Originally published February 21, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1214
When one is faced with a pointless death, such as that of Ennis Cosby, one is often seized with the desire to try to do something about it. This is usually not possible. It’s probably not even possible in this case.
But then I read about a rep for the LAPD describing the killing as “a complete whodunit.” Trying to solve mysteries and sort out things that don’t make sense is a natural compulsion (just ask Oliver Stone).
And I also read reports of the actual events surrounding the death of Bill Cosby’s son.
And there’s stuff that’s just bugging the hëll out of me. I have no one else to talk to about it, so I figured I’d talk to you.
The following stipulations and understandings must be made clear:
First, the reportage upon which the following speculation is based could be in error. Happens often enough.
A recent article in the New York Daily News about Marvel Comics described the Marvel/DC Amalgam books as “a flop,” despite the fact that they sold extremely well, garnered a good deal of positive fan response, and proved popular enough to prompt follow-up series.
Second, there may very likely be aspects of the crime which are being kept back by the police, a not uncommon practice. So something that seems contradictory may very well have some sort of sensible explanation.
Third, it’s entirely possible that by the time this sees print, they may have caught the guy and the following is proven to be right or (more likely, I admit) absolutely dead wrong.
Fourth, my little notions and theories are not at all intended to be invasive, insensitive, sensationalistic, or condemning. I’m just thinking out loud. This is the kind of half-baked speculation in which folks might engage sitting around at a convention room party at 2 a.m. For that matter, perhaps you should wait until 2 a.m. to read this column. It might be more effective.
The bottom line is: I am someone who makes a living by looking at the world in a skewed manner and saying, “Well, how about it?” And every so often I decide to give that tendency a real-world application. Which I’m about to do right now.
Why?
Because I keep thinking about the fact that many—if not most—murders are not committed by strangers, but by people who knew their victim.
Because I keep thinking about Susan Smith murdering her two children—but at first claiming that the murder was committed by a mysterious black man.
Because of the following…
The most detailed description of the crime I found was in the Feb. 3 issue of People. For the sake of argument, we’re going to assume (always dangerous) that it’s accurate. The pertinent section reads as follows:
“…[O]n January 16, sometime around 1 a.m., as Ennis… was heading north on the 405 freeway to visit a woman friend, he got a flat in the front left tire of a $130,000 green Mercedes 600SL convertible… He pulled off the freeway and stopped on a pitch-black stretch of road called Skirball Center Drive, just off the exit ramp. Using his cell phone he called his woman friend, whom news reports say me met the previous weekend at a party. The woman… arrived minutes later, parking her black Jaguar next to his car so that her headlights could aid him as he changed the flat. As Ennis finished fixing the tire, she reportedly told police, a man holding a gun suddenly tapped on her window and threatened to kill her. Terrified, she said she sped away but returned minutes later, at 1:28 a.m., to find Ennis lying in a pool of blood with a single bullet in his head. Described by police as ‘traumatized,’ the female witness was at first unable to supply a useful description of the assailant. It wasn’t until Jan. 18, two days after the slaying, that a composite sketch of the alleged perpetrator, a white man between 25 and 32 years old in a light-colored knit cap, was released.”
Okay. Let’s think about this.
1) Where did the assailant come from?
Was he lurking in the area on foot? Why? This was a “pitch black” stretch of road. A photo of the crime scene didn’t indicate any sidewalk, so foot traffic would be unlikely. So he was standing out there on a winter night on the off chance that maybe somebody might happen to show up with a flat tire?
Putting aside stretches such as that he was rollerblading or bicycling, the logical alternative is that he showed up in a car. In which case, why did no one see him coming? If it was pitch black, his headlights would have signaled his arrival, so Cosby and the woman would both have been alert to the new arrival, and (since Cosby is New York-raised) to possible jeopardy. The instinct would have been to scope out the other guy or—if there was any doubt—just vacate the area. Unless Cosby was so trusting that he just automatically assumed the newcomer was there to help them, but even then, the woman should have known that someone was coming. The only other possibility is that the assailant pulled up in a car with his headlights out, but Cosby still should have seen him coming, and the extinguished headlights would have been a sure tip that trouble was brewing.
None of this seems terribly plausible. So I wonder…
…why was this man there?
2) We can assume that the woman wasn’t right next to Cosby. Since the left front tire was out, more likely she was behind him. That’s the natural traffic maneuver to avoid going the wrong way and making yourself a target for any oncoming cars that might descend down the exit ramp.
(If you’re skeptical about her being able to provide him with enough light from behind, try it some time. On a dark road, pulled up behind a parked car with your brights on. You’ll find you can fully illuminate the area with no problem.)
So you’re sitting there in a car, using your headlights to illuminate the area. Are you sitting there with the car in drive and your foot on the brake? Very unlikely. You expect that you’re going to be there for a few minutes. What do you do?
You put the car in “Park.”
You watch Cosby change the tire. You don’t offer to assist in any way, which might help things move along faster.
And a guy shows up, tapping the glass with a gun. He’s that close. That close.
Okay, here’s a test. I want you, the reader, to get a friend. You sit in a chair and be the woman; have the friend be the assailant, gun in hand. Mime putting your foot on the break, reaching over to the gear shift, putting it into drive, take your foot off the brake and shifting it to the gas pedal, slam down the gas, turn the wheel and drive away. Your friend’s job is simple. The moment he sees you move a muscle to try and get away, he’s to pull the trigger of the “gun.”
Okay… ready, set—go.
What happened? No—don’t tell me. I’ll tell you. You had a bullet in the brain before you’d shifted the car into park. Because no matter how fast you move your hand, your foot and your car, it’s ponderous compared to the amount of time it takes to squeeze a trigger.
On the off chance, the slight chance, the incredible stretch of a chance that he misses you—he shatters the glass. He tries to stop you from leaving. If he’s that close, he puts a couple of bullets in your car, or better still, he shoots out a tire or two. You don’t get away.
So I wonder…
…why is the woman still alive?
3) Again, going on the assumption that she was behind him—she just drove away and left him? She had to drive right past him. Cosby could have leapt onto the hood and be carried off at five, ten miles an hour, and the moment they had any distance, clambered into the car. Yes, she could have panicked and abandoned him. But that’s a hëll of a thing to do. She would have had to be terrified. And if she was that terrified, why did she go back at all? Why didn’t she call the police? (She’s a screenwriter in her 40s who drives a Jaguar. Bet she has a cell phone.) Why didn’t she then wait for the police to show up before going back?
So I wonder…
…why did she leave Cosby to face an armed man who frightened her so thoroughly that she then went back to the scene without waiting for (and, for all we know, summoning) police assistance?
There are pieces of information I’m missing that I wish I knew. Was Cosby shot from close by or some feet away? Was the entry from the side, the rear, or the front? Ostensibly the motive was robbery. Presuming that the killer arrived on foot (because, as noted, showing up by car gives too much warning and the description makes it clear that it was a surprise), was Cosby’s car still there? If you’re into robbery, the hëll with the wallet: You take the $130,000 car. Get it to a chop shop and sell it off in no time, plus you get away from the scene of the crime quickly. If the car was still there, it makes even less sense.
So I’m thinking about all this, and how it bugs me. And I thought, if I wanted to turn this into a story, how would I do it? What motivations and people would I plug in so that the actual events are plausible to me. How do I turn fact into fiction which may have some smattering of relation back to fact?
And here’s what I came up with. (Again, I emphasize this is a mental exercise motivated by a desire to try to do something. When I try to do something, no matter what it is, it usually winds up in writing.)
How about this?
Cosby meets the woman at a party the previous week. Let’s arbitrarily assign her a name: Linda. But the woman is not alone. She has come with her boyfriend, named Matt.
Matt watches as Linda becomes enchanted with the ready wit of the self-effacing, humble son of the most popular comedic actor in the country. Matt becomes angry.
Matt isn’t a nice guy. He’s quick tempered, he can even become controlling and despotic.
So it’s a week later and he has shown up unexpectedly at her house—because the one she is expecting is Cosby. They talk. Linda is evasive. Suddenly she gets The Call. Cosby, the man about whom Matt is extremely unhappy, calls and ask for her help. “Have him call triple A!” rages Matt. But she refuses to kowtow; she’s going to go help him.
Matt insists that he’s going to go with her to “protect” her. That’s why he has the gun—ostensibly.
They pull up behind Cosby, shine the light. And Matt gets out of the car, offering to help move things along by aiding in the change of the flat tire. Cosby and Matt talk as they work on the tires. Matt’s anger and jealousy quickly become evident. Cosby refuses to be drawn into it. And an enraged Matt pulls out the gun and, to the horror of Linda, shoots Cosby dead.
“Get us out of here,” he orders her. “Drop me at home, then circle back and then call the cops. And don’t say anything to the cops about my involvement. Wait a few days and give me a head start, or you will regret it.”
She is terrified. Terrified of him. Terrified of what he might do to her if the secret comes out. She spends two days in a state of shock, not because she’s driven up after the fact and found a murder victim. It’s because she knows her boyfriend is responsible and has to give him at least two days so he can get as far from Los Angeles as possible. Which she does.
There.
That’s who I think killed Ennis Cosby. Not some passing stranger who just happened by at a stroke of luck. Rather, someone who knew him and was angry at him. Jealousy—the oldest motive for murder that exists.
Ahhh… the hëll with it.
It was probably O.J. Simpson what did it.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to a Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
• 
For anyone who, like me, wondered how the case was eventually resolved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennis_Cosby
Thank you.
Most of the information in that article is unsourced.
“Markhasev was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 10 years.”
So, what? If he dies, thus ending the life sentence, and then comes back they hold him for another ten years?
He dies, they leave him in the cell for another ten years. 🙂
If he’s ever clinically dead and then revived, he only has to serve another ten years.
That’s an interesting idea. If sentenced to life plus some years, could one arrange to “die” and then serve only the years? For that matter, could one “die” and then demand to be released?
Commons sense says no, and the quotes around “die” show it wasn’t really dying. But I’m sure some lawyer(s) would be willing to try to make the argument.
It’s interesting to see how logical it was to see this as a much more interesting and complex story than what it turned out to be. That’s one problem with armchair analysis as we have all done on everything from the Sanford Florida shooting to the Kennedy assassination. We look for those CSI show details that flip the story into something more than it is, when the dull simple explanation more often than not is the answer. Though not always.
A little part of me, after the deaths of Ennis Cosby and, earlier, Brandon Lee, kept thinking “Isn’t this where Columbo should show up?
With a run-of-the-mill thug for a suspect?
Naw, Columbo would’ve quickly zeroed in on the real killers, a producer or someone.
And now, 15 years later, we are once again in the midst of a national story about the senseless shooting of a young black man in a case where we’re not privy to most of the important details. As much as things change . . . .
And the father of Ennis Cosby is firmly saying that it’s not a question about race, but a question about gun control, and why aren’t we making guns harder to have access to? The sad thing is that plenty of short-memoried Americans have no clue why Cosby feels that way.
PAD
Mikhail Markhasev was a criminal. Stricter gun control laws would not affect his ability to get a gun. But allowing law-abiding citizens to carry them would’ve made it easier for Ennis Cosby to carry one. Although we don’t know if he would’ve been inclined to do so, such laws would not affect the ability of criminals to have them on their person.
Haven’t studies shown that states that permit citizens to carry firearms are fewer gun crimes?
“Haven’t studies shown that states that permit citizens to carry firearms are fewer gun crimes?”
I’ve heard that, but how does it explain the gun crime rates in, say, Britain and Japan, which have very strict gun control laws? Their rates are far below ours, even with population taken into account.
“would’ve made it easier for Ennis Cosby to carry one.”
Even if it were easier, is there anything to say that Ennis Cosby, or anyone else, would carry?
“Haven’t studies shown that states that permit citizens to carry firearms are fewer gun crimes?”
I’m assuming you mean concealed here, because you can open carry in most states that I’ve been in.
So, yeah, you hear that a lot. The Republicans and the NRA have long used John Lott’s work, “More Guns, Less Crime” to push that idea and even the MSM has reported Lott’s work as fact. But the facts are that Lott cooked the books on his research.
Even Professor David Mustard, the co-author of Lott’s study, has conceded that there were serious flaws in their study; flaws that seriously undermine the conclusions. Mustard was deposed under oath in the Ohio concealed handgun case Klein v. Leis. Mustard admitted that –
1) The study “omitted variables” which could explain that changes in the crime rate are due to reasons other than changes in concealed handgun laws.
2) The study did not account for many of the major factors that Mustard believes affect crime including crack cocaine, wealth, drugs and alcohol use, and police practices such as community policing. These serious flaws completely undermine Lott’s findings.
Oh, and when asked about his data, Lott conveniently claimed that his computer crashed and he “lost” all the data. The University of Chicago, where Lott claims he conducted the study, has no record of it being conducted so Lott then began claiming that he funded it himself, but kept no records.
But, but despite this, his original work is still hyped by the conservative media and he’s still treated as a reliable expert even by some parts of the MSM. In the meantime, others have done studies on the issue where they actually did look at multiple factors that could impact such things, looked at a longer time period in their studies and didn’t claim that the computer ate their homework when others asked to see it. The results have been interesting and shown that it’s more likely that, based on their findings, the concealed handgun laws pushed for by Lott, the Republicans and the NRA most likely caused more crime in some areas rather than caused the reduction in crime claimed by Lott.
Looking at tons of data on the subject, I think, leans one towards the conclusion that it’s hit or miss what it will do and based more on other factors beyond just letting people carry a gun. But the sad truth is that this is a matter where no amount of facts on either side will matter to the most of the people involved in the debate. It’s one of those things where even extremely intelligent people will favor the “information” that fits their own personal belief more so than the facts that don’t.
Jerry –
.
I’m more pessimistic. It’s not just gun control. EVERY ISSUE under the sun is like that. People form their opinions, usually based on highly emotional life experiences (no matter how they deny it) and all the facts are filtered. Man is not a rational animal, man is the rationalizing animal.
.
FDR is a great President that helped the US through the Depression and WWII. Or not. According to Robert Crim, FDR is a fascist with a black soul. And I have no doubt that all facts can be twisted to work with both versions, and countless others.
.
Society faces ever more complex problems. It’s likely that even a great human mind, studying for decades, will not be able to know everything there is to know about a certain problem. Economists study for 20 years without coming to an agreement about what caused this crisis or that crisis.
.
Oh hëll. Nevermind me. Sometimes I just get tired of it all.
Luigig: Haven’t studies shown that states that permit citizens to carry firearms are fewer gun crimes?
The UK has strict gun control laws. The UK has vastly (on the order of 45 vs thousands) fewer gun related homicides.
The argument that “criminals will get guns regardless, all gun control does is stop people from defending themselves” is bunk.
Rene,
I don’t think that all issues are equal in their ability to spark that defect in people and certainly not all people are as extreme in their desire to ignore facts. The more serious the issue, the more the wall is built up in most people.
And I wouldn’t seriously use Crim as much of an example of anything other than an idiot at this point. He’s one of the defective people who believes his ideology above and beyond all else and facts be dámņëd. Present an argument or a fact that conflicts with it that he can’t deal with and he just spouts inanities and pretends it’s the argument of a towering intellect. Unfortunately a common trait in American libertarians of a certain older age range and one they seem to relish displaying for all to see.
Sean, Luigi, Gray — Different countries, different cultures. But, one fact remains: if criminals want guns, they’ll get them and no amount of gun control will help. Someone mentioned Japan and it does have very strict gun control. Yet criminals have little trouble getting them. The thing is, they seldom use them because the police frown on that sort of thing and they are quite good at nailing the individual concerned, plus they have the death penalty and do use it.
Too, guns for self defence is questionable at best.
Either you’re at home, it’s late, you were probably woken from a sound sleep and there’s no lights on and these are less than ideal circumstances in which to go against an potentially armed opponent. Or you’re out somewhere and are in a one-on-one confrontation but what good’s the gun if the other guy gets the drop on you? You could be carrying a bazooka and still be toast. Or, as one of my favourite fictional characters, Clark ‘Doc’ Savage Jr puts it, people who carry guns get to relying on them and, if it gets taken away, or they are in a situation where they can’t use it, they’re helpless. So while there are situations where it can do *some* good, it’s usually more trouble than it’s worth.
I do agree with Mr. Cosby on one thing: that if Zimmerman didn’t have access to guns, Trayvon Martin would still be alive. I also agree (and have for years) that quite a few other tragedies…those that have made the news and the countless others that haven’t…could have been avoided if access to guns weren’t so easy. But I think it also needs to be pointed out that, aside from the gun, Martin would also still be alive if Zimmerman hadn’t provoked a confrontation in the first place. We might conceivably pass laws that prevent guns from being so easy to get…but how do we pass laws to prevent people from doing obviously obnoxious and stupid things?
I also think Mr. Cosby should not be so quick to claim that the Martin case isn’t about race. From the available evidence, it seems pretty clear that the primary reason Zimmerman found Martin’s presence in the neighborhood to be suspicious was the fact that Martin is black. And he was caught on tape making a racist remark about black people, regardless of how others may try to spin it and make it sound like he said something else.
I think Cosby is cutting to the chase, here. The reason Zimmerman accosted Martin may have been a matter of race, but the reason Martin is dead is because Zimmerman shot him. This is not to say that, without a gun, Zimemrman might not have come up with some other means of killing Martin, either intentionally or accidentally, but there you are. Whatever you may think about gun control, you have to admit that guns do make it much easier for people to kill each other on impulse.
For the record, I think that the American national character has more to do with a lot of death by violence than the presence of gun (though the presence of guns is a contributing factor, or course). We are much less likely to back down from confrontation. Sometimes, in some ways, this can be a good thing. In others, it can be quite a deadly one.
David Peattie: And he was caught on tape making a racist remark about black people, regardless of how others may try to spin it and make it sound like he said something else.
Which comment? Not his describing Martin as a black person to the 911 operator, I assume. As that’s been shown to have been a concoction of NBC news.
“As that’s been shown to have been a concoction of NBC news.”
Not really.
But he’s likely referring to the word “coon” that was uttered on the 911 tape. Some people have tried to claim that the word used was actually “punk.” Doesn’t sound even remotely close. Others have stated that the word used was actually “cold.”
It’s closer in how it sounds, but it really doesn’t make sense in context.
Having listened to the several versions of recordings purporting to be Zimmerman saying “fûçkìņg coon”, I just don’t hear it. Can’t make out what is being said at all definitively.
Does it sound like “coon”? Yeah, I suppose I could hear it that way. Does it sound like “cold”? Yeah, it kinda does. Does it sound like “punk”? Could be.
At best, it’s a Rorschach blot of a sound bite. Too distorted and muffled for anyone to fairly claim they’re hearing anything other than what they want to hear.
Certainly not clear enough for David Peattie to be claiming it as “[Zimmerman] caught on tape making a racist remark about black people”.
So, David, which comment by Zimmerman are you referring to?
You do love making being dense an art form in and of itself.
Didn’t one of Zimmerman’s friends claim that Zimmerman said goon?
Ahh, here it is:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/25/451392/friend-zimmerman-racial-slur-term-of-endearment/?mobile=nc
‘Goon’ as a term of endearment in high schools? Uhh, yeah, right. Granted, I’m a decade removed from high school (and so is Zimmerman), but the only time I’ve ever heard this word used is in hockey or box lacrosse (and that’s because many terms cross between the two sports).
And as others pointed out, if it’s a term of endearment, why is he saying it while chasing after Martin? Do people often chase after strangers calling them pet names one normally reserves for lovers? I kind of doubt it.
So, apparently there was no dispute that the word ended with ‘oon’. But, somehow, there is with the first letter.
Occam’s Razor, folks. Do try to not cut yourself while handling it.
Jerry: You do love making being dense an art form in and of itself.
And apparently you like being insulting for it’s own sake.
I explain my view and, acknowledging that I’m making an assumption and may be responding to something other than was originally referred to, ask David for clarification as to what he was referring to.
That you can’t follow my very straight-forward and simple comments speaks more to your ability to comprehend than the “density” of anything.
SDM: “As that’s been shown to have been a concoction of NBC news.”
Jerry: Not really.
Care to elaborate at all? Or do you just figure if you say anything other than “No.” you risk being accused of being too dense?
Because if you’re suggesting NBC didn’t edit the 911 tape to make Zimmerman appear more racist, NBC disagrees with you.
NBC http://newsone.com/2001253/nbc-fires-producer-for-racist-edit-of-zimmerman-911-call/
“Which comment? Not his describing Martin as a black person to the 911 operator, I assume. As that’s been shown to have been a concoction of NBC news.”
“Because if you’re suggesting NBC didn’t edit the 911 tape to make Zimmerman appear more racist, NBC disagrees with you.”
No, reality disagrees with you.
NBC News did not edit tapes to make them racist in their appearance. NBC News and every MSNBC (a division of NBC News) TV host who played the thing played it as it was and complete. The only place that it was edited and aired that way was on the Today Show.
It’s rather disingenuous to claim that NBC or NBC News was doing something that only one producer of one segment on one show did. It’s also somewhat misleading to say that being able to point to this one act by one producer of one segment on one show that aired one time somehow changes the fact that Zimmerman seemed to have a POV that walking while black somehow equaled being suspicious. No, he did not say on that one 911 call that Martin was black before he was asked for a description. This does not change the fact that the majority of unfounded and bogus 911 calls that Zimmerman made involved him calling because he saw black people in the area and decided that they were suspicious.
And I certainly did expect to see the idea that NBC News as a total entity was editing the tapes and therefore the takeaway from the tapes that NBC viewers had was wrong would be pushed by some here. I just expected to see it from fact free posters like self admitted troll Darin or a mindless talking point pusher like Jay Tea. But, hey, feel free to take up their slack if you feel that they’re falling down on the job.
What happened on the Today Show was stupid as hëll. It was made even more stupid by the fact that every other program dealing with news and current events on the NBC family of channels was playing the unedited version of the tape made the stupidity even more evident and glaring. But it was an isolated incident done one time on one show and they fired the twit who did it. It changes nothing in the overall facts of the case that we have seen and continue to see.
“I explain my view and, acknowledging that I’m making an assumption and may be responding to something other than was originally referred to, ask David for clarification as to what he was referring to.”
No, you did what seems to be more and more of a pattern for you. You asked a question, you got a direct answer, you decided that you didn’t like the answer and then you asked the exact same question again as if that would change the answer.
There is one and only one 911 tape where Zimmerman says something that many say was a racial slur. While stating that “they” always get away, many stay that it sounds like he punctuates it with the words “fûçkìņg coons.”
And Zimmerman’s supporters and defenders in the media have bent over backwards to claim that this was anything else no matter how insane they had to sound.
It was “goon” that he uttered and “goon” was actually a term of endearment. Right… He was calling Martin a name that showed how much he liked him.
Lot’s of people across this country, like in Louisiana, proudly call themselves “coon áššëš” The problem there was that Zimmerman wasn’t from there, they were in Florida and if you know any Cajuns they’ll tell you that “coon ášš” is not really something you call someone you like or something you proudly call yourself.
Some claimed it was the word “cold” that was uttered. A possibility, but somehow not really a right feel for the context.
And then there’s “punk” as an option… Yeah…
And then you say –
“Does it sound like “coon”? Yeah, I suppose I could hear it that way. Does it sound like “cold”? Yeah, it kinda does. Does it sound like “punk”? Could be.
At best, it’s a Rorschach blot of a sound bite. Too distorted and muffled for anyone to fairly claim they’re hearing anything other than what they want to hear.”
If someone thinks it sounds anything like “punk” they need their ears checked. Other than that…
I don’t immediately gravitate towards the race card. I actually dislike its heavy use. The word still sounds a hëll of a lot like “coon” to me. It sounds a hëll of a lot like “coon” to many people actually.
You want to claim that it doesn’t sound like it to you. Big whoop. It doesn’t change the fact that it does to many others. Nor does it change the fact that in this entire incident, that 911 call is well known to anyone who has spent more than three seconds hearing about this case as the infamous “coon” or racial slur 911 tape.
I know a lot of people who disagree with the interpretation of what was said on that tape. If you bring up the “racial slur” 911 tape in a conversation, they respond by discussing that call and, if they disagree with the interpretation of that word, they voice that disagreement while acknowledging the specific call itself. They don’t try to look deliberately dense or stupid by posing a “what are you talking about” type of counter to it.
But you, Sean D. Martin, practicing master of asking the same question over and over again no matter how many times you get the answer, ask the question that looks silly to begin with, gets a direct answer, decides to counter the idea behind the answer (not bad in of itself if by itself) and then play dense and ask the same question over again as if you’ll get a new answer this time.
Well, no, there is no new answer. The 911 call in question is the infamous “coon” tape. That’s the one.
David Peattie made a reference to that 911 call. An intelligent person could have responded to that by acknowledging that this call is the call widely known for that and then voicing disagreement with the interpretation of the word in question. But it does make a person look a little clueless at best or just plain dense at worst to then respond by asking what 911 call someone is talking about.
And it really just makes one look flat out deliberately dense to get an answer, the only answer and the correct answer when discussing the facts of this case, and respond by saying that, no, you don’t think that was said and then repeating the question as if it wasn’t already answered or as if you’ll get a different answer this time.
But that’s starting to seem to be your occasional thing lately. Ask a question and then just repeat the same question once it’s answered because, accurate answer or not, you dislike the answer.
Sorry to break it to you, but that just ends up making you look dense; and, worse, dense by deliberate act on your part.
Jerry: It’s rather disingenuous to claim that NBC or NBC News was doing something that only one producer of one segment on one show did.
…
It was made even more stupid by the fact that every other program dealing with news and current events on the NBC family of channels was playing the unedited version of the tape
…
But it was an isolated incident done one time on one show and they fired the twit who did it.
So it was only one show, but it was every program on the NBC family of channels, but it was an isolated incident on one show.
Romney should hire you.
Jerry: You asked a question, you got a direct answer, you decided that you didn’t like the answer and then you asked the exact same question again as if that would change the answer.
It might, since it was David, the person who made the original comment, that I was asking to clarify what he was referring to. You responded. And I replied to your response, discussed the “coon” tape. And having done so then asked David again if that was in fact what he was referring to.
And you go apeshit at my audiacity at not taking you to be the authority as to what other people meant. I must have missed the memo where David authorized you to speak his mind for him.
Jerry: If someone thinks it sounds anything like “punk” they need their ears checked.
Yeah, I’d agree punk is low on the list of what it could have been. But the point remains that that part of the tape is so muffled it’s impossible to say with any authority exactly what was said. So folks are tending to hear (or not hear) what they wish.
You want to claim that it doesn’t sound like it to you. Big whoop. It doesn’t change the fact that it does to many others
So the fact that others do have opinions somehow, what, overrules the fact that I have one? Oh, can I play this game? Sounds like fun. Let me try.
“Others want to claim that it does sound like it to them, Jerry? Big whoop. It doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t to me.”
Nope, I was wrong. Saying inane šhìŧ as if it meant something is boring.
Jerry: They don’t try to look deliberately dense or stupid by posing a “what are you talking about” type of counter to it.
So you’ve mentioned both the “he’s black” comment shown on the Today show and the “fûçkìņg coon (or whatever)” comment, both of which were widely reported as having racial content. Yet argue that when someone asks which is being referred to that it’s some dumb question.
Note, I wasn’t saying “What are you talking about?” as if I’d never heard of either. “Gosh, I’d never heard anything about Zimmerman being racist. What are you talking about?” Nope, far from it. Clearly I was asking “Which comment?” (Go back and check. That is exactly what I asked.)
Is it just poor comprehension skills, Jerry, or do you really have a need to lie about what someone actually said so you can justify insulting them to yourself?
“So it was only one show, but it was every program on the NBC family of channels, but it was an isolated incident on one show.
Romney should hire you.”
Sean, get your eye-glasses checked. You’re due for a new pair.
Me: “It was made even more stupid by the fact that every other program dealing with news and current events on the NBC family of channels was playing the unedited version of the tape.”
“It was made even more stupid by the fact that every other program dealing with news and current events on the NBC family of channels was playing the unedited version of the tape.”
Yup, you got me there. I misread that. My bad.
(See, acknowledging you got it wrong and hence responded incorrectly is possible. Try it sometime. Good for the soul.)
Now that I’m back and can address the rest of the drivel properly…
Actually, no, never mind. I just deleted three paragraphs of the start of my original response because this is much more to the point and true. All the rest of that drivel is too ignorant to waste any more of my time on. Have a nice life.
Well, next time I’ll know I’m just supposed to accept what you say as gospel. Clearly my not doing so and daring to speak directly to the person I was originally responding to is what got your ire up.
Jerry, looks like my last comment may have been eaten up as spam but anyway, it looks like it wasn’t just the Today Show, just once. It was the Today show 4 times on 3 different days, MSNBC at least once, and NBC6 in Miami 3 times. Another producer has been fired for the NBC6 story (which is a different edit from the one that went on Today.). there is also a claim that the NBC Nightly News had an edited clip that played the day before the Today Show but I can’t find any transcript do that seems unlikely.
Jerry, I haven’t had the time or inclination to get to the bottom of all this but it seems that misleading editing of the tape was NOT limited to one time on one show. if I’m reading all this correctly, the Today show did it 4 times on three separate days (3/20; 7am and again at 9am; 3/22, and 3/27. More distressingly, there are claims that it was also used on the NBC nightly news on 3/19 (but I can’t find any transcript of that so I’m withholding any judgment there). And there were apparently 3 stories using a separate misleading edit used by another NBC station (NBC6 in Miami) which has resulted in another producer being fired.
You can try to decipher it all from http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/i-almost-preferred-no-explanation.html http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/04/23/nbc-news-president-network-should-probably-apologize-air-repeated and http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/business/media/tv-news-corrects-itself-just-not-on-the-air.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all also http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10791755-neighbor-comes-to-defense-of-trayvon-martins-shooter had to correct their earlier story but the link to the correction doesn’t work for me.
NBC seems more interested in scrubbing tweets and changing web postings than any real transparency, so this is all hard to sort out. Stupidity seems a more likely explanation than deliberate malfeasance but that’s nothing to be proud of.
It may well have aired several times on the Today Show. I don’t watch it and even critics of NBC, MSNBC and the MSM in general cited only the one time when the scandal broke through the firing of the one producer.
Having not seen the Today Show, I find this part interesting.
“(The on-screen graphic in both instances shows ellipses after “no good,” but the audio runs continuously and omits the fact that Zimmerman was asked to describe the person he was following.)
That makes the Today Show stunt even more screwy. They aired the audio in a crunched manner so it played like it was one statement, but the showed an onscreen graphic showing that the audio is cutting bits. Again, that’s just… odd.
I still doubt that NBC Nightly News ran the edit since I do watch that. Even if I work that night, I generally catch the three network’s nightly news broadcasts since the free stream as iTunes podcasts. I didn’t hear NBC Nightly News playing the edit in question and, yeah, it would have likely stuck out since, again, even guys like Sharpton were playing the full tape that was released to the media on his MSNBC show (and I still cannot believe that I’m typing a reference to Sharpton hosting his own show on a f’n news channel.) The one 911 tape edit they reference in all of that stuff that is attributed to NBC Nightly News also doesn’t play the same way as the Today Show edit. It’s a different edit and it doesn’t come of as saying that Martin is suspicious because he’s black the way the Today Show edit does as much as it seems like he’s just adding descriptor information into the call unprompted.
I’m not going to even address the affiliate in Miami because affiliates are not the network; they’re their own little gig. They carry the brand name and they are ultimately accountable to the network, but their local broadcasts are not the network’s doing. If we hold the sins of the affiliates against the networks themselves, they’re all screwed. There’s a reason that I limited my criticism of Fox News itself when one of their Florida affiliates was in a lawsuit to, among other things, claim that they could falsify the news. Now, while we know that this is the Fox News Channel ethic in many regards, the most you could say about Fox News as a parent company there was that they should have done something about that affiliate. And in the case of NBC News, they have done something about it.
But even with all of that, the News Busters piece you link to shows that the edit in question, the one that really looks like a world class case of the stupids – ““This guy looks like he’s up to no good… He looks black.”” – was used exactly twice and, again, oddly, with onscreen graphics showing that it wasn’t a complete quote, by the Today Show only on their 3/22 and 3/27 broadcasts. So, again, saying that NBC News was pushing that false quote and distorting what Zimmerman said on the 911 tape to make him look more racist is a massive distortion in and of itself given how many times the complete quote was aired by even the most far left hosts on MSNBC, the complete quote was aired on NBC News programs and the fact that the Today Show quote, even according to the links you provided, was not played by any other show in the NBC News family.
So the amended statement for my postings above is that it’s a quote aired twice on exactly one show in the NBC News family. And NBC News fired the idiot behind the edit in question.
Plus, this entire game by the various pro-Zimmerman/anti-Martin people in the media is a joke when logic is applied to it. This flap was brought up to be the answer to the charge that Zimmerman seemed to see people as suspicious more often than not when the persons in question were black.
Even without the edit, you still have Martin doing nothing of note to be suspicious by any account. He was walking down the street and heading to where he was staying after he grabbed some snacks at the local corner store. It doesn’t change the fact that of the many calls he made to 911, but excluding the ones that were about trash in the road or potholes, the majority were about black people doing little more than walking through the area; sometimes a lone suspicious subject as young as “apprx 7–9” years old, four feet tall “skinny build short blk hair” last seen wearing a blue t-shirt and blue shorts.”
People can jump up and down about the Today Show’s stupidity as much as they want, but it doesn’t change what the totality of the 911 calls Zimmerman made show; he seemed to have an issue with blacks doing nothing more than walking through his neighborhood.
In other words, no one needed a lot of spin to make Zimmerman look bad. It’s like a reporting mistake on Richard Nixon to make him look just a little bit more corrupt.
I wouldn’t call the attention the NBC brouhahah has gotten as being necessarily “pro-Zimmerman” and certainly not “anti-Martin”. Mr Martin had zero to do with what the NBC people did and even if one thinks the worst of Zimmerman it does not mitigate the stupidity of same.
Me, I’m happy to wait and see how this all plays out–I’m pretty tired of armchair analysis that, when it turns out to be false or dubious at best is then dismissed by the very people who were making a big deal about it. reuters has a surprisingly fair story up at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/us-usa-florida-shooting-zimmerman-idUSBRE83O18H20120425 which pretty much kills the original narrative of the “black-hating white guy racist” we were originally served, assuming anyone still had that opinion (I kind of doubt even the NYT is going to keep using the “white Hispanic” bit any more, now that we’ve all had a chance to see Zimmerman live and in color.)
None of which changes the facts of the case but this story went beyond that some time ago and revealed some interesting, though predictable, aspects of modern journalism.
“I wouldn’t call the attention the NBC brouhahah has gotten as being necessarily “pro-Zimmerman” and certainly not “anti-Martin”.”
I’m not saying all of the flap is one or the other of those two things. But the simple fact is that lines have been drawn in the media and you have camps that are one or the other with only a few who are truly neutral. The people in the media that I have seen most strongly attempt to spin what happened on the Today Show as being something that NBC News did to deceive us all into believing bad things about Zimmerman (and convince us that the “gangsta” thug Martin was the real source of all violence here) or that it’s something that blows apart any idea that race was involved in this at all most definitively seem to have a pro-Zimmerman/anti-Martin vibe about their coverage of this and the entire thing.
“reuters has a surprisingly fair story up at… …which pretty much kills the original narrative of the “black-hating white guy racist” we were originally served, assuming anyone still had that opinion”
Which does not actually remove the idea that race played a part in this.
From the start of this, or at least since the release of the initial 911 tapes from that night, I said, here and elsewhere, that it seemed as if Martin’s only crime that night was being seen by Zimmerman while walking while black after dark. Not only has that not changed, it seems to be reinforced by the press getting their hands on the records of Zimmerman’s prior 911 calls.
In 45 or 50 calls, you have an interesting look at what Zimmerman saw as suspicious or worth calling in. There were a handful of calls about things. He made a few calls about potholes and a few about trash in the street or cars parked so that they were blocking the street. Nothing there about people, so those are out the window. The calls about people are the interesting ones. Some calls dealing with people were not about anyone doing anything suspicious. Those comments either involved issues with his ex-roommate or things that were actual problems. There was a call about a drunk walking down the street, a call about a women screaming at people from her parked car and a call about a party where the party-goers were spilling out into the street being loud and obstructing the road. These calls were all centered around actual activities. The seem fairly legit.
But then there was a good chunk of the calls that go into that interesting area. Zimmerman made quite a few calls to have police come and do something about people who were “suspicious” by his judgement. How were they suspicious? They were walking through the area. That’s it. That’s all they were doing. They were walking through the area. And they were also all black.
There was a couple of logged 911 calls where Zimmerman’s complaint was that they were walking through the area and suspicious with the additional bit of him being concerned because there had been some break-ins in the area. Was there anything that they were doing at all beyond walking down the street? Not according to the logged complaints. But they were all black.
Does that make Zimmerman a “black-hating white guy racist” here? No, not really. Does that indicate an issue with race? Maybe it does.
John Derbyshire finally got his dumb ášš fired from the National Review the other week. He wrote an article called “The Talk: Nonblack Version” for Taki’s Magazine where he outlined the “knowledge” and “statistical common sense” he imparted to his kids while bringing them up. A short list of some of that advice.
Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks.
Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites.
In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher.
In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.
And there was a bit more as well. Some of it actually comes of even worse than the above stuff. This was all, to Derbyshire at least, things that non-black parents should teach their kids to keep them safe and maybe keep them alive.
What does this have to do with Zimmerman? Some form of some of what Derbyshire outlined isn’t far away from the surface of many people who aren’t overtly racist and who do not fit the common mold of a racist.
I know a number of people who you would never peg as a racist and who really aren’t racists. They don’t disparage blacks, they don’t knowingly discriminate against anyone and they, to sound cliche, have a number of black friends that they’re close to. But they have admitted to having thoughts not entirely unlike some of what Derbyshire is likely making his kids think overtly and all the time.
I have one friend who is an English teacher in a school where her students are majority white, but there are a lot of blacks and Hispanics as well. She is not in a troubled school district with bad students or high crime. She has also never had a serious problem with or caused by any of her students. She’s white, in her late 30s and has lived around large cities most of her life. And a few years ago, as a group of us were sitting around discussing some things that had happened around here as well as some other recent events in the news, she admitted to having thoughts that bothered her and that she was unable to shake.
She said that she had realized that she was looking at blacks differently than whites in certain situations. If she was walking by herself later in the evening from a club or restaurant to her car, she reacted differently to a large group of black males on the street than a large group of white males. She said that she felt more nervous about what some of them may do, muggings or such, than when she passed other groups. She said that she sometimes felt more suspicious about blacks she didn’t recognize hanging out around where she lived than she did whites; even if she did sometimes think there was something up with some of the whites.
And she isn’t really sure why she does this. She is not a racist person in other quantifiable way. The only thing she can think of is that there was so much of the “beware of the black people” racism around her when she was growing up and that the news cycle in our area seems to get into periods of really hyping violent crimes committed by blacks that it’s somehow an unconscious thing that sends up red flags in her whether she wants it to or not.
Oh, and her girlfriend is black and, interestingly, says that she sometimes has the same reactions and feelings about large groups of black males in the night that she doesn’t know as well. Her only guess for why she has that feeling from time to time is that there is still a bit of a leftover cultural thing where blacks are portrayed as more menacing than whites. It was an odd discussion for a while, but it wasn’t an entirely unique one from what I’ve seen and heard from others.
A part of me wonders if Zimmerman isn’t too dissimilar from them. He may well not be the “black-hating white guy racist” stereotype, but that doesn’t mean that race might not have played an issue. His 911 call history leans towards indicating that he was far more likely to call in a report of someone being suspicious for doing little more than walking down the street if the someone in question was black.
And the 911 tapes released from that night certainly show that Zimmerman believed that Martin was guilty of something rather than just suspicious. He pursued Martin as he was leaving Zimmerman’s position and lamented the fact that “these —–” always got away when talking to the dispatcher. His words and actions are of someone who seems more convinced that Martin was guilty of something than just “suspicious.”
And, even with everything that’s come out so far, the only thing it looks like Martin was doing for Zimmerman to find suspicious was what some people have referred to as “walking while black.” And, by Zimmerman’s 911 history, Martin wasn’t the only one.
I can easily believe that Zimmerman is not the raving, overt racist that some would have him be. But I can easily see hims as being like some others out there. He sees blacks in a different way than he sees others. A white male walking home on that street doing the same thing that Martin was doing might not have gotten more than a glance from Zimmerman as he drove on by. But, conscious or unconscious, he may well have seen a black male walking down that same street as automatically more suspicious for no other reason than being a black male.
It wouldn’t be something unique to my friends, to Zimmerman or even to whites. And it’s certainly something that’s out there in more people of younger age groups than I would have thought a few years ago.
Now, the events that happened after that moment, the point that Zimmerman felt he needed to call and act, leave race behind. At some point, the actions of one or both people involved, my belief being that it will more likely be Zimmerman, will fall under the headers of both tragic and stupid. But the fact remains that none of the later actions would happen without the feelings of suspicion and the pursuit and the source of that suspicion looks highly questionable in its true legitimacy and sadly may be in part due to race even if it is not due to outright racism.
I don;t doubt for a minute that race played a role. Not one minute.
She said that she had realized that she was looking at blacks differently than whites in certain situations. If she was walking by herself later in the evening from a club or restaurant to her car, she reacted differently to a large group of black males on the street than a large group of white males.
Oh, she’s Jesse Jackson?
and her girlfriend (black) feels the same way and her only explanation is a leftover cultural thing?? Might I suggest that, depending on the area, it might have to do with the fact that mobs of young kids of one race or another have been involved in robbery and violence? Without mentioning names, I know of family members who own a shop in a city that are very very nervous about a wave of flash mob robberies. So far, all the mobs (that have gotten media attention at least) have been black. So I can’t be shocked at their increased fear over a large black group than an equally large white one.
and of course, color ihing. Would eithers not the only t be as fearful of an equally large group of old black men? Of black girls? Why do boys scare us more than girls-is it sexism? Or the reality that, again, depending on where you are, you are more likely to be attacked by a man than a woman? (there are places where girl gangs are perpetuating a series of random violent acts against people and I’ll bet the people there have a pretty bad reaction to a large group of young women.)
Me, I’ve taught long enough to look at any large group of young people, especially those of entirely one gender, with a cautious eye (though it usually doesn’t take more than a few seconds of conservation to figure out if they are just kids or trouble. Mobs have a pretty clear vibe about them when they are looking for trouble. The kids at school are always amazed when we manage to break up fights seconds after the start–it’s because you can literally feel the mood in the air before a fight starts and anytime the direction of traffic reaches a certain percentage of “everyone going in one direction” you know it’s game on. Plus they all are darting their heads around like deer in a bear cage. There’s a heightened energy.
In my neighborhood a large group of white kids would terrify me way more than a large group of black kids, if only for the novelty, plus the reasonable assumption that they may be looking for a large group of black kids to fight. If that’s profiling, so be it, I won’t lose sleep over it.
“If that’s profiling, so be it, I won’t lose sleep over it.”
Yeah, but there’s profiling and then there’s profiling.
Everyone profiles. Everyone has stereotypes and beliefs about “them” (and any and all of “them”) in their heads, good ones and bad ones, that they carry around with them. Some are built on experience, some are built on what we’re taught and told and some are built on bûllšhìŧ. But there is a point where a person crosses a line from healthy or harmless profiling into the stupid kind.
Profiling like my friend’s may be useful. It may save her from a bad situation one day. Profiling like you mention might help you both on and off the job. Police are even taught profiling, but they do try and teach us what is the good kind VS the bad kind (and they tend to not call it profiling whenever possible.) But my friend and her girlfriend, you, and most others I know aren’t on the phone to 911 reporting nothing more than the fact that one or two black males are walking down the street.
And that, from every 911 call released about the night that Zimmerman shot Martin, seems to have been all that Martin was doing. That seems to be all that a number of black males, including at least one young child, were doing from the information logged by Sanford PD Dispatch about Zimmerman’s many 911 calls.
And no one I know ever went and decided to, while armed with a gun, chase down a black male because they were “suspiciously” just walking through the neighborhood with their hands in their pocket. It may hard to tell from an incomplete picture what really went through his mind that night, but, with the tapes from that night and his past calls, it does have a certain smell to it.
The absolute facts that we know about Martin from that night is what wasn’t found by investigators. He had no weapons, he had no belongings that were not his own on his person, he wasn’t carrying lock-picks or burglary tools and toxicology done on the body showed that he had no drugs or alcohol in his system. We also know, despite the initial spin from some quarters, that he wasn’t walking in some area that was hidden, out of the way or in some other way someplace that would be unusual to see someone walking. But he was still shot dead 70 yards from the rear door of the father’s fiance’s townhouse.
But Zimmerman felt that a kid walking down the street at seven in the evening and doing nothing of note was “on drugs” and so suspicious in nature that the police needed to be notified and that he had to engage in a pursuit of him. Again, we may never know what was in his head at the time, but that just has a bad smell to it.
Everyone profiles or lets stereotypes color their POV every day in lots of ways and likely very few people know that they’re doing it when they’re doing it. But most people don’t act on that profiling in truly negative ways. Zimmerman may well have.
And, had he not done that, had he just called 911 and not chose to chase and possibly engage Martin over his “suspicious” actions, Martin would have walked the remaining 70 yards he never had the chance to walk to get back to where he was staying and he would still be alive right now.
I’d say that in the overall balance of things, the results of Zimmerman’s profiling might just tip the scales the wrong way.