lgstarr: Media Blackout

"Equal and exact justice to all men..." --Thomas Jefferson

Editor's Note: PG suggested -- this essay contains graphic descriptions of a brutal crime.

In 1775, John Adams wrote, "There is in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong, a love of truth and a veneration of virtue ... if the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice..."

Adams understood that a shared penchant for justice and virtue is essential to liberty, and depends upon the ability of people to discern between right and wrong.

Today, it is evident to every astute social scientist (and most anyone with common sense) that among definable American subcultures the capacity for distinguishing between right and wrong is severely diminished.

The origin of these deteriorating standards for justice and virtue is rooted in the dissolution of the family, and the failure of our places of worship and our schools to instill those values necessary for self-government -- self-government being the foundation of family-government and that being the foundation of social responsibility.

U.S. urban centers, and to a lesser extent suburban and rural areas, are now home to generations of sociopaths who do not value your life, simply because they do not value their own.

Making matters worse, the MSM perpetuates a virtual blackout of news regarding select sociopaths, while trumpeting allegations and speculations of others. This results in a distorted popular understanding of the extent of the social degradation around us.

Three years ago (March 2006), the Leftmedia spent a year relentlessly convicting in the court of public opinion three white Duke University lacrosse players for a "hate crime" -- the alleged gang rape of a black woman named Crystal Gail Mangum. Millions of dollars in defense-lawyer fees later, it turns out that there was no evidence and that Mangum was a liar. The real victims were, in fact, the accused men: David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty. (All charges were dropped, but there has been no apology yet from 88 Duke professors who jumped on the bandwagon, condemning Evans, Seligmann and Finnerty in an open letter before the first day of their trial.)

Four weeks ago, Barack Hussein Obama interrupted a live media propaganda confab promoting his administration's most critical national initiative (nationalizing health care) in order to accuse a white Cambridge, MA, police officer, James Crowley, of "acting stupidly" for arresting Obama's black friend, Henry Gates. That accusation was followed by similar knee-jerk pronouncements of racism by the black governor of Massachusetts and the black mayor of Cambridge. Under such heavy-handed political and media pressure, all charges against Gates were dropped.

The Gates' story dominated the national media headlines for a couple weeks, until it was determined that the officer's actions were, in fact, justified. Obama attempted to make amends by tossing back a few beers with the Gates and Crowley in the Rose Garden, but BO offered no public apology. (Narcissists do not apologize, they just reinterpret the facts.)

This week, there is a trial underway which is racially charged, but, unless you were reading The Patriot back in 2007, chances are you have not heard of this one since it involves a savage black-on-white crime, rather than MSM feeding frenzy accusations of white-on-black crimes.

I am referring to the brutal torture, mutilation and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom by four black men in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom

In the event you were not a reader in '07, allow me to recount this horrendous incident ... because you won't see or hear it from any MSM news outlets.

On 6 January 2007, Channon (age 21) and Christopher (age 23) were out for a Saturday dinner date, after which Channon called her mom to report that they were on the way to visit friends. But Channon and Christopher never arrived at their friends' house -- nor returned home.

The next day, the mutilated and burned remains of Chris Newsom were found along a railroad track. Two days later, Channon's mutilated body was recovered from a trash bin.

Channon and Chris were in Channon's Toyota 4-Runner when they were carjacked. They were taken to a nearby house, brutally gang-raped, mutilated and then murdered. They were subjected to lengthy torture in each other's presence.

Newsom was raped, his genitals were cut off, and then taken to the railroad tracks where he was shot execution-style. The perpetrators soaked his body with an accelerant and burned his body.

Christian was kept alive for a while longer, repeatedly raped, mutilated, had cleaning solution poured down her throat in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence, and then stuffed inside a trash can where she suffocated to death.

This appalling attack is more than a case study in sociopathic evil. It is a case study about which stories the MSM headlines and which they do not. Yes, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous, than most.

Regrettably, there is nothing new about the racial aspect of this story, which may explain why it was not national news. Although blacks represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, black perpetrators are convicted by a jury of their peers in more than half of all murder and manslaughter cases. Additionally, per-capita black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the inverse.

The underlying social factors contributing to such racially unbalanced crime statistics have been delineated by many conservative black leaders and academicians. However, their solutions -- most notably promoting family unity, faith-based programs, better schools and individual responsibility and accountability, contradict leftist political objectives, which seek to maintain black folks' status as wards of the state. (The modern Democrat implementation of a plantation system.)

The Accused

Charged in the torture/murder of Chanon and Christopher were Eric Boyd, Letalvis Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman.

In April 2008, Boyd was convicted in federal court of being an accessory after the fact, but the MSM was too busy fawning over the candidacy of Barack Obama to report that conviction. (Boyd's case is on appeal.)

"One down. Four to go," said Channon's father, Gary Christian.

He and Channon's mother, Deena have been present at all the proceedings. "We do this for Channon," said Deena. "We've been through the worst. We and the Newsoms have lost our children. We can endure anything."

This week, the trial of a second defendant, Letalvis Cobbins, is underway, but it's safe to say that the prosecution of this defendant will pass without a satellite news-link truck anywhere in sight.

I draw your attention to this case not only to mourn the murder of this young couple, but also to call attention to a despicable political double standard which includes the MSM's complicity in advancing that standard.

In 1998, three white men in Jasper, Texas, beat a black man, James Byrd, then chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles to his death. Not surprisingly, Byrd's murder received national media attention -- as it should.

Clearly, hate was a motivating factor in the Jasper case, but it was also a motivating factor in Knoxville, though not a "hate crime" as defined by federal law. So, why do white-on-black hate crimes invariably result in a media feeding frenzy, while black-on-white hate crimes receive nary a mention?

What about the double standard when it comes to race-hustling poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (who fabricated the Tawana Brawley rape hoax)? The only difference in racists such as Jackson and Sharpton and those in the KKK is that the latter are not Leftmedia celebs.

To that end, my colleague Walter Williams posited this query: "What have we heard from the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others who rushed to judgment and outrage as they condemned whites in the cases of the 'Jena 6' and Don Imus when he referred to the Rutgers ladies basketball team as 'nappy-headed ho's'? Where were the national news media and public officials? You can bet the rent money that, were the victims black and the perpetrators white, Knoxville would have been inundated with TV crews, with Jackson, Sharpton and other civil rights spokesmen and politicians from both parties condemning racism, possibly blaming it all on George Bush..."

As for the defendants in this case, Knox County has already paid in excess of $350 thousand to prosecute and defend these monsters. Based on the eyewitness account of defendant Vanessa Coleman, the question before Cobbins' jury, and those yet to be empanelled for the other defendants, is not one of guilt or innocence, but guilty of what charges.

Those found guilty will be treated to either life imprisonment, with all entitlements, or life on death row for maybe a couple decades -- all at a cost to taxpayers of more than $100 thousand per year per convict.

Martin Luther King, in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail, proclaimed, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The MSM blackout of this crime is a grave injustice.

To the families and friends of Channon and Christopher, we share your grief and will continue this vigil with you until justice is served.