The old rule in the newspaper business is the the important points of a story should be put in the first graph or two of the story. Those first paragraphs set the tone for the story and the following paragraphs and maybe pictures will provide the detail. Those first paragraphs are the hook to land the reader, with the promise of more juicy details. the lede is what sells the story and what has always sold newspapers. This story is a good example.
PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. — A village police officer has been suspended and could be fired after apparently posting a racist, obscenity-laced rant about President Obama on his Facebook page.
“The fact that he (Obama) is still alive bewilders me,” Officer Peter Burns allegedly wrote in the post, which The Journal News obtained Thursday. “Go die in a shallow grave you Muslim commie …”
In the story, this is the only quoted passage. There’s nothing racist in the quoted item. The cop obviously hates Obama and thinks he is a Muslim and a communist. Obama was a Muslim and may still be a Muslim. He has called himself a Muslim so we should take his word for it. He is probably a communist, but a lesser sort like you see on the university campus. The communist stuff is popular in the academy. Obama’s sponsors in politics are all self-professed Marxists, so assuming Obama is a communist is not unreasonable.
The article says he used a racial slur, but provides no evidence. It is just assumed that not liking Obama, if you are white, means you are a racist. The cop supposedly used the handle “Coon Trapper” so that could be proof he is a bigot. “Coon” is an old fashioned word for blacks, but one that fell out of use fifty years ago or more. Maybe in New York it is still in use, but that seems unlikely. All we can know is he detests Obama, like the majority of Americans according to recent polling.
Leaving the issue of his handle undecided, the real crime he has committed here is not liking Obama. We know that because the innocuous portion of his rant is what is being used as proof of his racism. If his Facebook name had been “Fluffy Sunshine Bunny” he would still be guilty of racism. The reason is he is white and he hates Obama. In other words, being a racist is no longer having a general animus to people because of their race, but it is a white person not holding the preferred political positions.
It’s not hard to see there this goes. Disconnecting the sin of racism from the definition of racism means that anyone holding the wrong opinions will be called a racists. It’s a way to weaponize a logical fallacy. If all racists hate Obama, then everyone who hates Obama is a racist. This is somewhat plausible in the case of Obama because he is black, but it is not hard to see how this expands to everything the Left fears. Everyone who opposes the Left is a racist and racism is the worst thing possible, so killing fields.
