The most-watched presenter in cable news was forced out of Fox News on April 19th
Mr O’Reilly was television’s most successful purveyor of fake news long before there was a name for it.
.. But his enduring political legacy, shared with Mr Ailes, will be the corrosion of public discourse in America. In 2004 Media Matters for America, an activist group, awarded Mr O’Reilly its inaugural “Misinformer of the Year” award (for which he beat out fellow Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity). In 2005 Stephen Colbert, a comedian, created a show for “Comedy Central” based almost entirely on Mr O’Reilly’s
.. calling “Black Lives Matter”, the activist movement against police killings of black Americans, a “hate America group”, or accusing the left of trying to use immigration to destroy “traditional America”—reached a sympathetic audience of several million, mostly white, mostly older Americans.
She wanted to criticize Black Lives Matter in a college speech. A protest shut her down.
she said black-on-black crime is a bigger threat to African Americans than police violence
.. A disproportionate amount of crime happens in black communities, she told students at Claremont McKenna, and modern policing is driven by data, not racism.
.. She also argues that an outsize focus on police brutality has caused police to back off on proactive policing measures that brought huge crime drops across the nation. “Criminals,” a synopsis of the book says, “are being emboldened.”
Protesters Shut Down BLM Critic, Threaten Student Journalists
On Thursday, a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked the exits to Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, shutting down a scheduled lecture and question-and-answer session by Heather Mac Donald, a prominent scholar and critic of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Chanting “Black lives matter here” and “no cops, no KKK, no fascist USA,” protesters massed tightly around the exits, blocking fellow students from entering Mac Donald’s scheduled presentation, entitled “The War on Police.” Even faculty members who sought to enter the building were denied, with waves of protesters screaming and resorting to physical force to repel anyone who drew too close to the building. At one point, a crowd of White students screaming “Fuck White supremacy, fuck White supremacy” pushed an elderly White professor away from the Athenaeum entrance.
.. Upon locating the source of the livestream, students stood outside the glass windows and screamed in the hopes of disrupting the presentation. They also gathered outside all the entrances and exits from the building, including the service entrances and fire escapes, to block anyone seeking to enter or exit and to trap the speaker inside.
White male students watching the chaos were ordered to leave, while journalists — including several from the Independent — found themselves surrounded by a mob seeking to block their coverage. One editor from the Independent reported receiving threats of physical violence for recording video at the scene, while another had to retreat to safety from the mob under the protection of a line of campus security officers.
.. “What we face here is not an attempt to demonstrate, or to ask tough questions of our speaker, all of which are protected and cherished on this campus, but rather to make it impossible for her to speak, for you to listen, and for all of us to debate. This we could not accept.”
Tyler Cown on “Black Lives Matter”
My views are pretty simple, namely that I am a fan of the movement. Police in this country kill, beat, arrest, fine, and confiscate the property of black people at unfair and disproportionate rates. The movement directs people’s attention to this fact, and the now-common use of cell phone video and recordings have driven the point home.
I don’t doubt that many policemen perceive they are at higher risk when dealing with young black males, and that is part of why they may act more brutally or be quicker to shoot or otherwise misbehave. I would respond that statistical discrimination, even if it is rational, does not excuse what are often crimes against innocent people. For instance, a man is far more likely to kill you than is a woman, but that fact does not excuse the shooting of an innocent man.
.. I also don’t see that citing “Black Lives Matter” has to denigrate the value of the life of anyone else.
.. but at its essence I see this as a libertarian idea to be admired and promoted.