By Steve Sailer
09/24/2007
It’s striking how much demand there is in modern America for evidence that some whites somewhere are still committing the same crimes against blacks as in the distant past. It’s even more striking that in a country of 300 million where surely it’s statistically plausible that somebody somewhere is doing any horrible thing you can imagine, that so many of these media campaigns end up humiliating themselves.
For example, the prestige media, led by the New York Times, fell so hard for the Duke lacrosse hoax in part because they so desperately wanted a news story about white men raping a black woman. They wanted it so bad that they threw out all their standards and principles to push it endlessly until it blew up in their faces.
Similarly, the Jena Six story is all about America’s craving for proof that white Southerners are still a lynch mob. That’s why every recounting starts with nooses being hung from a tree on campus three months before the Jena Six stomped that kid.
Yet, as the facts emerge (see my VDARE article), we're able to start piecing together a very different, much more modern narrative of what happened, one that is much less redolent of poor Emmett Till, and much more reminiscent of OJ Simpson. The Emmett Till narrative was constructed long after the stomping by cherrypicking events, and leaving out massively relevant facts, like that the Jena Six, far from being despised outcasts, were the best football players in a football mad small town.
Mychal Bell was to Jena what OJ was to LA.
As you'll recall, Johnnie Cochran persuaded the jury (which ultimately was three-fourth black, with eight black women jurors, due to prosecutor Marcia Clark’s doctrinaire feminist assumption that gender trumps race in a domestic abuse case) that the racist LAPD was out to frame OJ.
In reality, most cops loved OJ. Whenever the late Nicole Brown Simpson would call 911 to report that her husband was beating her, a couple of LAPD’s finest would go around to the Brentwood house, and … "Hey! You're OJ!" So, they'd wind up getting his autograph and some pictures taken with great man himself, and a grand old time was had by all. Except by the victim, but, while cute, she never rushed for 2003 yards in a season, did she? Did Leslie Nielsen ever slap her on the back, sending her wheelchair careening down the steps and off the grandstand at Dodger Stadium in "The Naked Gun?" I think not.
The only cop that took Nicole’s 911 calls seriously was evil old Mark Fuhrman
This doesn’t mean the average white LAPD cop liked blacks in general — the ones cops come in contact with the most, other than their partners, are not the kind of people that inspire warm feelings — but OJ was a football star!
And the Jena Six knew they were football stars, and like so many star athletes, exploited their privileged position to run wild. Finally, they went too far.
And that explains the initial attempted murder charges (lowered to aggravated battery in the actual trial of Mychal Bell, the first defendant), which appear to have been necessary to get them out of the juvenile justice system that had completely failed to dissuade them from committing more crimes. Bell, we now know, was convicted in the juvenile system on four occasions over the over 12 months before his involvement in stomping the unconscious kid, including two crimes of violence. "Sources told ESPN that one of those cases was a battery in which Bell punched a 17-year-old girl in the face." (The juvenile records of the other five have yet to be unsealed.)
Yet, Bell didn’t miss the football season, in which he averaged 101 yards rushing and 12 tackles per game, and 17 yards per punt return, earning him All-State honors as a junior.
Was the DA’s legal ploy justified? Maybe, maybe not. A higher court ruled it was not. But, the judge recently refused to reduce Bell’s bail enough to get him out of jail — this is one scary guy who has been convicted five separate times since Christmas Day 2005!
Was the DA’s reasoning so preposterous that his real motivation must have been racism? Obviously not.
It is clear that the juvenile justice system can’t get the job done of adequately punishing the stompers — the one member of the Jena Six who was so young (14 at the time) that he had to be left in the juvenile system has now taken Bell’s place on the Jena HS football team and has averaged 100 yards rushing per game this season!
The interesting question is whether anybody ever learns from repeatedly getting snookered over these kind of racial brouhahas in the media.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.