The former ESPN writer, who is remarkably sane about everything but Jeff George, cuts through much of the activist nonsense surrounding Jena:
Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span. Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?
That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.
There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.
Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.
A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder….
It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack.
The interesting thing is the way in which so many people are upset about “excessive charges” because the six thugs were forcibly prevented from killing their unconscious victim. And yet, when these barbarians end up killing someone – probably another black man – or raping someone – even odds that it’s a white woman – many of the people now complaining about the supposedly excessive charges will lament the fact that nothing was done the first two, or three, or four times that the thug was convicted of committing a violent crime.
I don’t know if the six barbarians of Jena were trying to kill the kid or not. I wasn’t there; neither were any of those who are publicly proclaiming that attempted second-degree murder charges are excessive. And while there are many good reasons to distrust the U.S. system of justice, it is beyond ludicrous to argue that numerous black men are involved in an attempt to judicially lynch a violent gang of young black men.
Although, I suppose that no one is more sick and tired of violent black criminals than those who most often suffer their depradations, the peaceful, law-abiding black community. If they did want to get rid of these young monsters-in-the-making, who could blame them?