Controversies Erupt Over Coverage of Chicago Torture Videotape

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?