Feelings on Campus

In "The Campus-Left Occupation that Broke Higher Education," George Packer of The Atlantic concludes

Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not “marginalized,” while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.

Well, of course not. They have failed to train their students to do so because of the current emphasis not on what is actually said or done but upon the impact of statements or actions. Packer explains

The muscle of independent thinking and open debate, the ability to earn authority that Daniel Bell described as essential to a university’s survival, has long since atrophied. So when, after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish students found themselves subjected to the kind of hostile atmosphere that, if directed at any other minority group, would have brought down high-level rebukes, online cancellations, and maybe administrative punishments, they fell back on the obvious defense available under the new orthodoxy. They said that they felt “unsafe.” They accused pro-Palestinian students of anti-Semitism—sometimes fairly, sometimes not. They asked for protections that other groups already enjoyed. Who could blame them? They were doing what their leaders and teachers had instructed them was the right, the only, way to respond to a hurt.

Right-wingers could gloat that colleges, especially of the elite nature, what Reverend Jeremiah Wright (also Frederick Douglass and the Apostle Paul) have said in a different context: Whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap. However, most of them, ironically pro-Israel (rhetorically pro-Jewish), ,have embraced the same reasoning. One of the most prominent:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott urges swift punishment after police arrested more than 20 people while dispersing an anti-Israel protest that pro-Palestinian demonstrators held at University of Texas in Austin.

“These protesters belong in jail,” Abbott writes on social media.

“Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

The statement from the President of the University of Texas was excellent. At least as quoted, the governor of Texas did not urge swift punishment of individuals because they broke any laws or disrupted operations of the university or of its students. He condemned them for "joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests."

It appears that Abbott's ire was invoked not because student protestors misbehaved or committed criminal offenses but because their words were hateful and bigoted. The greatest crime is not to be wrong or illegal but to be insensitive. This has been the guiding principle of much of the woke left for several years but gained energy during the black lives matter protests in the summer of 2020. A report from that time noted

A statue of Confederate soldier John B. Castleman was removed from the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood in Louisville on June 8. According to a report by the Courier-Journal, the city plans to move the statue to Cave Hill Cemetery, where Castleman is buried.

The University of Kentucky in Lexington said on June 5 that a mural, which has previously been a source of controversy on campus, will be removed. Students have protested racist images of black people and Native Americans in the mural.

The mural may have been bigoted and/or may have painted a false image of blacks and tribal peoples. Yet, that apparently was not the basis of the decision. Instead

In an email to students, the university’s president, Eli Capilouto, recalled “a conversation with one student about the mural who stopped me cold with the observation that every time he walked into a class in Memorial Hall, he was forced to reckon with the fact that his forebears were enslaved.”

The university president did not want to hurt the student's feelings, did not want him to take offense. He believed that the problem was not the mural itself. It was in the response, justified or not, to the art. 

Universities have been particularly partial to these priorities and so have been prone to punish speech more readily than behavior. And now the right, as represented by the governor of Texas, denounces protesters not for their actions but because some of their language is anti-Semitic and hateful. It makes individuals feel unsafe, apart from being unsafe, and is disagreeable and discomforting, perhaps even  painful. That should not be the primary issue but, for institutions of higher learning, what goes around, sadly comes around.

 

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Double Standard

Before NYU business professor Scott Galloway made his cogent points, Joe Scarborough himself spoke sense, remarking

One of my pet peeves- one of your pet peeves- seems to be that, you know, 2,000,000 people have been killed in the Sudan civil war. I haven't seen a protest at NYU for that. Assad killed 500 Arabs. I didn't see colleges burned down. Five hundred thousand Arabs killed by Assad. Sadaam Hussein killed over a million Muslims in wars- gassed them. I didn't see protests there.

Two million killed in the civil war in Sudan is an exaggeration. However, according to The Guardian in February, "tens of thousands" have been killed in the civil war begun in 2023." A report the same month by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted there "multiple indiscriminate attacks by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in densely populated areas... between April and December 2023" and there had been "more than eight million" people displaced by the conflict. (No doubt the number has since increased.) Even as of mid January, an estimated 500,000 people had fled Sudan into eastern Chad.

The slaughter of Sudanese should bring to mind the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted the "terrorists perpetrated hundreds of individual, purposeful acts of barbarism- executing babies, murdering parents protecting children, raping women as corpses of their friends lay beside them."

While Israel, in response to that devastating attack, is recklessly accused by its critics of committing "genocide," actual genocide is transpiring in Sudan,  Attacks often have appeared to be indiscriminate." In one atrocity last year, "six Arab paramilitary commanders and militia leaders" are believed to have "directed their forces to shell densely populated displaced-persons camps and districts in the city with "rockets and mortars," much of it "directed at the ethnic African Masalit tribe," then the majority of the city of El Geneima. 

Scarborough continued

Yet, your school is shut down now because Israel is responsing to the worst attack against Jews worldwide since the Holocaust. Help us sort through that. Again, I don't know algebra but I'm pretty good at the common denominators here and why there's no common denominators in all of them, just that it's Jews defending their homeland because if you look at the numbers, they don't add up.

They don't add up in part because of the enormity of the attack of October 7, in which Hamas "killed more than 1300 Israelis and third-country nationals, including at least 29 Americans, in a country whose population is less than 10 million. In America, that would be equivalent to killing nearly 40,000- 13 times more than the number of Al Qaeda victims on 9/11." Recognizing the importance of context:

“2,200 American servicemen killed at Pearl Harbor. We [America] go on to kill 3.5 million Japanese, including 100,000 in one night. 2,800 Americans in 9/11. We [America] go on to kill 400,000 people in… pic.twitter.com/nnalzWaUHa

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) April 23, 2024

As author Dara Horn explained three years ago in "People Love Dead Jews"

the last few generations of American non-Jews had been chagrined by the enormity of the Holocaust- which had been perpetuated by America's enemy, and which was gross enough to make antisemitism socially unacceptable, even shameful. Now that people who remembered the shock of those events were dying off, the public shame associated with expressing antisemitism was dying, too. In other words, hating Jews was normal.

It is not only American non-Jews who were shocked by the Holocaust who are dying off. It is also American Jews who were shocked (and beyond) by the Holocaust who no longer are alive. The mixture of young, ignorant American non-Jews with the naivete of young Jews, who have grown up in the safety and security of American society, is proving very toxic.

 

              

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No Self-Awareness

Oh, for those simpler times. On June 25, 2020, as Blacks Lives Matter/black lives matter protests raged, United States Representative Ayanna Presley eloquently, if misleadingly, asserted

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of every black family that has been robbed of a child. On behalf of every family member that has been forced to see their loved one lynched on national television. Driving while black, jogging while black, sleeping while black. We have been criminalized for the very way we show up in the world. Under the harsh gaze of too many black bodies seen as a threat- always considered armed...

Black lives matter is a rallying cry for the people. It's time. Pay us what you owe. Our black skin is not a crime.

          

Listening to Representative Pressley, you could be forgiven to fear that if you stepped outside your home at a random time, you would see police systematically murdering black people ("lynched... driving while black, jogging while black, sleeping while black.")  Of those left alive, they were arrested- criminalized- merely for being black, "the very way we show up in the world." 

Fast forward less than four years and, well, it seems the Black Lives Movement, which pushed for less policing and less  has at best failed miserably, at worst, backfired.

The organization and the movement it spawned pushed for less policing and less incarceration. It is now almost four years since the whole of American society was encouraged to reimagine criminal justice enforcement because of the horrific, televised murder by one police officer of one black offender in one major midwestern city. And now we have this:

 

It’s definitely the fault of Walgreens that they’re shutting down their stores in black majority neighborhoods. Right. pic.twitter.com/NBPmJpa2vX

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 21, 2024

Nearly four years in from the demands the attack on the "carceral state" and demonization of law enforcement, Representative Pressley again appeared on the House floor and remarked

Mr. Speaker, Walgreens is planning to close yet another pharmacy in the Massachusetts 7th, this time on Warren Street in Roxbury, a community that is 85% black and Latino. This closure is part of abandonment of low income communities by previous closures in Mattapan and Hyde Park, both in the Massachusetts 7th. 

When a Walgreens leaves a neighborhood, they disrupt an active community and they take with them baby formula, diapers, asthma inhalers, life-saving medications and of course, jobs. These closures are not arbitrary and they are not innocent. They are life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination.

 

They are acts taken reluctantly because the stores no longer generate a reasonable profit, perhaps any profit, in their location(s). The company is in business to make a profit and if they could do so, even by increasing security or other significant changes, they would remain.

Medicaid reimbursement for prescription medicine, critical in low-income areas, is lower than for many private prescription plans. Nonetheless, with Walmart and Target, as well as Walgreens, citing losses from theft in decisions to close stores in urban (generally low-income, majority-minority) neighborhoods, it is blaringly obvious that shoplifting has materially harmed poor people.

Difficulty staffing police departments, prompted by the black lives movement and exacerbated by the pandemic, has played a role, as have lax prosecutors and lenient judges. Yet, Pressley and fellow radicals will not acknowledge what through most of the country has become increasingly obvious: the movement they championed in the months following the murder of George Floyd has unleashed ugly consequences. 

These include a backlash among voters who, against evidence, believe that violent crime has burst out like spring. And it includes also a rise in theft which plagues communities that can least afford it, which particularly need the baby products and prescription medication Pressley cites. If she acknowledges the error of her rhetoric of 2020-2021, she should be welcomed back as if the prodigal son. Ideology, however, is more likely to remain a stumbling block.

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One of Our Own, Or So He Says

So do your thing ,Charles! Stephen A. Smith on Fox News on Wednesday night commented

I got to tell you something. As much as people may have been appalled by Donald Trump's statement weeks ago, talked about black folks, he's hearing about how black folks find him relatable because of what he's going though is similar to what black Americans have gone through, he wasn't lying. 

He was telling the truth. When you see the law, law enforcement, court system, and everything else being exercised against him, that's something that black folks throughout this nation can relate to with some of our historic, iconic figures. We've seen that happen throughout society. So no matter what race, what ethnicity you may emanate from, we relate to you when you're suffering like that because we know we have. That's what he articulated. 

First, let's get something out of the way.  The "we" (in "we've") is doing a lot of work here. Smith appears not to have grown up in poverty and attended college at Winston-Salem State University, to which he received a basketball scholarship. He wrote for the school's newspaper, earned a degree in mass communications, and became a well-respected print journalist thereafter.

Smith thereafter became a well-respected print journalist and is now an extraordinarily successful media personality. He is paid approximately $12 million annually by ESPN. Good for him! With both of his parents hailing from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, he is not generational African American, unlike the "our historic, iconic figures" to which he apparently is referring.

So Smith is not from a line of persons descended from individuals brought to the American shore by Europeans and subjected to slavery. Nor has he ever been arrested. Good for him- but "we" is doing a lot of work here.

Smith contends that "black folks find (Donald Trump) relatable" because "what he's going through is similar to what black Americans have gone through."

In the space of thirteen months, Donald Trump has been indicted four times, with all charges pending, comprising 88 counts of alleged lawbreaking. Stephen A. Smith runs with an  unusual crowd if he believes the typical black American has faced four indictments. That is not the situation in any part of the country.

Nor, evidently in contrast to Smith's view, are the charges lodged against Trump similar in any way to those innocent or guilty blacks face.  He has been indicted for allegedly violating Georgia's anti-racketeering law by urging a Republican secretary of state to "find" him enough votes to overcome an electoral deficit. 

He has been indicted in Washington, DC for mishandling top secret- including nuclear- documents- at his Florida estate, valued at $18 million to $37 million; for falsifying business records, allegedly because he wanted to hide an extra-marital affair with a pornographic movie actress because he was running for President.; and for trying to overturn overturn an election by defrauding the federal government and conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding ("January 6").

This doesn't sound similar to most blacks I know; Stephen A. Smith's experience may be different. However, the extremely wealthy Smith is pushing Trump propaganda not merely because they both are part of the fortunate .1%. Not all of the super-rich agree with Smith- so take it away, Charles!

 

On an episode of (the now-cancelled) King Charles, ex-NBA superstar and current TNT star Charles Barkley remarked "if I see a black person walking around with a Trump mugshot, I'm going to punch him in the face." After the inevitable controversy, King the following week persuaded Barkley to explain that he wasn't really going to roam the streets looking for blacks to punch out. Nevertheless, he explained

for him (Trump) to compare a white billionaire of stuff he did not because of stuff- like black people in trouble for stuff they did not deserve to do. But for him to compare that to black peoples' plight, that's just stupid on their part....

If you're wearing a Trump mugshot around, you're a freaking idiot.... But if you got a Trump mugshot and Trump sneakers on, you cross over a line that you cannot get back.... My message is very clear. If you think Donald Trump is under the same umbrella as black people, you're just stupid.

The following day on his own program on Sirius XM, Smith added "It seems to me that they're ("the Democrats") trying to use the law and the courts. They've clearly politicized this thing with Donald Trump and the courts because can't come up with a strategy to offset the momentum he's clearly gained."

Against the wishes of most Democrats, Attorney General Garland- obviously a reluctant Prosecutor- waited and waited before moving on evidence of Trump's criminality, eventually settling on a Special  Prosecutor. Moreover, recent polls show Biden gaining on Trump rather than vice-a-versa. It is not being "politicized," but rather being handled by an independent judiciary. If Smith had specific evidence indicating otherwise, he'd spit it out. But, no.

If you had told me 24 months ago that a well-educated, well-dressed professional journalist such as Stephen A. Smith would be carrying water for Donald J. Trump while the former "Round Mound of Rebound" would be a sensible straight-shooter, I wouldn't have believed it. We live in strange times.

 

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Overwrought Reaction

Take the "L" and just move on.

 162 Democrats joining Republicans to attack free speech and condemn a phrase that advocates one thing—freedom—is what voters mean when they say Democrats aren't working for us.

This Republican Congress and the Democrats that enable them, week after week, are a joke. https://t.co/tLf4g6tQk2

— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) April 16, 2024

>

After twenty-nine invocations of "whereas,"  the House of Representatives resolved that

the slogan, "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," is outrightl (sic) Anti-Semitic and must be strongly condemned; this slogan is divisive and does a disservice to Israelis, Palestinians, and all those in the region who see peace; this slogan rejects calls for peace, stability, and safety in the region; this slogan perpetuates hatred against the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and anyone who calls for the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people are Anti-Semitic and must always be condemned.

The phrase is "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is not a call for a pluralistic society. The Palestine national movement aims for a Palestinian state, not for intermingling of races, nationalities, or for individuals of varied religious faith. It is a fairly explicit call for the land of Palestine to be strictly for those supporters consider Palestinian, for a land which is judenfrei. It is clearly anti-Jewish or, in the words of the House of Representatives, anti-Semitic.

 

Words have meaning. In asserting that the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" must always be condemned, the House is not demanding that any individual must be stopped from using the slogan nor punished for doing so. It is not an abridgement of "free speech." The resolution is inconsistent with the cause of free expression but the First Amendment is silent on the issue of "free expression," mandating only free speech. If freedom of expression were constitutionally protected, a lot of public colleges and universities would be in more hot water than they are.

Fortunately, the use of the noxious- albeit clever and rhythmic- phrase cannot be prohibited or penalized with this resolution. The legislative action is non-binding. It is tantamount to an expression of support for Israel as a Jewish state against those who would like to see it eradicated. .There are bigger fish to fry for the radical left, including attacks on colleges and universities in the name of combatting anti-Semitism.

Merely symbolic and virtually meaningless, it is at worse, it is virtue-signaling; at best, it is virtue-signaling. Yet, Justice Democrats choose to blow smoke up the rear end of the public and claim the phrase merely calls for "freedom" which, ironically is in greater abundance for Palestinian residents of dreaded Israel than for Palestinians virtually anywhere else in the Middle East. The organization should have given the House resolution only the attention- none- it deserves, suck it up, and reserve their dishonesty and hatred for something substantial.

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The Simpson Verdict Was a Manifestation of Inequity

On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, the conversation eventually was steered (abruptly) to the death of Orenthal J. Simpson. The host made a few remarks, a couple of them dangerously misleading, reflecting conventional wisdom..

Bill Maher remarks (at 41:30 of the video, if it were still available) 

I think what it was, I think black folks knew very well that he did it and I don't blame them one bit for cheering him on. I mean, when you're on the wrong end of the justice system- first of all, as they have been, when they finally got one, even though he was not exactly the best recipient of that.

For what it's worth, poll(s) at the time indicated that most blacks believed Simpson was innocent. Through the years, more blacks (as most whites) came to realize that the Hall of Famer was guilty as charged. More whites did so, also, though both at the time of the trial and years later, more whites than blacks believed Simpson committed the two murders.

The unchallenged belief that blacks "got one" is inaccurate. And Maher was correct that Simpson was not "the best recipient" of the mercy extended, not only because he was guilty but also because he strove to represent himself as not black. "I'm not black, I'm O.J." he would famously assert.

Maher continued

I mean, of course, when we saw that split screen of white people going (mock horror expressed) "oh, my God, oh my God, justice has not been done" and black people screaming in joy- totally understandable. You can't have two completely different histories in American and then expect people to have same reaction to that.

Understandable, yes, the way it's understandable that (some) individuals devoted to Donald Trump believe that the insurrection/riot of 1/6/21 was an inside job, a set-up by the FBI to entrap patriotic Americans so they could be tossed into jail.  By all indications, the protesters acted on their own, resisted by law enforcement officers who were overwhelmed by the numbers and anger of the crowd.

Similarly, the evidence against Simpson was so overwhelming that rational dissenters could have realized they were exposing themselves as ignorant by expressing their joyful exuberance at the verdict. Instead, this should go down (but won't) as the beginning of the "all exuberant emotion is good, especially if it will be filmed" movement in society.

Conceding that the defendant was in fact culpable, Maher added "It was a miscarriage of justice but for white people to be that upset about the one time, the one time a black guy gets off, I thought that was the gross part about it."  Asked by guest panelist Gillian Tett whether "it's different now," Maher said

it is different now. Everything is different now. There's a whole complete different generation that never experienced the kind of racism that the people alive in 1994 who were born in whatever, 1964, 1954, anything like that, they did experience. So would there still be a lot of that reaction? Of course, for understandable reasons.

A moment later, he clarified 

It was payback and on a very larger scale, that's happening in America and will happen for decades to come because the legacy of our despicable racial past doesn't go away in a generation. It takes a very long time. Even people today, younger people, maybe they didn't have anything terrible to happen to them but they're like "yeah, but I know what you did to my grandfather and that was some s_ _ _ and I love him so I'm mad for him. That's not going to go away in my lifetime or yours.

The "understandable reason(s)" that there still would be "a lot of" blacks who now would celebrate a similar outcome in a similar case is perception, not reality. The perception- in the media and among the power elite- seems to be that the common "miscarriage of justice" in the USA is predominantly racial in nature. Maher cites the "two different histories in America" as explaining the discrepancy in reaction of whites and reaction of blacks to the not guilty verdict.

The two different histories extend to treatment by the criminal justice system (and policing, which came into play in the trial, courtesy of the infamous Mark Furman). It was "the one time a black guy gets (got off" because black guys, even less than white guys, have enough money to get off.  The discrepancy in history was not, ultimately, the reason Mr. Simpson was not convicted.

The defendant's "dream team" of attorneys included eleven lawyers, four of them prominent- F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Kardashian, and Alan Dershowitz. No one- even a white, Christian, land-owning male- is able to hire so much talent without being very, very wealthy. A typical defendant cannot afford to hire even one private attorney and if he is able, she probably is someone not at the top of the legal heap. Although no one who would know for sure is talking, estimates are that Mr. Simpson's defense cost approximately five million dollars.

That is the numeral "5" followed by 7 digits. Without deep pockets- earned by being a phenomenal professional football player, effective celebrity pitchman, and mediocre actor- Simpson would not have been able to sniff an effective defense. And he did so while being black because- in the world of criminal justice as in most of society- black or white is far less important than green.

Thus, it's not only Bill Maher who is mistaken. A professor of Afro-American Studies was quoted by The Washington Post soon after Simpson's death maintaining that racial divisions persist "because we haven't repaired the social fabric in a way that we like to pretend we have because we fall back on race and racism at the drop of a hat or a drop of the glove in this case."

Nonetheless, that's not the only reason racial divisions persist. We also fall back on race and racism because we fail to acknowledge the impact of other, more important factors in some matters.  The jury, including eight blacks and only one white,  did (as Maher noted) believe that the acquittal of OJS constituted a rare victory for a black man in a system beset by racial prejudice. However, the verdict was less an aberration or correction than it was reinforcement of the most significant feature of the criminal justice system;  not white makes right, but money can buy most defendants out of most of the trouble they face. 

The vast majority of whites, and an even greater percentage of blacks, are not wealthy enough to put on an effective defense. And so while we can join Bill Maher in debating whether racism will prevent blacks from getting a fair shake in the future, most will not because they lack the financial resources to put on a fight. Marc Watts, who covered the trial for CNN and is now with the African American Leadership Forum, has stated "many African Americans believed that O.J. Simpson was the revenge verdict. It was the one black people had won in response to some of the ones black people had lost."

No, sorry; black people, few of them in the same universe as Simpson financially, lost rather than the almost universal view that they won one. The video (from seven years ago) below, portrays the trial, as has been typical, as being about race. There is a lesson, as Bill Maher might put it (if he understood), of "happening in America and will happen for decades to come." However, the lesson is less about the importance of race than of the importance of class. 

     

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Shedding Tears Over the Death of Orenthal James Simpson

Orenthal James Simpson has died, and he leaves behind an impressive, in a manner of speaking, record of misbehavior.

In 1964, Simpson as a juvenile had his first run-in with the law. In 1989, he was arrested after wife Nicole Brown Simpson, who went to the hospital with severe bruising and cuts, told the police "he's going to kill me, he's going to kill me." Orenthal pled guilty to spousal abuse and was fined and placed on probation.

The year after Orenthal and his wife divorced in 1992, Mr. Simpson broke into the rental home occupied by Nicole and the (ex-) couple's two children. Nicole called the police and reported "he always comes back."

In June of 1994 Mr. Simpson stabbed to death Mrs. Simpson and an acquaintance, Ron Goldman, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Orenthal immediately fled to Chicago, then promptly returned to Los Angeles, dumping somewhere along the line the knife he used. Simpson failed to appear after the L.A. Police Department, through the suspect's attorney, offered Orenthal a chance to surrender. Simpson was arrested after the famous "white Ford Bronco" chase.

Simpson in October, 1995 was acquitted, as is almost universally believed, because a majority of the jury was black. However, in February of 1997 a civil court jury found him liable for the murder of Goldman and responsible for beating Nicole on the night of the murders.

Over the next dozen years, Simpson is accused of a burglary and theft at a girlfriend's house, with no charges filed; acquitted of a felony; had his home searched by federal law enforcement in response to a drug-smuggling scheme; lost a civil suit filed by DirecTV over signal stealing' and arrested after he broke into a Las Vegas hotel room to steal memorabilia which he later claimed was his own  property. For that he was ound guilty of weapons, robbery and kidnapping, sentenced to thirty-three years in prison and granted parole in 2017.

So what in the Almighty was this all about?

 

So I'll say this.  Our thoughts are with his families during this difficult time, obviously with his families and loved ones. And I'll say this- I know they have asked for some privacy and we're going to respect that. I'll just leave it there.

There is little doubt that the abomination known as Jean-Pierre wanted to "leave it" at sympathy for the Simpson family, which had issued a tweet which included "his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace."  By contrast, the father and the sister of Ron Goldman, in neither their statement to NBC News nor a subsequent statement sent to reporters, asked the public for privacy or anything else.

(As any believing Christian will tell you, "grace" is "unmerited favor." Why the Simpson family would suggest that the favor of privacy is unmerited is curious.)

This incident bears a similarity to the occurrence in 2024 of International Day of Transgender Awareness on the same day as Easter Sunday. The President could have merely signed a standard proclamation recognizing transgender day, but he went much further. He attacked "extremists" for "proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families" while decrying "the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face." Biden blamed these unnamed individuals for "worsening our Nation's mental health crisis," described the Administration's efforts on behalf of the transgender community, and pledged "my entire Administration and I have your back."

All on Easter Sunday, which the President later realized he had to acknowledge, thus issuing an anodyne statement of recognition. 

As of this writing, the Administration still has not noted the murders of two innocent people, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Those murderers were, beyond of a shadow of doubt, committed by Orenthal James Simpson. As longtime sportscaster Bob Costas, a friend of Simpson until the latter slashed two people to death, put it

If I could give him the benefit of any doubt, I would. And I'm sorry I have to say this on the day that he passed away, but someone asked me once "do you think O.J. did it"? I said "yes." They said "why"? I said "because I live on this planet."

Bob Costas recalls someone once asking him how he could possibly believe OJ did it, and responding: "Because I live on this planet. The evidence just adds up to nothing else." pic.twitter.com/4sIT9gNx0U

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 11, 2024

Joe Biden and Karine-Jean Pierre live on this planet, as do the Republicans, who criticize the President for a weak economy which is very strong, declining oil production which has risen to record levels, and  the rising crime in cities which is not occurring. Of course, expressing sensitivity for the death of a convicted felon rather than to the families of two individuals he earlier murdered is not in their wheelhouse.

But that doesn't absolve the President of responsibility for considering Transgender Visibility Day more important than Easter, nor for being more concerned about the death from chronic disease of an elderly criminal than for his victims.  Something is askew in the values at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and at some point someone will notice. 

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