We’ve long since ceased to be amazed by the depths that human beings can sink to, especially when it comes to those who want to preserve their own place in the existing power structure, even at the cost of dehumanizing countless other people for no reason other than the color of their skin. What can we say? We’re cynical.
And, of course, we’re not just cynical about human nature—we also have really low opinions of other things too! Things like the New York Post‘s editorial board. So it should have come as no surprise that a day after a grand jury failed to indict Eric Garner’s killer, Post columnist Bob McManus (who has, in the recent past, defended well-known jerk Rudy Giuliani) decided to write a column in which he blamed Garner for his own death. McManus thinks that it was Garner’s decision to sell loose cigarettes (a crime which McManus admits seems “inconsequential” because IT IS) which directly, justifiably, caused his death. McManus even goes so far as to call police officer Daniel Pantaleo’s response “textbook,” a description which is patently wrong seeing as how the deployment of a chokehold by an officer is literally illegal, and not “illegal” as McManus would have readers believe.
Nice as it would be to just write-off McManus as being a bloviating asshole who is pandering to the Post‘s conservative readership (and ownership), he isn’t the only person responding with staggering insensitivity to the Garner case. Following the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center last night—an event that protestors failed to derail—two people decided to re-enact the fatal chokehold that Pantaleo put on Garner for the camera of the WPIX 11 news team. What the fuck, humanity? Do better.
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