While the criminal acts are clear on the horrific videotapes showing the torture of disabled man in Chicago, the response to the videotape has been more unexpected. That includes the bizarre spin given initially by a ranking police officer that the torture could just been the type of “stupid decisions” made by “young adults.” CNN host Don Lemon is under fire for his response to the horrific videotapes from Chicago of a white disabled man being tortured by four black assailants. After a guest says quite understandably that the torture of the disabled man was “evil,” Lemon insists that it was not necessarily “evil” as opposed to “bad home training.” Millions of people were legitimately confused how torturing a disabled man, forcing him to drink from a toilet, and betraying his friendship with a former school mate could in any universe be just “bad home training.”
Chicago police are finally calling the horrific crimes committed against a white disabled man in Chicago a hate crime and released the names of the alleged culprits. They are Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24.
Guest Matt Lewis states “The fact that this was a vulnerable person that was probably duped into going along with them. It appears it is someone who is mentally disabled, I think makes it even more sickening. But at the end of the day, you just try to wrap your head around evil. That’s what this is, it’s evil. It’s brutality. It’s man’s inhumanity to man.” Lemon curiously responds by saying “I don’t think it’s evil,” Lemon replied. “I don’t think it’s evil. I think these are young people and I think they have bad home training. I say, who is raising these young people? I have no idea who’s raising these young people. Because no one I know on Earth who is 17 years old or 70 years old would ever think of treating another person like that. It is inhumane. And you wonder, at 18 years old, where is your parent? Where’s your guardian?”
Another guest Democrat strategist and former Bernie Sanders press secretary Symone Sanders questioned “not a hate crime” if the suspects were motivated by “hate of Donald Trump.” Of course, the guests had just watched the assailants screaming “f–k white people” as they tortured a man. Would have a nuanced approach be the same if the races were reversed in the videotape with equivocation over whether it might be more politics and race? Yet, he suggested that somehow this might be the fault of the Trump campaign (or Trump himself) in bringing out extremists:
I just want to remind folks that we cannot sit here and ignore that — at least for the last year on very public display — the worst parts of America have been brought from the fringe into the mainstream. That affects people on both sides. We’ve talked about white nationalists and white supremacists and the KKK, but there also, when this inflammatory rhetoric is out there, when someone is repeatedly telling you that your community is the worst of the worst, it brings out the worst of the worst in people.”
NBC News correspondent Ron Mott also took a curious take: “You look at it on the surface, you think kids can make some really poor decisions from time to time. They made so many errors, if they were truly trying to be criminal, to obviously broadcast your crime is not a smart thing to do.” The suggestion of “some really poor decisions” usually means things like speed racing on city streets as opposed to torturing disabled persons.
What do you think?
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
You would think outgoing Obama & Attorney General Loretta Lynch would comment on this. Nope. FBI needs to get involved & deal with these monsters. Are there other things these monsters did?
A study of 2 serial killers, BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) Dennis Rader & Iceman, Richard Kuklinski. Richard tortured & killed cats as a teenager for fun. Double your pleasure.
In October 1974, Rader sought fame and attention for his crimes, placing a letter in a public library book in which he took responsibility for killing the Oteros. The letter ended up with a local newspaper, and the poorly written note gave authorities some idea of who they were dealing with. Rader wrote, “It’s hard to control myself. You probably call me ‘psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up.'” He went on to describe the urge to kill as a monster inside him, but he clearly wanted to control his image: He requested to be called the “BTK Strangler,” explaining that BTK stands for “bind them, torture them, kill them.”
Kuklinski was a contract killer for Newark’s DeCavalcante crime family and New York City’s Five Families of the American Mafia. After his murder convictions, Kuklinski took part in a number of interviews during which he claimed to have murdered from over 100 to 250 men between 1948 and 1986, though his recollection of events sometimes varied. Though some have expressed skepticism about the extent of Kuklinski’s alleged murders, police are confident in their belief that he was a serial killer who killed at least several dozen people both at the behest of organized crime bosses and on his own initiative.
Professor Turley do you think one of the charges will be ‘domestic terrorism’
Or ‘terroristic threats’ ?
These punk kids are of course responsible for their own actions, and should be treated accordingly.
However, it is symptomatic of the lack of constructive activity for millions of young people. If there isn’t much to do besides just hanging around, it is easy to get into trouble.
I hope you are being facetious.
“it is symptomatic of the lack of constructive activity for millions of young people”
There is plenty to do.
I just completed watching and listening to the entire video in question.
For hate crime purposes, this was not an off the cuff remark of mentioning the victim being white. There are many, many references to his race by at least three of the actors (and most likely all) and his disability and the beating stemmed from extreme hostility to the victim’s membership in these classes. In my view the state will have a strong case for convicting on all counts for all actors. The only issue I can see being brought up by the defense might be an attempt to bring in the sobriety levels of at least the two women.
As for these three reporters and pundits, if they were made to watch this video and still held fast to their original statements they are either fundamentally detached from human decency, complete fools, or they are liars who refuse to acknowledge they assessed the situation incorrectly.
In the video, it can be seen where the male actors assaulted the victim with a knife, beat him, lifted him by a ligature around his neck, threatened to kill him on several occasions, threatened to rape him anally with a knife, threatened to “put him out of his misery”, threatened to pistol whip him and numerous other taunts, assaults and threats. They also taunted the police, complained they were not getting any likes or comments to their depraved video, and showed extreme narcissism and indifference to the life of the victim by rambling on about showing the video to friends and talking about music and such while the victim is being tortured only steps away. The girl making the video at times is more preoccupied with herself and at no time offered any remorse for what she was doing and for that matter none of the other actors did either.
These adults are not wayward youth, on the contrary they display total incompatibility with membership in public society and this did not happen overnight. If convicted I believe strongly they should receive either a life sentence, or be incapacitated through incarceration until they have attained such an age, they physically cannot victimize society again.
Two of the perps in the Jennifer Daugherty case earned themselves the death penalty. Justice was served. One very likely should have gotten it but she was 17 at the time and not eligible.
Let them rot in jail. No death penalty but a life sentence w/out parole.
Elson Floyd was the recently deceased president of Washington State University. In my opinion, he was the best president for at least the last 47 years.
His skin happened to be strongly melenanted.
Morality has been turned on its head by society, government planners and the Supreme Court. Many people do not truly know what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. They only know to turn to their political party who must be correct. God help this country, God help us all.
That’s part of the problem – the left has been busy removing “God” from society.
Donna Brazile could not be reached for comment.
What Lemon should have said was that it was “typical” black home training, that is training in how to be violent, savage, and criminal. Which is par for the course in a large number of single black mother households. But I wonder if Don Lemon is going to be fired, the way Wendy Bell was, for speculating about black lack-of-family life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iMGm1V3rrY
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It is not just single-parent black families, Squeeky.
A nearly identical crime, this time ending in murder, was committed by 5 whites and 1 black. The whites made her drink detergent, urine, and eat feces; they shaved her head, beat her…
The poor man is lucky to be alive. Jennifer Daugherty was a mentally challenged woman who was tortured to death by her “friends”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jennifer_Daugherty
Their race is essentially immaterial.
I think they are having difficulty processing the reality of the alleged crime conflicting concurrently with the unreality of their professed beliefs–and by extension the “Face” they are losing.
Another possibility is that they are so disconnected with the situation on the ground and so entombed in a theoretical approach to life fed by only by a set of political ideologies they simply cannot accept that they might be wrong.
It seems also as if these three are trying to almost excuse the behavior by these alleged kidnappers but restrained their comment knowing it would otherwise be soundly rejected if they expressed their true thoughts of the matter. So, they came up with the half-measure of stating this was the result of bad parenting and minimized the notion of it being a depraved and cruel act. Yet, I propose they will waste no time in using harsh words and declarations of something being evil if it comports to their own definition of a political enemy.
The lack of honest media coverage is beyond appalling. This was a twisted and sick hate crime. There is no debating it was a racially motivated assault. Did some in the media actually try to blame any of this on Trump? I wonder if Obama had a son he would look like any of these thugs?
I meant: “Is the Republican Party paying Don huge sums of money to say this stuff?”
This is so awful – did not watch the video. I cannot bear to see people abused – especially those who cannot defend themselves. Sure, young people do stupid things – smoke pot, break into their folks liquor cabinant, play pranks on their teachers, put out stuff on YouTube, but to actually demean and hurt someone crosses the line. It makes me feel sick inside. My heart goes out to the victim and his family — one can only imagine the state he is in since he trusted his “friend”
Hopefully CNN will fold soon and folks won’t be subjected to idiots like Don Lemon!
The poor man is lucky to be alive. Jennifer Daugherty was a mentally challenged woman who was tortured to death by her “friends”. The youngest assailant was 17 at the time and pregnant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jennifer_Daugherty
It’s just plain wrong, but I do hope Don Lemon soon dies a tortuous, horrible death. I just can’t think of any fate bad enough for this disgusting racist, bigoted, scoundrel.
Please try to imagine a better analogy than this for Lemon: “Hey, Mussolini was not all bad! The trains ran on time, after all.”
If some whitey said something approaching the pure racism of this scum, the same night the DA would arrest him for hate crime, and the Feds would also press charges.
Is the Republican Party paying huge sums of money to say this stuff? Republicans can’t buy as many votes as Don just gave them.
This is the type of mushy justifications made by apologists from the left that drives conservatives crazy. Have they lost all common sense? Can they not identify evil when they see It?
Hate crimes only go one way, silly rabbit.
This is a strawman argument. I haven’t heard any leftists justify this. Lemon is not a leftist & I don’t think he meant to justify it anyway.
What I find most stunning about this is matter is that the perpetrators posted it on Facebook. Is their worldview so warped they didn’t understand broadcasting a video of themselves torturing someone might cause them some problems? Like decades in prison? Evil has always been with us but this level of “stupidity” (for lack of a more precise term) is breathtaking.
Trump and Pence both said they liked torturing people. They’ll probably appoint these folks to their Cabinet if current appointees aren’t approved by Congress.
@doglover
You are comparing apples and oranges. I, too am against the wars the US has become involved in over the last 25 years, but that isn’t the issue here.
Liberals such as yourself love to excuse or make excuses for black crime and absolve them of possessing agency. They just aren’t really responsible for their acts due to racism, etc.
There are few individuals reading this blog who would prefer to live in a black neighborhood, send their kids to a school with a lot of blacks, etc. In fact, most upper middle class people love to go on about the wonders of diversity while living in an exclusive community and sending their kids to a mostly white (and asian) school. Such hypocrites!
If you ever get attacked by such animals, just tell them you are a good liberal. Who knows maybe they will stop and apologize and then go pick some evil conservative like myself.
Ashamed to say my last name is Glover. You are ignorant human being.
Don Lemon needs to take some time off work and perhaps go down to Louisiana, where he is from, and drink some rum.
I guess only BLM. Blake, Louise and Marty. Oh, Black Lives Matter. White lives not a smatter.
Where da white women at?