subject "Free Food, Free Speech and Free of Police: Inside Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’/President Trump challenged Seattle’s mayor to 'take back your city' after police vacated a precinct and protesters laid claim to the neighborhood around it":

[F]acing a growing backlash over its dispersal tactics in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the Seattle Police Department this week offered a concession: Officers would abandon their precinct, board up the windows and let the protesters have free rein outside.

In a neighborhood that is the heart of the city’s art and culture — threatened these days as rising tech wealth brings in gentrification — protesters seized the moment. They reversed the barricades to shield the liberated streets and laid claim to several city blocks, now known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”

“This space is now property of the Seattle people,” read a banner on the front entrance of the now-empty police station. The entire area was now a homeland for racial justice — and, depending on the protester one talked to, perhaps something more....

“Take back your city NOW,” Mr. Trump wrote in a tweet directed at Mayor Jenny Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee. “If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”....

The protest zone has increasingly functioned with the tacit blessing of the city. Harold Scoggins, the fire chief, was there on Wednesday, chatting with protesters, helping set up a call with the police department and making sure the area had portable toilets and sanitation services. “I have no idea where we’re headed,” Mr. Scoggins said in an interview. “We’ve been working step by step on how to build a relationship, build trust in small things, so we can figure this out together.”...

AND: Ken Jennings (who lives in Seattle) weighs in:

A play in three acts from this afternoon, since Trump is now tweeting about Seattle. A local TV host credulously reports an unusual SPD claim, doubles down when readers are skeptical, and then... finds it’s not true. pic.twitter.com/5ce8O0wFea

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) June 11, 2020

"I cannot promise that I will not make missteps along the way, particularly as a white woman... realizing that I cannot fully see the system that has been built up to benefit me and others like me."

Our mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway, apologizes for her kind words to the police, which she had not intended to be heard by the general public. She thanked the police for their work during the protests, vandalism, and theft, and — as she puts it now — "failed to center" her message on Black Lives Matter. There's a hostage video quality to this:

"Day 10 of protests ends with 'defund police' painted on road leading to [the Wisconsin] Capitol."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Protesters painted "defund police" in giant letters on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Monday night. The street leads from the state Capitol to Monona Terrace, passing between the Madison Municipal Building and City-County Building, at top.

We're told this was "without city permission," but I think that has to be read to mean without explicit city permission. Something that conspicuous — taking that much effort, in that location — is actively condoned. It had the tacit permission of the city.

Also at the link are other photos of the 10th day of protests. Based on the photographs, I would say that the protesters are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly female.

If I were still the sort of person who roams around inside protests and talks to people, I would ask them how they would harmonize the #MeToo movement with defunding the police. A year ago, there was so much of a push to get men arrested for things that used to be ignored. Then, the slogan was "Time's up." We were never going back. Is time up on Time's Up?

I remember when it was a big feminist goal to force the police to take domestic violence so seriously that they were required to arrest someone when they answered a call. It became the statutory law here in Wisconsin. I'd like to ask the female protesters whether they ever supported that law and if they did whether they will now declare it to have been a mistake — a racist mistake.

ADDED: In "If they can, why can’t we?," David Blaska muses about painting over the "u" in "DEFUND THE POLICE." Changing the "U" to an "E" would flip the message: "Call it a little editing. Call it vandalizing the vandalism. Call it free speech. Call it civil disobedience. Call it a profile in courage or social suicide in the super-heated atmosphere of progressive Madison. Call a lawyer."

"'Gone with the Wind' was pulled from HBO Max while the long-running TV show 'Cops' was outright canceled..."

"... a sign that entertainment companies are re-examining the content they offer in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.... In a statement, HBO Max said 'Gone With the Wind' is a 'product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.' When the movie returns to the platform it will be 'with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.'... On Monday, John Ridley, who won an Oscar for the adapted screenplay for the movie '12 Years a Slave'... call[ed] for 'Gone With the Wind' to be taken off HBO Max.... 'Cops,' once considered a groundbreaking look at the day-to-day life of police on the beat is now also out of fashion. Featuring the song 'Bad Boys'—with the lyrics 'Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?'— ...  'Cops' presented a very positive look at policing, showcasing officers handling everything from domestic disturbances and drunken driving to robberies and sex crimes...."

The Wall Street Journal reports (and this was not behind a paywall for me).

"Senate Republicans said they are working on a comprehensive proposal to respond to racially motivated police misconduct and other reforms to the criminal justice system."

"Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is the only black Republican in the Senate, is leading the effort, GOP lawmakers said Tuesday. 'I’ve asked Sen. Tim Scott to lead a group working on proposals to allow us to respond to the obvious racial discrimination on full display on our television screens the last two weeks and what is the appropriate response of the federal government,' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said" (Washington Examiner).

They asked their black guy. Is that racist?

Could those who are talking about dismantling the police address the problem of violence against women?

I remember when I was being gang-raped & beaten by a mob in Egypt, would have been great to have a police force to call then. Would that have been my white privilege talking? I’ve stood against racism all my life,don’t have a racist bone in my body. My heart breaks... https://t.co/U4USN1cMP6

— Lara Logan (@laralogan) June 9, 2020

"Their argument, then, is not necessarily that we don't need police officers. It's..."

"... how we can best ensure that police officers are serving the communities they are tasked with policing? But that subtlety is lost in chants of 'Defund the Police.' And Trump, desperate for an issue to latch onto as he watches his poll numbers both nationally and in swing states tumble, will destroy any nuance in the conversation over police funding in order to paint Biden (and Democrats more broadly) as wanting to get rid of the police entirely."

Ha. Yeah. Trump IS the destroyer of nuance.

I'm reading "Is 'Defund the Police' a massive political mistake?" by Chris Cillizza (CNN).

Liberals love to present themselves as the People of Nuance. But if you're going to do slogans and chants — and especially if you're going to do vandalism and looting — you're not doing nuance. And if your knee-jerk reaction for everything you do wrong is to flip it into ORANGE MAN BAD, you are not doing nuance.

I've been following this "nuance" theme since I started this blog in 2004. Remember how John Kerry was fawned over as the candidate of nuance, compared to that vicious dimwit George Bush?

"Appreciate the article but the sanitizing and glossing over of the serious crimes including assaulting a pregnant woman with a gun does a disservice to reporting reality."

"He need not be perfect for all of us to mourn and demand change but by manipulating the life story we lose the ability to educate many who don’t see the problem as they focus on the spin versus the real story - his murder."

The second-highest-rated comment at "George Floyd, From ‘I Want to Touch the World’ to ‘I Can’t Breathe’/Mr. Floyd had big plans for life nearly 30 years ago. His death in police custody is powering a movement against police brutality and racial injustice" (NYT).

Also highly rated: "I am confused. I believe the autopsy report said he was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine. This seems relevant to the full picture yet is not mentioned in the meticulously researched article."

I've read the NYT for more than 50 years, and I don't believe I have another option for reading a real newspaper here in America. I've always been looking out for the propaganda. In fact, I was taught to that by my high school history teacher, whose class included required daily reading of the NYT. After the ousting of James Bennet a few days ago, you would think the NYT would feel extra pressure to show that it will pursue high journalistic principles and not skew things to please the people who are demanding propaganda. I can't say I'm surprised to see this sanitized portrait of George Floyd, but I want to go on record saying that this is bad.

And it's bad not only as bad journalism, but it's bad on the subject of police brutality. It doesn't matter that the man who died had big dreams of the future or professional-level athletic ability. The police shouldn't be executing anybody.