NPR On Modern America: Lynching Is 'Inescapably Us'

Photo of Tim Graham.

From the home page and the Most Popular list at NPR.org: National Public Radio took up the cause of social-realist art in government buildings on Monday's Morning Edition, and its ameliorative effects at the Justice Department. "This building is a sermon, a hymn to justice, a tour guide is quoted as saying. NPR Justice Department correspondent Ari Shapiro introduces the art as hymn: "That hymn includes verses that are progressive, controversial and even radical."

The main subject of praise is a mural from the 1930s depicting a lynching attempt thwarted by a courageous judge. Opposing lynching is hardly controversial today. But oddly, Shapiro finds a liberal expert who says this exposes "us" in modern America, even if our youngest voters were born in 1990:

"This is art really doing its work," says [Roger] Kennedy. "And it tells us what our country is really like. It's inescapably us: not somebody else, not the founders, not the 19th century. Because what illuminates the scene are two things: the flame of hate in the back, and the car headlights in the front."

Doesn’t our departure from the 20th century matter? Don’t the liberals usually proclaim to conservatives who cling to traditions, "come on, we’re living in the 21st century now?" Roger Kennedy’s accusation that lynching defines "us" is odd in this piece, considering that Shapiro concluded his "hymn to justice" by winding it back around to warm words for Barack Obama’s nominee to head DOJ, a living sign of racial progress:

Eric Holder is set to be the first black attorney general in American history. When he walks through the halls of the Justice Department, he will pass all those murals, reminding him that this is his story and ours, and that his job is justice.

By the way, Roger Kennedy worked for Bill Clinton as director of the national parks, and was an NBC News reporter in the 1950s.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.


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Socialist Realism

Socialist realism was well defined and promoted by Karl Marx, whereby all of the arts in every from - from the written word of novels and plays, to statues and paintings and anything else you can think of - were to be compelled to reflect socialist and communist "truth." Roger Kennedy is a dupe who is spreading poison in a way that would make Karl Marx proud, and Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro aroused and orgasmic.

"Us?" Not me, Kemosabe. I

"Us?" Not me, Kemosabe. I may live in the South, but I don't know nuthin' bout no lynchins. I was born in the 60's and I never have seen anyone lynched, known anyone lynched, or even heard about anyone being lynched. So, while it may be a historical fact that many people, black and white were hung, I haven't experienced it in my life, so let it go, dude. I think Tim made a good point, I thought we were always supposed to get into this century, and leave the old things behind? I get so tired of these idiots and their "white guilt" thing. I don't feel a bit of guilt or shame. I didn't do anything.

Me either

I wish someone would fold up their tent. I hate this constant ridicule of us in the none coast states

 

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

Art, Modern?

Why don't they bring their art up to the current state of things. How about something like... oh I don't know.. maybe depicting over one million premeditated child murders every year? Oops, can't do that, liberals think killing innocents is just fine, but it would get us into this century.

How about some art about current events, like selling Senate seats, or a picture of a freezer with cash in it, possibly a collage of all mayors in the news? You know, Culture of Corruption stuff.

 

"Lynchings R Us" victim store......

opening in a community near you, soon.

January 26, 1922 House

January 26, 1922 House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster

~Chad

Cincinnati, OH

You may not be aware that

You may not be aware that they actually made post cards back in the day with lynching photos.  One in particular showing a dead black man, seated on a chair with white paint put all over his face makes me want to vomit when I think about it.  In every white on black lynching photo you have white men, women and children literally posing with big smiles on their faces.  Don't care what the guy did (or what they thought he did) that's disgusting and shows the ass-end of Humanity.  Human cruelty is not the sole realm of America, it's just that we expect less of that behavior over here.

One may consider the mass impalings by Shaka Zulu of his enemies...the Inquisition...the Rape of Nanking...and a great deal of other atrocities committed and being committed around the world, many of which are ignored by the MSM...because they want to perpetuate this notion that white Americans are the epitomy of evil in the world.

I have seen one lynching photo (in South Carolina I believe it was) in which there is a group of black people posing by a black man they had just lynched.  Apparently he had raped a little black girl.  That pic seems to have disappeared (was trying to find it for a discussion on another forum).

Also, the worst mass lynching in America was of Italians in New Orleans during the Teddy Roosevelt era.

One of the 24% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 89% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory.

Aww .. lynchings, a Democrat terror speciality

After the Democrats got their KKK started as the terror enforcer wing up and running right after the civil war, about 1870, lynching was the way to show Democrat's power. The Democrats enjoyed the public hangings, as a way of showing off their terror wing.

Did you know that the Democrats over the years, lynched about the same number of white opposition party members and other white obstructionists as they did blacks? Yes, lynching conducted by Democrats were not limited to blacks in their lynching victims. Anyone who stood in their way were targets. They lynched blacks to mostly keep them on the farm working as slaves, and whites as a form of political assassination.

But as far as it being Us, nope, the Democrat party was the KKK, lynchings, Jim Crow, segregation -- They were all done by Democrat party members. So drop the Us, unless you carry sheets Byrd in your pocket.

Excellent comment.

...and Democrats opposition to civil rights in not limited to the 1800's either.  They have a rich and recent history of being vehemently anti-civil rights.

 And just as the (D) is conveniently dropped from most negative news stories regarding Democrats, it is also dropped from the history books.

~Chad

Cincinnati, OH

Guilt?

Guilt by suggestion that I am somehow responsible for things which happened a hundred or even 50 years ago is something which causes me to take a pause. Whiners who attempt to make me feel guilty for the aforementioned cause me to put my fist thru the closest object. People who appear sane but actually vote for the whiners escape logic. Legalized Americans (not hyphenated people) have the right to eat, sleep and defacate. Beyond that, don't attempt to legitamize your existence. I don't give a s%$t what happened to your great grandfather. And I especially don't care what you have to say about it. Life gives us zero guarantees and you are no exception. If this bothers you...so what. Get over it. 

Just a thought... "This

Just a thought...

"This is art really doing its work," says [Roger] Kennedy. "And it tells us what our country is really like. It's inescapably us:

Is there also a mural depicting Native Americans cutting the body of a settler family limb from limb, then emascualting the males in order to cripple them the after life?  After all, the lynchings in question happened about he same time.

Want something more recent?  WHere is the mural of the FBI agents at Wounded knee being executed by AIM Militants in the 1970's?

How about the Mural of a car full of lost Japanese tourists being held up at gunpoint in Watts in the 1980's.

I am certain their is a linotype or two in the DOJ building depicting OJ Simpson beheading his wife and Ron Goldman, then getting away with it.  A whole series of Johnny Cochrane using every sleazy trick available and colluding with Simpson I think would be in order.

Speaking of a linotype series, how about a compedium of realist paintings of ACLU Attourneys attacking witnesses and victims in order to get a protected class of criminal off the hook?  Boy, they could turn that into a ACLU defense attourney mural entitled "Boy was that guy obviously guilty".

Two Words on Modern Lynchings

Reginald Denny

When journalists talk about

When journalists talk about themselves like this they always include America as if that justified their actions.

"Forget change, I want improvement!"

Such drivel! As a revisionist correspondent, perhaps...

Such drivel! As a revisionist correspondent, perhaps Shapiro could enlighten us on Eric Holder's comlicity in Bill Clinton's pardons of Marc Rich and Hillary's future constituents, the Puerto Rican Terrorists. As he walks through the halls of the Department of Justice( if he's confirmed), he can thank his lucky stars that it is because of the United States, not in spite of the United States that he can make that walk. 

Republicans stopped the Lynching

What Party passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote? Republicans What Party passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting blacks protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, and was the Party of most blacks prior to the 1960’s, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Republican What Party from 1870 to 1930 used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks their rights as citizens? Democrats What was the Party of President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator, then opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after becoming president, and later had the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) investigate Dr. King on suspicion of being a communist? Democrats Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Senator Al Gore, Sr. And after he became president, John F. Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican. In 1960, King was arrested for trespassing during a sit-in and held in Georgia's Reidsville prison. Fearing for his son's life, Martin Luther King Sr. appealed to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy to secure his release. When King was freed, his father vowed to deliver 10 million votes to the Democrat, even though Kennedy wasn't a supporter of civil rights. That began four decades of black people voting for liberals. To free black Americans from the Democrat Party's economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty.

The latest pole says that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.

This is just another

This is just another example of the MSM projecting its attitudes about Sarah Palin.  This has nothing to do with "us."

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.

Lynching is a metaphor for MSM methods

Lynching is the perfect metaphor for the way the MSM works against their targets. 

Welcome to the era of unity, you racist!

It's inescapably us: not

It's inescapably us: not somebody else, not the founders, not the 19th century

It is NOT me!  What little rope I have, I use to hang my birdhouses!  

Shame on NPR for stirring the Race Card!!

  ""I get so tired of these

 

""I get so tired of these idiots and their "white guilt" thing. I don't feel a bit of guilt or shame. I didn't do anything.""

 It seems like you're offended by something! Thou certainly doth protest a whole lot! The mural in question isn't even ABOUT RACE! 

The lynching victim happens to be WHITE. The mural is speaking about lawlessness NOT racism. Which all of you would have learned had you bothered to look at all of them. It is strange though how you guys go on the defense against race even when no racism is being alleged.  Makes me wonder what you'd do in the face of actual racism. 

So, the liberal writer who is the author wasn't making a racial statement, nor are the murals, but somehow it translates that way to you. Curious. The liberal didn't even mention the blackness of Obama or Holder in relation to the lynchings. Which would have actually been appropriate as that type of analysis would have been a pat on the back for America! Imagine, two black men ready to take office, when just a relatively few years ago such a thing would have been unheard of ! Way to go AMERICA. 

Here's a snippet that describes the mural in question. Notice that the words "BLACK" or African American, don't appear.

"One member of the lynch mob wears a dapper linen suit and a hat. In the back of the mob, two girls are waving; they look like they're having a good time. The man holding the lynching rope has his face covered; so does the man cowering on the steps. It's as if both the hunter and the hunted could be anyone."

Sadly, most of you want to deny a racial issue that no one raised. If the shoe doesn't fit why try to wear it? In fact, of the twelve murals NONE of them feature a black person as it's subject. The only one with a black guy in it has him praying for justice like the whites in the photograph! See photos 1,8,&9.  

The issue is lawlessness, not race. Calm down. No ones calling you a racist today!

 

 

Thank you ever so much, Keith

 

 

I guess the truth hurts so

I guess the truth hurts so much that you seek to defame me by calling me someone else's name. I am aware of the harsh, but true things that "Keith" said about your salvation. As offensive as his "tone" was, you would do well to consider the scriptures he presented before you. Since without the Holy Ghost you don't belong to Jesus, Rom 8:9 and without being born again thou shalt neither see nor enter into the Kingdom of God. Candance was kind enough to send me some of "Keith's" posts. His biblical scholarship was quite amazing, perhaps that much light lends itself to some coarseness when confronting the blind. I don't know.  I DO know that he was right about most of your churches being false churches, baptizing incorrectly and neglecting to have their congregants filled with the Holy Spirit ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE. So put THAT in your pipe and smoke it.  

While it seems that any effort to correct or comment on the behavior or silly thought processes on this blog will be met with similar stupidity and name calling, I offer this.  Do you really think that "keith" was his actual name? Is "Blonde" yours?

Is it your plan to defame EVERY Apostlic person who presents you with the truth of your falsity? Como estupido! Why not deal with the facts presented so irrefutably? Why not deal with the fact that a bunch of you jumped on the good ship "Racism Denial" without cause? But noooo, instead you want to call me by another name. Okay, so now what? You're still on the wrong ship. 

Thank you again, Keith

You're MO, syntax, word choice, etc. are exactly the same.  Of course you think he's correct.

Or is Keith your identical twin?

Here's my plan:

We need a better class of troll, here.

 

 

sorry acts

sans hesed you are as a clanging cymbol.  Biblical scholarship?  Epic Fail.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” -- Chief Justice John Roberts

Acts.........like a jerk

People like you give the Bible a bad name.
What do you know about Blonde's salvation? Work out your own with fear and trembling.

In order to be pro-choice, one must first be born. Ah, the irony.

Is it your plan to defame

Is it your plan to defame EVERY Apostlic person who presents you with the truth of your falsity?

Uh, it's spelled Apostate, not Apostlic.  Please learn to spell correctly when referring to yourself.

Trust me, we will be called

Trust me, we will be called racists again before the day is out.

But you will note that a class of protected persons was not represented as I listed above.  That protected class being associated with LIBERALS.