Watching the Ferguson mob rioting for fun and looting for the traditional reasons live on television last night, I didn’t see much “anger” in evidence. The arson and destruction looked premeditated and deliberate, an orgy of opportunity.
Was it an accident that the orgy commenced as President Obama urged calm? (The White House has posted the text of his remarks and a video of his statement here.) It was either a remarkable coincidence or yet another example of the Obama touch. The man is King Midas in reverse.
Obama was the last man we needed to hear from last night. He could have served a useful purpose if he had asked Al Sharpton to pack it in and stay away from Ferguson, but the racial hustle is the family business.
If anger was not obviously in evidence among the mob in Ferguson, the same could not be said about the mob in Washington. As he read his statement, Obama was seething. He took the failure of reality to conform to the prescribed racial script personally.
As well he might have. Obama had already invoked events in Ferguson in his speech at the United Nations this past September. Mentioning ISIS and its famously non-Islamic “violent extremism,” Obama juxtaposed it with America’s “failure” and “our own racial and ethnic tensions” in “the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri.”
“Failure” is right. “[T]here are issues in which the law too often feels as if it is being applied in discriminatory fashion,” Obama intoned last night. Was the “feeling” warranted in this case?
Obama wasn’t saying. Of course, he’s made a fruitful living on the feeling and the Democratic Party has staked its future on it.
We hear incessantly of racial disparities in law enforcement, school discipline, and everything else down the line. We never hear of the underlying behavioral disparities that are reflected in the numerical racial disparities.
“I’ve instructed Attorney General Holder to work with cities across the country to help build better relations between communities and law enforcement,” Obama said last night. Again, Obama could have served a useful purpose ordering Holder to stay put until his time in office is up. His “work” with cities is all about suppressing “racial disparities” by ignoring behavioral disparities, including the behavioral disparities that the rioters in Ferguson have put on display for all to see.
Speaking of disparities, I return to the disparity between Obama’s words urging calm and his seething anger over the outcome of the state’s grand jury proceedings. It’s not over yetand Obama is not conceding an inch to the reality that has failed to conform to the prescribed script.
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