Be Thankful For Small Favors: New Hampshire Is Not Texas

Just when you get frustrated about some lunatic New Hampshire state Representative who believes SMOG is the major threat to Hampton, New Hampshire (sort of like the Dr. Stranglove character, Base Commander, Jack D. Ripper, who thought fluoridated water was the greatest threat to America), you have to get some perspective when you see real life in McKinley, Texas on youtube. However bizarre things may seem in New Hampshire, we do not hold a candle to Texas. 

Really, we have to be grateful to be living in a time when every citizen has a video camera and all the spin and fluff and obfuscation by which police cover up what they actually do in the wild can be quickly exposed.

So much can be seen on youtube which could never be understood in conventional newspaper reports and the limits of print media and of news media can be seen in bold relief when you see the unedited events, the raw data as it were, on you tube. 

There is also a very useful posting with a narrator, Cenk Yugar, of "The Young Turks," who makes no pretense of being non judgmental, but who gives an unusually complete account of what happened.  He does not need to comment on the nature of the white adult women who apparently initiated the altercation at the swimming pool where the episode began. Once you get a look at those white women, no  more need be said. 

The short summary is a Black teenager invited some Black friends to what appears to be a neighborhood pool for a party and white adults using the pool objected to Blacks using the same water. They hurled insults at the Black adolescents, telling them to go back to their Section 8 (welfare) housing where they belonged. (No matter, the Black kids were just as affluent as their white antagonists and in fact, most of them lived in the same neighborhood.) It was just raw racism, which, given the fact this is Texas is not surprising. And once you look at the women who started things by  slapping the adolescents, you do not need a whole lot more explanation. They look like candidates for some of those postings called, "Shoppers At Walmart" which document the extent of American grotesque.

But the best part is when the police arrive and you can see the star of the show, a policeman named Eric Casebolt, is not the sharpest blade in the drawer.  He throws an apparently innocent Black teenage girl in a bathing suit to the ground, pulls his gun and the Black males around her sensibly retreat.  No attempt to discern the facts is made. It is clear for Officer Casebolt the Blacks are guilty of Bathing while Black, Breathing while Black and  Speaking while Black. 

It's all there, bare, unvarnished and very real.

Fred Rice, it turns out, is small potatoes.