Hands Up! Don't Shoot!
It's the gesture now making the rounds of football fields to Congress to a host of other places that is based on Ferguson myth. So what happens when someone who buys into the myth, such as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, is challenged to back it up with facts? Well, the lame defense as you can see is the incredibly low standard that there is no evidence that his hands were never up.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: ...So many lies were spread early on and spread on Twitter and spread on Facebook and it became sort of urban legend and then we find out later that so much that was said early on that caused the outrage and caused the protests ended up not being true. That's my concern here. So if you use a gesture that's based on a lie I'm just afraid that it doesn't help the conversation, in fact it coarsens the debate.
EUGENE ROBINSON: Well, if the gesture stems from what some witnesses said. And again if you look at the testimony and you look at the way those witnesses were taken through their testimony as opposed to the way some other witnesses were taken through their testimony. One wonders if, well I don't actually wonder, but I think that if in a proper adversarial trial situation I'm not sure...
SCARBOROUGH: Gene, Gene, do you have any evidence? I mean let's cut through it. Let's not talk about the niceties of the legal debate. Do you believe that Michael Brown had his arms up saying "Don't shoot?" Do you believe that actually happened?
ROBINSON: Look, I actually believe that at some point he was clearly advancing toward the officer at the time he was shot. Was he charging the officer like a bull, like a demon as the officer said? Was he staggering toward him in some...
SCARBOROUGH: Do you believe he had his arms up in the air and said "Don't shoot?" I think this is a very important to question to answer if this is to become the new symbol, the new protest symbol of people on the floor of the House and before football games, I think it actually matters whether it was the truth or not.
ROBINSON: I don't believe Joe that there is anything in the record that certainly not in the forensic evidence that precludes the possibility that he had his hands up at some point when he was approaching the officer. He probably did not...
SCARBOROUGH: That's an awfully low standard. There's also nothing in the evidence that doesn't suggest a flying saucer from Venus swooped over all of them. I mean that's a very low standard.
ROBINSON: There's lots of evidence that there was no flying saucer but no one would be claiming that he had his hands up...
SCARBOROUGH: There's no evidence that it's precluded though, Gene. I'm not being difficult. I'm saying the truth actually does matter.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I think it's an uncomfortable question for you because if you say no, there is no evidence that his hands were up, you're probably insulting a lot of people. Do you feel uncomfortable with the question?
ROBINSON: No, I don't feel uncomfortable with the question at all.
BRZEZINSKI: Do you think his hands were up from everything you've read?
ROBINSON: Because I don't think there is any evidence that his hands were never up. There's no evidence that his hands were never up.....
Yeah, and there is also no evidence that a flying saucer from Venus never swooped over Ferguson. Hey, your humble correspondent read all the non-evidence in Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout.
