AP/Yahoo: “Mrs. Bush said although the report was damaging, Newsweek should not be held solely responsible”:
I’m racking my brain, index finger sturdily resting on my chin, head tilting to the right. Can you recall any riots and killings throughout U.S. history that we might share with our First Lady?
More below : : :
KENT STATE just for starters. Mrs. Bush might put Philip Caputo’s new book on her list of must-reads. Well, she’d remember except she was dealing at the time (oh, that’s so awful).
The Civil War? The labor riots? The Haymarket Riots? The civil rights movement? (Three who gave their lives: Remembering the martyrs of Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964)
Perhaps Mrs. Bush could begin with “A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present,” by Howard Zinn:
… narratives of national unity and progress are a smoke screen disguising the ceaseless conflict between elites and the masses whom they oppress and exploit. Historian Zinn sides with the latter group in chronicling Indians’ struggle against Europeans, blacks’ struggle against racism, women’s struggle against patriarchy, and workers’ struggle against capitalists. First published in 1980, the volume sums up decades of post-war scholarship into a definitive statement of leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. This edition updates that project with new chapters on the Clinton and Bush presidencies, which deplore Clinton’s pro-business agenda, celebrate the 1999 Seattle anti-globalization protests and apologize for previous editions’ slighting of the struggles of Latinos and gays. …
(Amazon)
In the Kos cross-post, I quoted from Welshman’s story below.
Chicago dem convention “68? Cops repeated beat protestors. Kent State?
I wonder how many black men were lynched just in Texas based on “reports” that they might have shown a little disrespect toward a white “lady”?
But let’s not pick on the First Lady. It’s not her fault that she grew up in a country that has always refused to see itself for what it is.
Oh, I feel we can most definitely pick on her for this. (Assuming your tongue isn’t in your cheek.) This is yet one more example of the AIR OF SUPERIORITY that underscores everything the Bush administration does, and the blind assumption that we’re better than them.
Honestly, I don’t even know if my tongue was in cheek or not. All I know is that I’m so angry at the entire country for not caring about torture that I find it hard to work up any additional venom for Laura B.
She’s about the only ignorant librarian I’ve heard about. What a disgrace to a noble profession. They really ought to drum her out.
and pressing the Play button, they must be hurtin’.
Where to start?
The Mormaon masacree of that wagon train? The murder of the Chinese railroad laborers in Wyoming? Wounded Knee? Little Big Horn? The shooting of coal workers trying to unionize? Murder of protesting farm workers? The draft riots. Any Lynching in the south…
Maybe she doesn’t know how to spell “KKK”
Why do they think Laura is so popular? She has ALWAYS struck me as an extra from the Stepford Wives movie. A brainless, smiling chunk of plastic with hair that doesn’t move.
Consider the target audience.
/:-)
Most of these are cases of massacres rather than riots, where unarmed groups who weren’t causing any sort of scene were overrun by a mob. While they’re all deplorable, I don’t think they’re really comparable. If you think there’s a connection, please set me straight.
Here’s a better, albeit hypothetical example: The media reports that a severe ice storm is heading for Seattle and the city might be shut down for a few days. This happens just as a Teamsters strike is straining the resources of the supermarkets in getting food to the shelves, so prices are already high, supplies are short and people are tense. Now with the report of the ice storm people panic and start overrunning not only the Safeways and Albertsons and Fred Meyers and QFCs, but the PCCs and Pike Place Market (farmers’ market) and food banks. The National Guard is called in to restore order, they start firing rubber bullets into the crowd and a dozen people are killed by weapons that aren’t supposed to be lethal (not only that, one grandmother dies from asphyxiation due to tear gas and a six-year-old is trampled in the rush to get away from the riot control).
It isn’t relevant to the situation, but if you like you can add the detail that the ice storm actually changed its course and ended up hitting the B.C. lower mainland instead.
I can’t think of any non-hypothetical situations that would fit Susan’s criteria, but it’s early and my brain isn’t quite in gear yet. Certainly there have been cases of people killed during riots — Kent State and Crispus Attucks come immediately to mind — but I can’t think of any that were based on press reports, other than in a general way (e.g. Kent State was fueled, but not caused, by reports about the Vietnam War).
in the upper midwest,
the trains that were mobbed on the rumor that the Pope was onboard, traveling west…
Riots spread by rumor fueled by distortions of and deliberate manipulation of the press… in this country, has been more common than you would think, historically.
Given the “Belief” based methodology of this Junta, Laura’s comments are not that supprising. Now, we get to watch the echo chamber take off…
Others have mentioned Rodney King, which is probably a better example since it’s within recent memory.
No, no, it only counts if it’s a riot involving only white people. (Real Americans)
Nope… no riots in LA based on some stupid report about a trial. police and a beaten black man…nope nothing to see here
Not guilty verdict for LAPD officers in Rodney King beating trial.
Spring 1992.
And to date myself, disgruntled UCLA students in Westwood because USC was chosen to go to Rose Bowl even though UCLA had defeated USC. Late sixties.
Maybe a football example would resonant more with the Bushies.
What about riots when sports teams have won championships? I seem to remember Detroit fans taking to the streets when the Pistons won the NBA championship a few years ago. (My apologies if I’m wrong.)
Tucson had riots break out when the Az Wildcats lost the 2001 NCAA basketball championship to Duke.
And that college studetn who was shot to death (with a pellet — was it gas?) in Boston after the Sox won the championship … the cops were trying to stop the happy rioters!
Tulsa’s Black Wall Street victims still waiting for justice
“He told my mother, `We’ve got to go.’ He said, `We’ve got to get out now. They’re burning up the town.'”
For a moment, her father, Jackson W. Franklin, tried to convince her mother, Frances, to take the children and leave as he stayed to defend the family home with a pistol.
“But she stood her ground: `If you don’t go, we don’t go.'”
Within minutes, the Franklin family, three children and their parents, with nothing more than a change of clothing in a sack, fled their Tulsa home, which was later destroyed by an angry White mob.
What has been called the worst riot in American history was triggered by an accident. Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old African American, accidentally stepped on the foot of Sarah Page, a White elevator operator, in a downtown Tulsa office building. She attempted to hit Rowland with her purse, and he quickly fled.
After being told by Page that the young man attempted to assault her – a story that was later changed to his having grabbed her – police arrested Rowland.
Word spread among Whites that Rowland had attempted to rape Page, and more than 400 Whites intent on lynching the Black teenager gathered at the county jail. Meanwhile, two waves of armed Blacks showed up at the jail, offering to help protect the prisoner.
“The Tulsa police chief deputized between 250 and 500 men, commandeering local gun shops and pawnshops in order to arm the new deputies,” the suit states. “The police department ordered members of the mob to `go home, get a gun, and get a nigger’…When the State National Guard arrived to assist the police, the guardsmen joined in the destruction and fired at will at African-American Greenwood residents.”
.
We are civilized, ever since we arrived in this beautiful wide-open country filled with nature. [no Indians of course] We have world’s first and best democracy, citizens of every country in the World, want to emigrate to the US.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
– Twinkie defense for killing Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk in SF
– Watts Riots, LA
– Birmingham and Selma, Alabama
– Vietnam Anti-war protests
That’s just off the top my head before my first cup of coffee…
add to the list:
Newark and Harlem, late ’60s.
Shays’ Rebellion
This confirms what I have long suspected: Laura Bush is as much an empty suit as her husband.
They are forever trotting out her creds as a “librarian,” carefully obscuring the fact that she worked, maximum, a few years before she married Georgey-boy and hasn’t done a day’s work since.
Like her father-in-law, she probably would be surprised by the use of electronic scanners for checking out groceries or books.
M (whose excellent local library still has a paper card catalog housed in a wooden cabinet, the flipping through of which allows serendipitous explorations and discoveries)
In college she had a stint as a fluffer, by far her most relevant qualification for the ‘job.’
Totally OT, but maybe you can answer my pronounciation question from a yesterday thread. Being johnny-on-the-spot, as it were.
Sure:
‘God’ = something like German gut, but with a mute consonant at the end.
‘Reise’ = like German reise, but with the first ‘e’ as in English ever. Roll the tongue once to produce the ‘r’ (Oslo accent) or failing that, pronounce it as in German (Bergen accent).
Clearly, my mastery of Norwegian has a way to go.
I am now wandering around the house saying something that sounds like, “Goo’ rize.”
Thanks. 😉
Brilliant!
I suppose in the great tradition of Focks News I should have expected it but there is a historical error in the fake screen shot. Any takers?
I believe it’s the flag in the top left corner, which is supposed to represent the Union flag: the red “X” shaped cross (red saltire of St. Patrick, for Ireland) should have been white at that time, shouldn’t it? It was just composed of a red St. George’s cross (for England) and a white St. Andrew’s cross (for Scotland). The flag as seen in the pic was adopted only in 1801.
The ensign on the ship should be correct, I believe.
10/10. Yep in 1776 the red saltire cross of St Patrick was not on the Union Flag. There was also a dissident Scottish version in which the white saltire of St Andrew overlaid the red cross of St George. Prior to 1801 the official verion was this:
The one used on the faux Fox image is the current one which not only has the additional cross but has a darker blue and is wider (less square, more “widescreen”). Worth knowing this, especially if you are a prop buyer for movies who often get it wrong.
Also note that it is not symmetrical so the lowest white diagonal stripe next to the flagpole is narrow. If you invert it, that line is wider and is a distress signal. (For use when you are using it as a courtesy flag on your boat)
Cincinnati – 2001
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/jan-june01/unrest_4-16.html
A boiler explosion, erroneously reported as a Spanish mine, was used by the Hearst Press to whip up war fever for the Spanish-American War.
And a local example- On the basis of false reports that a Catholic printer had been given the contract to publish textbooks for the Philadelphia Schools, the good protestants of Philadelphia proceeded to engage in a pogrom against Catholics, leaving at least 24 people dead and two Churches burned to the ground. link
This latter piece should be a warning to any Catholics who are acting as fellow travellers to the Religious Right, which seems intent on turning the GOP into the historical “American Republican Party” (an affiliate of the “Know Knothing Party”- the more things change, eh?)
in a bad way, that she should blubber this just as the Emmett Till murder is being revisited. A little kid murdered in as vicious a manner as can be imagined because of a report that he’d been disrespectful of a white “lady”. But I guess that’s not a “riot”, so it doesn’t matter.
I hate to admit it, but I really do hate these ignorant dumbfucks. I hope she can buy enough plastic for her hair to make it worth marrying Nazi money.
After the “report” by video clip was shown on TV, of Rodney King being beaten by cops, I think there was a slight disturbance among the population.
Then there are the Watts riots of the 1960’s…
That’s just off the top of my head before coffee.
Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802-37), an 1826 graduate of Maine’s Colby College, was killed defending his abolitionist newspaper against a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy is considered the nation’s first martyr to freedom of the press.
The Lovejoy Award is given annually to an American journalist.
This is even more interesting because from the AP report on Laura Bush’s comments, the deaths were not caused by the protesters but:
So this case is most similar to the death of Kathleen O’Toole in October 2004 during disturbance in Boston following a baseball game win.