Maddow and McCaskill Blame Cops for Chaos in Ferguson, Let Looters Off the Hook

Few lower forms of life exist, at least to MSNBC, than the humble, hard-working owners of small businesses in Ferguson, Mo., that were looted last month in civil unrest after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teen. Indifference is worse than hatred, the old saw goes, and ignoring the travails of these business people since their livelihoods were destroyed has become pronounced among MCNBC pundits and their guests. That these same people see themselves as deeply compassionate makes their shrugging away such obvious suffering all the more bizarre. For example, Rachel Maddow invited Democrat senator Claire McCaskill on her MSNBC show Sept. 4 for two obvious reasons – one, to nod in vigorous agreement about the police ogre thugs in Ferguson (albeit in soothing diplomatic tones) and to breathe a glimmer of life into McCaskill's embryonic presidential hopes. Before introducing McCaskill, Maddow offered her own curiously spotty chronology of events in Ferguson. “It was in response to the shooting death of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, by a Ferguson police officer last month that the country's attention suddenly focused on police use of force and police response to upset over their use of force. Those protests in Ferguson riveted the nation.” Wow, all manner of sin hidden in Maddow's use of “upset,” a tame euphemism if ever there was one. But this was just the tip of the iceberg; Maddow again – “At the height of the tensions with those daily protests, those daily confrontations, when the local police response to the public outcry about Michael Brown's death sometimes looked more like a poorly planned military invasion than any sort of precision policing.” Hmm, now we're getting somewhere. It seems that the “upset” Maddow cited earlier manifested itself in specific ways – there was a “public outcry” and “protests” – indeed, daily protests of apparently always peaceful and law-abiding demonstrators. A narrative that already reeked of dubious claims took on a decided stench after Maddow introduced McCaskill – MADDOW: You're a former prosecutor, you've worked with law enforcement for a lot of your career. When you think about the way that local police are going to respond to something like that, do you have empathy for their resistance, their feeling defensive about having outsiders coming in (alluding to Justice Department probe of Brown's death) and telling them that they're doing it wrong. How do you think it's going to be received locally? We've obviously seen overt signs from the local community that they're welcoming it, but do you expect that there will be some resistance? MCCASKILL: Well, I do think that there have been some lessons learned. If you look at Ferguson (police) adopting the body cam so quickly, they didn't fight that. And frankly body cams not only protect citizens from an overreach by police departments, they also protect police officers (just as they'd also protect politicians who wore them. Your thoughts on this, senator …) because people may capture the end of a police altercation on camera and not capture the beginning of it, which might give it a whole other tone or tenor. And also, the county police department today agreed to a cooperative investigation with the Justice Department (after getting an offer they couldn't refuse …), asking the Justice Department to give them advice and analysis of their responses and they of course were the police department that I believe got carried away on Tuesday and Wednesday night (Aug. 12-13), which then ultimately led to an escalation, which ultimately led to some bad guys coming into the community when things really got complicated through the weekend. (Alluding to Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Holder parachuting in.) Notice what's absent, both in Maddow's and McCaskill's retelling – the looting, rioting and assorted mayhem that began within 24 hours of Brown's death, fueled by the immediate leftist myth that he was a wholly innocent black youth summarily executed by a racist cop wearing a police uniform instead of his customary KKK hood. Not the way that I remember how it played out in Ferguson after Brown died, nor does it appear this way in a timeline posted by USA Today on Aug. 25. The timeline states that Brown was killed shortly after noon on Saturday, Aug. 9. The following day, according to USA Today, “a candlelight vigil to honor Brown turns violent. More than a dozen businesses are vandalized and looted. More than 30 people are arrested and two dozen police officers suffered injuries, police said.” The following day, Brown's parents and an attorney they hired held a press conference “where they ask for a stop to violence and demand justice for their son,” according to USA Today. This was on Monday Aug. 11 – more than 24 hours before the “Tuesday and Wednesday night” cited by McCaskill when police “got carried away” with their overly militarized response. The narratives asserted by Maddow and McCaskill neglect to mention that it was the allegedly peaceful protesters who were first to escalate tensions – by destroying more than a dozen local businesses whose owners played no role whatsoever in Brown's death. I'm still trying to figure out this casual left-wing nonchalance about looting, providing of course that they're not the ones getting robbed. Most likely explanation – looting is merely socialism in a hurry. Reasonable people can disagree on whether the police in Ferguson were too heavy-handed as of Aug. 12 and made matters worse -- or if it prevented their city from turning into South Central Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. But people who are genuinely reasonable aren't going to airbrush away the pivotal catalyst for that police response – and it wasn't peaceful demonstrators kneeling in prayer in the streets.