Mary Katherine Ham @ Hot Air:
A liberal critic of my comments on “The O’Reilly Factor” this week tweeted his displeasure with my assertion that factions of the “Left” and “some liberals” sympathized with Chris Dorner and even made him into a folk hero. He asked for examples. Here’s one:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/v-uuGdxLZtE[/youtube]
It’s hard to imagine how Marc Lamont Hill could have put this more appallingly. One member of the panel starts by rather sensibly bemoaning the waste of life, manpower, and ink in this chase. Hill responds:
“There’s no waste here, though. I mean, this has been an important public conversation that we’ve had about police brutality, about police corruption, about state violence. I mean, there were even talks about making him the first domestic drone target. I mean, this is serious business here. I don’t think it’s been a waste of time at all.
And, as far as Dorner himself goes, he’s been like a real-life superhero to many people. Now, don’t get me wrong, what he did was awful, killing innocent people is bad. But when you read his manifesto, you read the message that he left, he wasn’t entirely crazy. He had a plan and a mission, here. And, many people aren’t rooting for him to kill innocent people; they’re rooting for someone who was wronged to get a kind of revenge against the system. It’s almost like watching ‘Django Unchained’ in real life. It’s kind of exciting.”
Hill and I have been on many of the same TV shows. We have been paired as sparring partners. We have been in TV doing commentary for approximately the same amount of time. Please imagine a scenario in which there is a fugitive who killed four people, two of them police officers, wounded four others, taunted the families of his innocent victims, held a couple hostage for days, and led one of the largest manhunts in recent history because he felt the government was too overbearing a force, spending too much money, and taking too much freedom from its citizens. Imagine his manifesto referenced issues about which I care deeply, such as the need for entitlement reforms and the need for charter schools and school choice, and name-checked Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson as admired figures. And, I went on TV and said this:
“There’s no waste here, though. I mean, this has been an important public conversation that we’ve had about entitlement reform, about some of endangered liberties, and about school choice. I mean, this is serious business here. I don’t think it’s been a waste of time at all.
And, as far as [Quadruple Murderer] himself goes, he’s been like a real-life superhero to many people. Now, don’t get me wrong, what he did was awful, killing innocent people is bad. But when you read his manifesto, you read the message that he left, he wasn’t entirely crazy. He had a plan and a mission, here. And, many people aren’t rooting for him to kill innocent people; they’re rooting for someone who was wronged to get a kind of revenge against the system. It’s almost like watching ‘Red Dawn’ in real life. It’s kind of exciting.”
First of all, we’d never be having this conversation on TV, because it’s a warped and deeply insensitive conversation to have. Quite the opposite: as a conservative, I would have been forced to carefully distance and denounce for a week straight (and, by the way, would be required to do this even if there were no evidence the murderer shared my belief system, as in the case of Jared Loughner). Never would there be a discussion of whether we should consider whether the murderer had a legitimate grievance, nor should there be. You have lost the privilege of a “national conversation” about your grievances once you have killed four fellow citizens. If anything, I would curse the perpetrator not just for his murders but for making it nearly impossible for me to speak publicly about the concerns he, regrettably, shared with me.
Second, I would never, ever, ever say this because it is morally deranged.