There's so much I could say about the presumptions, about the coverage, about the reactions from left and right, the opportunism, regarding the killing of Michael Brown. Also, there's nothing I can say, because others have said it so much better than I ever could. (That link is a must-read, far as I'm concerned.)
But I do think the attempts to demonize the victim when the facts remain obscure (and might forever), are pretty pathetic. Horrifying, really. The following little episode is a perfect example of how the right wing scream machine operates in all sorts of situations. It produces a deliberate lie (Fox "news" is famous for its nearly countless dishonest video edits), confident that it'll be repeated in the echo chamber and that the gullible will believe it like they believe Fox is "fair and balanced" and that global warming is a hoax.
The cop who killed the victim was severely beaten by the victim before killing him; so much so that he suffered a fractured orbit (despite the fact that video shows him calmly remaining at the scene and talking to other cops). Except that the whole thing was a shameless lie by a famous right-wing blogger, whose conspiracy theories always get play comparable to the second coming:
Not only has Jim Hoft’s story been shown to be false by CNN, we now know he deliberately misled his readers into thinking this was a CT scan of officer Darren Wilson by altering the image.If you haven't heard the details, go to the link. It shows how the images that made their way to Fox "news" and which were touted by no less a right-wing icon and arbiter of all that is true as Ann Coulter, were intentionally, brazenly, confidently falsified.
Jim Hoft is busted. Exposed as a fraudster. He should apologize and retract this post, but I know he won’t — because that’s not how the Dumbest (and Most Dishonest) Man on the Internet rolls.
Once again, we see how readily the consumers of right-wing media are gratefully and eagerly misled and misinformed by their preferred sources. They like it that way. They must; because the evidence of the falsehood-feeding is everywhere.
(And, with perfect timing after I wrote the above, there's this.)
[Image source]
