Yes, my kids have repeatedly brought this up at the dinner table.
Wiki makes it sound ridiculously safe to get behind them, which itself makes me a little suspicious. But Jena should probably be put on the "What to burn when they shoot Obama" list.
I have seen this covered several places and haven't seen anything yet that makes me think you wouldn't be safe supporting them.
Ha ha, only nooses! Lynching jokes are so edgy! Boys will be boys!
Shorter wikipedia entry:
In `65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
The tennis shoes as deadly weapons part of that story is too surreal to be accurate, or at least so straightforward as that.
Is there any dispute about what happened? Because that sounds like battery to me (though attempted murder is a bit of a stretch). Other people should probably be charged with various offenses as well, but the noose thing isn't really exculpatory.
Wiki doesn't make it sound like anyone was complaining about a charge of battery.
9: I think that's actually reasonably common. I could swear I saw a charge sheet like that--shoe as deadly weapon (& not steel tipped boot)--last year.
One news article says that attempted murder means that 17 year olds are tried as adults, whereas aggravated assault wouldn't.
The noose thing certainly isn't legally exculpatory but does ad to suspicions of a racist DA & jury.
That is, I guess they're complaining about the type of battery charge, which (from wiki) required the tennis shoe characterization. Gawd, would I hate to black and not rich in the South.
Eh, it's no picnic up North either -- remember the 'wilding' kids who got railroaded for allegedly raping that jogger?
Ah, ok, it's that they're being charged with aggravated battery, rather than (I guess) "regular" battery, because of the sneakers being deadly weapons. Yeah, that's rather wrong.
14: I don't doubt that there are substantial problems up North. But, while the school's treatment of the noose might have flown in NYC twenty years ago, when the wilding stuff happened, I just can't imagine it being passed over like that today. Not perfect, probably not good, but not Jena.
It's also a problem, if you look at the whole story, that actions such as, e.g., threatening someone with a shotgun are not prosecuted, while a fight is. It's battery, sure, but where some crimes are passed over as no big deal and others are prosecuted, it starts to look problematic.
16: Oh, something like the noose wouldn't have happened up North, or would have been reacted to with horrified outrage if it had. The tone is different, I'm just not sure that the outcomes are.
It would seem logical that a 'deadly weapon' would be something that doesn't form part of people's normal clothing and which has as one of it's common purposes, killing people. But what would I know?
Gary Younge had a column in today's Guardian newspaper that presented an account of the story that makes a pretty strong case for consistent bias in the Jena law-enforcement handling of this and similar cases.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2170644,00.html
But, six guys, attacking one guy, even if he was talking like a prick? That's surely deserving of prosecution.
The tone is different
I think tone's a pretty big deal, though. If the school is telling you that you're allowed to threaten black folks, then you have a tip as to how well the law's going to treat you. Which in turn affects your sense of self-protecting behavior. I don't think you can justify the sort of violence the six committed. It's just that it turns the community something like those abusive relationships when you just think, "Of course you should set him on fire when he's asleep."
Ugh.
19: Yeah, calling it a 'fight' understated the wrongfulness of the assault, given the six-on-one thing. But the selective prosecution still looks screwy.
"Of course you should set him on fire when he's asleep."
I just wanted to see that again.
I've never been to an educational institution where "joke" lynching threat wouldn't have resulted in a full shut-down of classes for at least three days. At my (private, hippie) high school, we would've had a week of seminars and small-session discussion groups and cry-ins.
9, Crap like that happens all the time.
Oh, and I also want to note: how fucked up is it that the nooses appeared in response to one freshman's (apparently) jocular question about being allowed to sit under the White Tree? I mean, it's not like he whistled at a white woman, or failed to tip his hat to a white man.
re: 24
Yeah, here too. If the police/prosecution want to go after you, they can, even in what look like clear-cut cases of self-defense. A friend of mine was prosecuted for beating up two guys who mugged him at knife point. Admittedly, he did hurt one of them fairly bad, but he was unarmed and they had a knife.
From what I've read the people aren't arguing that the Jena Six should have no charges filed, but that the charges should reflect the crime, which from the Guardian article seems to have been giving a white kid a black eye and a concussion.
I expect that it will make me seem even more wussy than usual, but I am reluctant to leap to the defense of violence on the grounds that someone else started it, drove by somebody's house late one night honking the car horn, tp'd somebody's house, stuck a noose on somebody's locker or called a third person a very, very ugly name. Or, pace some of the comments in a thread below, on the grounds that somebody had more money than somebody. The democratic institutions that we are supposed to revere do not protect us from one another's ugliness.
28: Sure, but in the full story of the Jena events, it's not like all the violence was restricted to the Jena Six, and they were responding purely to non-violent taunting.
I am reluctant to leap to the defense of violence
To the best of my (limited) knowledge about the case, people are complaining about the abuse of prosecutorial discretion. They're not saying that violence is OK, but rather that a consistent pattern of prosecuting similar violent acts in wildly different ways (filing no charges versus filing heavy-duty felony charges) is highly problematic. To say the least.
27 yeah, and 28, you know, the democratic institutions that we are supposed to revere treat some people different than others--which is kind of exactly the point. If they don't protect black kids from racist bullshit, then they ought not protect white kids from much-deserved black eyes.
re: 28
What Witt said, in 31.
I thought you were talking about a new version of a Java RDF library I use regularly. "There's a new version out already? They've skipped straight to 6.0!?"
I find the habit of naming New World cities after counterparts in the Old World to be highly confusing.
We could always posthumously charge Frederick Douglass with assault, battery, and attempted murder.
Isn't there some kind of legal thing where provocation makes a difference? "Fighting words" or some such?
The (black) kid getting prosecuted for theft of a firearm after wrestling a shotgun away from a white kid (who had gone back to his truck to get it) was a particularly nice touch, I thought.
re: 36
Not that I am aware of, but I know less than zero about US law.
I would certainly not expect the defense of verbal provocation to cut much ice here.
23: At Auburn University in Alabama, where I used to teach, there was a mock lynching at a Halloween fraternity party. Pictures from the party, along with pictures from a second party where students in blackface dressed up in fake bling and the T-shirts from a black fraternity on campus, were posted on line by the people who were at the parties, because they thought the pictures were funny, and wanted to share them with their friends.
Initially, the university responded by expelling the two fraternities. The parents of the kids then brought suit for 400 million dollars. The university waited until class was out of session, and then rolled over on its back like an obedient puppy. All punishments against the students and fraternities were dropped, and the president issued a statement saying that the correct response to speech you dislike is more speech, not censorship.
Dealing with this issue brought me into contact with a long history of cases of white fraternity students at southern universities engaging in racial harassment and going completely unpunished.
Educational institutions tolerate this stuff every day.
I was wondering what the right thing to do under those circumstances is. Drive to the police station and (explaining what you're doing before anyone sees the gun) give it to the cops explaining that you took it away from someone who was threatening you with it? I mean, that might have been a problem given the apparent attitude of the cops, but would that be abstractly correct?
Also, the kids at my old school who staged a mock lynching were using real guns in the photos. It turns out, though, that bringing guns to a keg party and then horsing around with them is not a violation of the campus firearm policy.
A student who was involved with the incident defended the actions to me personally saying "the guns weren't loaded."
38: Yeah, I don't know anything about it, but my guess would be generally the same. "Fighting words" is a weird First Amendment doctrine, when the gov't is entitled to make you shut up for fear that violence will break out, without much practical application.
39: That, I'd swear, is a North/South difference. I'm not saying there's not racism up North -- there's plenty -- but I'd be stunned to find that sort of thing openly tolerated by a college.
40: Probably, but I think that might have been a problem given the apparent attitude of the cops gets to the heart of the issue I was describing: in some circumstances, there are no right answers.
39--
no, look, the auburn president has a point:
"the president issued a statement saying that the correct response to speech you dislike is more speech, not censorship."
similarly, the correct response to mock-lynchings is more mock-lynchings, e.g. of white frat-boys, of university presidents, etc. etc.
Not quite a black eye here -- someone can definitely get killed from getting stomped by a group when they are down and unconscious. Some of our Scottish friends can no doubt recall examples.
I'd be stunned to find that sort of thing openly tolerated by a college.
Because they'd be getting the same threats of a lawsuit, except from the other side. And there would be social support for the college, at least to a greater degree.
So, yeah, a North/South difference.
@44: in theory, under the action-is-speech interpretation of the 1st Amendment in recent decades, this is correct. And would be an interesting tactic.
45: Actually, yes, quite a black eye here. The victim had a concussion and attended a party that evening. No doubt you can certainly kill someone from stomping them while they're unconscious, but.... this doesn't really seem like one of those cases.
I'm not kidding when I say that my HS would have cancelled classes for a week. We might never have known for sure who had been responsible for the mock lynching (although it's probable they would have been expelled), but the whole student body would have had to sit down and face the consequences. At my U.C., I dunno, probably the cops would have filed some charges. Where I did grad school, the surrounding black community would have likely shut the campus down with repeated protests and sit-ins had the administration ignored such a thing. Very bad P.R.
32: You forgot the paragraph explaining that the commenter isn't racist, and in fact worked well with many Blacks (they told the commenter they hated the term "African-American") during his stints in Special Forces and founding his own successful small business that was railroaded out of business by a racist Latino agent at the IRS. Perhaps something about fights at the commenter's forcibly-integrated high school in the '70s, too.
Is Auburn a private university? Because I fully support the rights of private actors to punish douchebags who dress up in blackface and stage mock lynchings.
re: 45
I've been stomped in such a manner. I have a 1 inch scar below my lower lip where I bit completely through it. Yeah, being kicked in the head by someone wearing boots, when you aren't in a position to adequately defend yourself, sucks.
I just bought some boat shoes, and I'm wearing them without socks. Aggravated footwear? Second-degree comfort? Intent to lounge on the patio with a deadly beverage? Guilty as charged.
52: No doubt. OTOH, don't you kind of feel like you would have liked to kick the guy in the head in this case? I do.
Aggravated footwear with intent to watch the school children play.
Armsmasher, that is aggravating footwear indeed. LNS pledge, are you?
Auburn is a federally funded, land-grant university. The board of trustees is appointed by the governor of Alabama, which in turn appoints the president.
The board of trustees is controlled by a well connected banker and major campaign contributor named bobby lowder He is known mostly for the intensely personal interest he takes in the football team, including a famous incident where he flew members of the athletic department in his private jet on a recruiting mission for a new coach. There were also extensive rumors about him steering contracts towards companies of his cronies, but I don't think anything was ever documented.
Does it count as pwnage when the timestamps are identical?
I think there's case law to the effect that a *foot* can count as a deadly weapon. I agree that you can probably beat or kick someone to death, but the solution would seem to be to charge based on the severity of the injury instead of making everything into a deadly weapon.
An aggravated assault charge doesn't seem ludicrous on the merits, though I'd have to look at the statute & the differential prosecution still wouldn't be cool. Charging with *attempted murder* without evidence of intent to kill, severe injury, a real deadly weapon, etc. so that you can try them as adults does not seem defensible. (As I understand it, they were not actually convicted of attempted murder, but charging that way meant that they were sentenced as an adult for the assault? I could be misreading.)
I don't know that this is so much a North/South thing, as it is a rural Deep South/everywhere else thing. Jena, LA ≠ Durham, NC, for example. Nearly everybody I know around these parts would argue that kid roundly deserved a stomp in the face.
Both of my parents went to Auburn, btw.
yeah, but the triangle has been over-run by carpet-baggers. anybody knows that.
Apo has a point. I can think of some rural parts of the Northeast where the reaction described by Rob would not be uncommon. Maybe it's not north/south (geographically) so much as North/South (culturally).
I agree that you can probably beat or kick someone to death
There's not really any probably about it. You can.
45, 52: These are the reasons that I think the six kids who beat up the white kid were almost certainly going easy on him. When someone's on the ground, and has been kicked around a bit, and the worst bit of damage was suspected to have been caused by a punch or their head hitting the pavement in the first place, the people kicking certainly weren't trying very hard.
The funny/sad thing is that the prosecutor, by overreaching for such obviously trumped up charges, will let six probable criminals go free. Hopefully, that is, as I'd consider these six kids going to jail for decades on ridiculous charges to be a much worse miscarriage of justice than them being let off scot-free.
Auburn is on the list of colleges that I have never in my life heard any mention of except for their sports teams. This also includes Clemson, Marshall, UConn, Alabama, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Southern Mississippi, Florida, Florida State, Central Florida, South Florida, Florida International, Florida Atlantic, Memphis, Louisville, Marquette, Butler, and any university in Oklahoma.
62: I'm actually surprising myself with how bitter I still am at the way the highest levels of the administration behaved while I was there.
OTOH, none of the stuff about Lowder would be known if there weren't a lot of people at Auburn who were dedicated to keeping it an institution of learning, and not an odd combination of football team and circus.
Both of my parents went to Auburn, btw.
Great, so in 67 I have to replace "Auburn" with...let's see...Gonzaga. Or Long Beach State. Or Kansas State.
69: I know of a famous philosopher who teaches at Miami. And a friend went to their medical school.
My sheltered northern upbringing was exposed when a friend at college informed me that Memphis has a statue of the founder of the Klan in a prominent city park. I proposed a road trip down to lynch the statue, but nothing came of it.
I dunno. You hear a lot of shit about how the north is somehow just as racist as the south (or deep south), and I understand what is meant by that, but I just don't see it when you have examples like that. Hell, in the north, statues of Columbus can be controversial; if you can't get Mr. Klan taken down, I doubt that 500 year old imperialists are in much danger.
I've been following this case closely, and I can say that yes, it's certainly safe to get behind it. (Also, on general principle, if David Duke bitches about it, you're likely on the side of angels by opposing him.) But in terms of how the prosecution behaved, well, the kid who was almost "murdered" looked like this afterwards, and was so hurt that he immediately proceeded to his high school's ring ceremony.
70: I took one summer class at University of Memphis (which was then known as Memphis State). And dated a few Memphis students.
So you can now scratch that one off your list.
Ah! that reminds me. What the fuck is a ring ceremony?
While at a NEH institute in this summer, I spend a lot of time hanging out with a lovely woman who teaches history at the University of Central Oklahoma.
well, the kid who was almost "murdered" looked like this afterwards
Yeah, those six kids were almost certainly not trying to severely hurt him as much as they were trying to scare him or just get some revenge shots in. Jeez.
(which is still bad, yes, yes, but not deserving of anywhere near the same severe treatment)
75: I think it is like a circle jerk.
Ring ceremony's this stupid thing Herff Jones does, in which everyone gets their class rings and spins it the number of times ... something or other. I didn't attend mine -- didn't buy a ring -- so I'm not sure.
And Mississippi State is where I attended Band Clinic in high school.
So scratch that one off your list, too, Ned.
76: Ah, but that university doesn't have famous sports teams.
Actually there would be a huge number of such schools unless I limited it to just football schools. Cross off Gonzaga, Long Beach State, Marquette and Butler.
the kid who was almost "murdered" looked like this afterwards
Shoot, I've seen winners of lopsided UFC fights who looked worse than that.
Wait, who Herff Jones, and why does he do something so pointless? I'm getting so confused. All I know is that lynching jokes aren't funny.
81: You consider University of Memphis a football school?
Nobody in Memphis does.
Herff Jones is a manufacturer of class rings.
I take that back. It would be really funny to lynch the statue of Mr. Klan, as suggested by JRoth in 72.
Herff Jones are the people who sell school rings.
83: The company you buy your class ring from.
Sorry, Herff Jones are the people who sell class rings, you know, their representatives set up shop in the commons, near the ROTC, in the cafeteria, &c. It's a wonderful racket, one I wish I'd have thought of myself. Sigh.
84: Hey, they're in Conference USA. Along with several other such schools like Tulsa, East Carolina, Marshall, UTEP, Central Florida, and Southern Mississippi.
Also, what's a class ring?
Your class ring is an expression of who you are.
91: A sort of official memento of your graduating class. The concept of having one was never really taken seriously by anyone I knew in high school or college.
91: It's a big bling-y knuckle-duster ring that says "CLASSY."
91: You buy a ring your senior year of high school, with the school name on it and a stone in your school color. It's nonsense.
(MIT, on the other hand, has really really cool rings. I regret not sticking it out there largely because I'd love to be walking around with a Brass Rat.)
re: 94
Also, what's a graduating class?
91: A hunk of 10K gold that costs your parents $250 in high school, that you sell for $90 in college when you're short on cash.
Your graduating class is the group of students with whom you graduate. Identified by a certain year.
91: American universities are rife with all sorts of fake ceremonies and honors, in part because selling the associated paraphernalia is good business, and in part to generate the sense of loyalty that keeps alumni donating. Also, people at Auburn were quite explicit about using extensive rituals and football boosterism as a way of distracting students from sex.
99: What is this "year" of which you speak?
American universities are rife with all sorts of fake ceremonies and honors, in part because selling the associated paraphernalia is good business
interestingly, the sale (and dry-cleaning, who knew) of "associated paraphernalia" was more or less the economic basis of the Ku Klux Klan.
as a way of distracting students from sex
How well did that work?
101: Slowly, the light dawns. #&#^@#!!! Scots.
Also, people at Auburn were quite explicit about using extensive rituals and football boosterism as a way of distracting students from sex.
Did it work?
Someone answer ttaM in 101. I want to see how long he can keep this up.
The year that you graduate (e.g. 2004), you become an alumnus of the institution, and are referred to as a member of the class of 2004. The "institution" refers to the organization that operates the educational facilities, and the buildings in which they take place. "Graduation" is a process by which you are certified to have received a certain amount of education, as measured in hours.
I'm beginning to think that this clicking-over-from-the-unfogged-chat-bot thing is going to make for a lot more pwnage.
99 wasn't me although I was slightly kidding in 97.
The concept of a 'graduating' class isn't really common to British high schools and, to the extent that it's becoming more so, it's in slavish imitation of the US.*
In Scotland at least, kids will leave school after 4, 5 or 6 years of high school, with about 1/3 of kids leaving each year so there isn't really a 'graduating class' as such.
* same with schools that have *%^ing 'proms'.
Sorry, 97 was me, 101 was not. Can't even keep track of me versus whoever it is impersonating me.
Hm. Apparently I can't read backward as well as I thought I could -- missed the 'toN' entirely.
You buy a ring your senior year of high school, with the school name on it and a stone in your school color.
At my undergrad institution, they bless the rings but it's totally phony, as you can't do any magic or banish any fiends or dust any vampires with them.
105, etc. Combined with the effects of abstinence only education, it seemed to succeed in getting students to postpone first intercourse for a few years, and develop really fucked up attitudes towards sex. Also, a saw a lot of people getting married in their early 20s while still in college.
I cover a lot of stuff about reproductive autonomy in my medical ethics class, and see a lot of the damage done to people by religious crusaders. I once had a student write in a paper that she was 20 years old and terrified at the idea of sex.
This seems to me like one of these cases susceptible to a error in scope of outrage. Trying an assault as attempted murder: very bad. Ignoring one set of crimes while prosecuting others aggressively: very bad.
That said, if you set upon someone with five buddies and stomp him, leaving him unconscious, you aren't Frederick Douglass. You're a thug, and should go to jail.
In the US graduating after exactly 4 years is by far the norm. This is true whether you learn nothing or something during that time. Hence all the resistance to being held to actual standards by teachers/professors, because actually failing a class might mean actually taking longer, as measured in half-years, to get the degree.
At my undergrad institution, they bless the rings but it's totally phony, as you can't do any magic or banish any fiends or dust any vampires with them.
Have you tried, Miss Doubting Thomasina? Sounds like an exchange program is in order.
interestingly, the sale (and dry-cleaning, who knew) of "associated paraphernalia" was more or less the economic basis of the Ku Klux Klan.
And you know who else wore uniforms that had to be regularly laundered? That's right.
Don't try to get this thread back on topic, baa. We're explaining the American high school and college experience to our overseas commenters.
103, 105: Same time stamp. Je ne regrette rien.
re: 116
I was talking about high school.
University: 3 or 4 years is standard. Some places do 3 years for a standard degree, 4 years for honours.
We should add seconds to the comment timestamps, in order to properly resolve the pwnage issues.
103: You should ask your mom.
True story: my parents had to get married during their senior years because I was on the way and Roe v. Wade was still five years in the future. I'm just curious whether Auburn's gotten any better at the distracting.
Thanks to Roe v. Wade, Auburn has had to redouble or even retriple its efforts to CREATE UPSTANDING VIOLENT CITIZENS.
And you know who else wore uniforms that had to be regularly laundered? That's right.
This seems to me like one of these cases susceptible to a error in scope of outrage.
I'm so glad you're here to talk us down from all the massive outrage and calls for the Jena Six to get off scot free that are rampant in this thread.
We're explaining the American high school and college experience to our overseas commenters.
In that case, they should know that American high schools possess full spectrum dominance across all weapons platforms, and that we all benefit from a benevolent high school hegemon.
In the US graduating after exactly 4 years is by far the norm. This is true whether you learn nothing or something during that time.
I think this identifies the difference between the American and British systems. You can, in theory, graduate without honours from British colleges, but then you can't get a job. So people who would don't bother.
Does the term "scot free" derive from Braveheart's habit of bellowing "Freeeeeeebirddooom!!!!11!!"
You'd be hard pressed to top 127/128 for summarizing the entirety of my and baa's commenting history here.
129: I don't think I'd be too keen to employ people without honour. I definitely wouldn't give them access to the till.
129: But doesn't graduating without honors and having learned nothing certify that you are a good potential employee who falls into line and can follow basic orders?
Does the term "scot free" derive from
It refers to the formerly-common punishment of making criminals live with Scots as a sort of out-prisoner system. The eighth amendment, thankfully, eliminated it from our shores.
Seriously Mitch, you see nothing like this here?
If they don't protect black kids from racist bullshit, then they ought not protect white kids from much-deserved black eyes.
But on the substance I take it we are in agreement, so comity, increase the peace, &C .
133. No the British system is that you get a job at 16 or 18 while you're still young enough to be intimidated into submission. At least in theory.
134: Australlia didn't get off so easily, though.
You'd be hard pressed to top 127/128 for summarizing the entirety of my and baa's commenting history here.
We both appreciate American exceptionalism in our own way.
135: Is that really such an objectionable statement where the 'racist bullshit' included prior violence and threats with firearms? I'm not arguing that the Jena 6 should have been entirely unpunished, but I would argue that a system where minor violence goes entirely unpunished is preferable to one where minor violence by one side of racial altercations is unpunished, and by the other side is punished harshly. You could argue that this isn't a fair description of what happened in Jena, but I don't think it's an intrinsically wrong position to take.
134 - It's Get Off Scott Free, an unpublished comic book about the further adventures of Big Barda and the Female Furies that Jack Kirby wrote after eating four tabs of brown acid and going to watch The Devil in Miss Jones. The brass at DC didn't understand his artistic vision, although some of the themes were later explored in Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy.
Joke-steppage complete! My work here is done.
See what you did, baa? This thread was getting close to the inevitable discussion of anal sex, and you had to get it back on track!
scot: old term for a tax of some kind (forget which). not related to the toponym in any way.
so scot-free = tax-free.
there's also a phrase scot and lot, which i believe means the whole kit and kaboodle.
what are these "Scots" that everyone keeps talking about? Is it slang for "Canadians"?
142: Which, incidentally, I've been told goes on a lot at Auburn. Apo should ask his parents whether that's a recent development or not.
wale: fabric merchant's term for the corrugations in corduroy.
What about the term "scut work"? I assume it refers to work so sordid and degrading that it was beneath the dignity of everyone but Scots, or "Scuts" in the local patois.
I shudden to imagine the Village People's dry-cleaning bills.
98- "A hunk of 10K gold that costs your parents $250 in high school, that you sell for $90 in college when you're short on cash."
Holy crap! You got that much!?
Seriously Mitch, you see nothing like this here?
I see a couple of instances in a thread over 100 comments long. The vast bulk of on-topic comments say pretty much exactly what you said, i.e. the upset is over the severity of the charges and over the apparently-biased enforcement, not over the fact that the defendants were charged at all. I really don't see an overabundance of outrage in the thread, or the threat that we're spiralling into a lynch mob or something.
151--
what do you mean? i advocated the lynching of mocks, back in 44.
151: I dunno, I also like the idea of lynching the public statues of former Klansmen. But that might have to wait until Unfogged gets a Special Ops team.
153: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's try lynching the statues in effigy first.
154 is a typical example of proceduralist liberalism, and is the reason Democrats never win.
I am pleased to learn that "Jena Six" refers to something I'd actually heard about, rather than the latest Tom Clancy doorstop.
JENA'S CAREER PEAKED IN THE ROLE OF SIX
I am displeased to learn that "Jena Six" doesn't refer to some sort of fembot.
149: The figure $90 sticks in my head for some reason, but maybe that was the amount of money I was trying to obtain to replace my car window that I had to break when I locked the keys inside.
Re: 139 I suppose were we all to agree ahead of time that violence below a certain level shouldn't be a police matter, that's one version of "rule of law" that might have some benefits. Not my cup of tea, but I see why some might like it.
What seems more objectionable is applying that standard ex-post facto on the basis of prior incitement. The kid who got beat up wasn't, as far as the press gives us information, the guy who hung the nooses or who waved the shotgun around or who was involved in any of the other incidents. He's just a loudmouth who got stomped on.
I am displeased to learn that "Jena Six" doesn't refer to some sort of fembot.
I initially didn't click the link because I assumed it was NSFW. Nice to see Lab's mind occasionally out of the gutter.
160--
i believe that the canonical quote says that he is still in the gutter, but that on this occasion he is looking at the stars.
getting stomped in the head will do that to you.
What seems more objectionable is applying that standard ex-post facto on the basis of prior incitement.
Sure, that'd suck. Noting and objecting to different standards for prosecution, and supporting a uniform standard, on the other hand, is completely unobjectionable, right?
Nice So sad to see Lab's mind occasionally out of the gutter.
154- "is a typical example of proceduralist liberalism, and is the reason Democrats never win."
How about this? Let's pass a non-binding resolution so that no one gets pissed off.
lb--i see you are trying to shed some light over at obwi, and being foiled by the ponderous obscurity of the atmosphere there.
i admire your efforts, i guess. uphill battle.
I was afraid that clicking on the Jena 6 link would mean having some annoying and impossibly catchy song stuck in my head for a month.
LB, I would point out that ObWi does not count as getting work done, tho' it keep you from commenting on Unfogged all day and all night.
if obwi does not count as getting work done, arguing with ga/ry far/ber does not count, triple time.
great guy, gf, great resource for links. but.
Yes, indeedy. May I say again, in relation to work, arrgh.
157:Damn, the Opionated Grandma has reminded me of Jena Malone...umm, fine young actress whoe career probably has peaked. Samantha Mathis also had her finest moment circling Christian Slater, unless it was in Ferngully.
all the way back up at 28:"but I am reluctant to leap to the defense of violence"
Unfortunately, my trolling privileges were wasted on Greenspan-bashing.
170: I MEAN JENNA VON OY
And the arguing I'm doing really isn't productive.
Noting and objecting to different standards for prosecution, and supporting a uniform standard, on the other hand, is completely unobjectionable, right?
Absolutely.
172:Arguing on blog comment threads can count as productive?
I have always considered it performance art with a Dadaist aesthetic, which is why I ended at Unfogged.
I agree that you can probably beat or kick someone to death.
I just feel more confident with modern, more efficient methods.
LGM has a post today on a resegregation in Tuscaloosa.
I pretty much found the Jena Six story wildy encouraging. An integrated HS, much interaction between the two groups, no actual lynchings...in rural Louisiana.
We have come so very far since I was a kid in the Kennedy years. The story sounded like a tale from the North in the 60s. Another couple hundred years, and Dixie will be just fine.
shoes don't kill people--feet kill people.
I had a funny conversation with a British friend once, about how non-violent Americans are in that you so rarely see reports of someone being kicked to death in the news. I'm thinking the difference is that in the US, anyone who would kick someone to death probably owns a gun, and simply does things the modern, efficient way. Although I can see some admiration for the handcrafted, artisinal murder.
I just feel more confident with modern, more efficient methods.
Yeah, screw that. I'm in terrible shape.
True story: my parents had to get married during their senior years because I was on the way and Roe v. Wade was still five years in the future.
Apo is a trolley-car problem in the flesh.
179: How did people murder each other in Samoa? Rope?
179--
i remember a few years ago seeing that the most common murder weapon in the ussr was the axe.
it really told you something about the horrible backwardness of the economic system.
(in communism, comrade, government axe you!)
that's a good school slogan: "Jena High: No actual lynchings since 19[whenever]"
Rope?
Candlestick in the conservatory.
re: 179
Yes, I have had similar conversations.
Also, if we are going to be hurting people the old fashioned way, I don't want guns evening up the odds. Rather, I think a couple of years practice in a martial art named after shoes, is a better starting point.
179 is typical Northeastern latte-sipper elitism, and is why the Democrats never win.
So anyway, it seems to me that the concept of "with a deadly weapon" is meaningless. What does it really mean? Anything can be deadly. "With intent to kill"?
This sounds like the sort of thing you learn very early in law school.
Coconut crabs are only scary if you imagine them on your pubes.
I pretty much found the Jena Six story wildy encouraging. An integrated HS, much interaction between the two groups, no actual lynchings...in rural Louisiana.
Um. I didn't see any descriptions of interactions between blacks and whites in the wikipedia article that didn't seem, at minimum, tense, and more often violent. No actual lynchings, yeah, that's good, and it sounds like at least some of the black students tried to deal with the crap in an admirable way to start with (sit-in under the 'white tree', attempts to address the school board), but still.
I originally thought this thread was going to be about Jenna Bush getting engaged. With six diamonds or something.
182: Rocks, largely. It was funny, because everyone walked around with these eighteen-inch machetes (locally called "bush knives") but they were very rarely used to injure -- they were tools. Not a taboo, just a mental block.
I had a terribly funny moment in class once when some jerk kid brought in a ten-inch hunting knife his cousin had sent him from the states, and was waving it around to scare people, and all the other students were scampering around being frightened and ignoring the six or seven bush knives scattered around the classroom. I was falling against the chalk board laughing helplessly, which ended the situation as everyone became more interested in what I thought was so funny rather than whether Tagiapea was going to cut someone.
190 "Coconut crabs are only scary if you imagine them on your pubes."
Isn't that even worse?
187:"I don't want guns evening up the odds."
God made people, Lincoln made them free, but Samuel Colt made them equal. Or something like that.
150 lbs of ravenous wildebeest on excessively long leashes works for me. Am I also packing? This is Dallas. Of course I am.
(I should say that I'm not dead sure it was Tagiapea, come to think of it, in case I have any old students reading, and he obviously wasn't going to cut anyone -- the whole thing was a goof.)
115, 160: The thing you're missing here, baa, is that the Jena narrative is about a systematic abuse of power. It is not about a case where thugs were treated with kid gloves by the authorities - quite the reverse.
Your characterization of the situation suffers from the identical flaw of B's in 32 - you attempt to minimize unnacceptable behavior by casting aspersions on the victims.
According to Google, Tagiapea has never done anything like that, or anything else, or has ever even been a word.
Of the students I had, I'd admit he's not the first I would have expected to have a blog. Geez, all those kids are over thirty now.
191:Well, there was a mention of a party that was "mostly white."
And the entire article would have been inconcievable fifty years ago. I don't think teenage blacks could get close to enough to a lone white kid in the deep south to threaten him, or would if they could. You never ever heard of blacks beating up whites in Dixie. Just didn't happen. (Someone Far/beresque can refute me with cites, but still so rare as to be meaningful)
Fights between cliques happen everywhere. If we are at that level in rural Dixie the progress is tremendous.
And think of the huge progress this represents over slavery!
"And the entire article would have been inconcievable fifty years ago."
That's true. 50 years ago, there would have been people in those nooses.
If we are at that level in rural Dixie the progress is tremendous.
what a depressing thought.
It reminds me of the stories where women beat up a groper. Yes, it is a definite mark of progress.
Stories where women beat up a grouper, on the other hand, are simply inexcusable fish-abuse.
"It reminds me of the stories where women beat up a groper."
Where? Where?
209:"Don't ask, don't tell" is Texas manners. Don't be impolite. Seriously, why exactly do you want to know?
And think about how far family law has come since the days of Roman patria potestas
you attempt to minimize unnacceptable behavior by casting aspersions on the victims
What?! Even if we give *complete* credit to everything alleged as incitement, the fact stands that 6 kids beat the crap out of another kid whose only offense was to mock one of them. That's not an aspersion, that's the truth. Even if one of them is the victim of a previous threat, or previous violence by someone else, that doesn't make their actions OK.
Again, I am with you 100% on equal prosecutorial standards, and that the charges filed were unjust.
On second thought, perhaps I don't want to know.
It is disturbing when you come to realize the extent of overlap between "people who are slightly crazy" and "people who carry concealed weapons."
I thought it was going to be about the Athenæum crowd.
that doesn't make their actions OK
Agreed, but. When somebody's being an asshole and basically daring somebody to hit them—especially when they're egregiously outsized or outnumbered—it's mighty, mighty satisfying to see them get hit. And often, a valuable lesson is imparted.
Just sayin'.
That's not an aspersion, that's the truth.
Hmm. In my use of the word "aspersion" I was not attempting to suggest that you were making a false assertion - merely that you were making an unflattering one. A glance at the dictionary indicates I used "aspersion" incorrectly - that the word does, in fact, imply falsity.
To be clearer, then, please substitute "pointing out flaws of" for "casting aspersions on" in my 197.
170: On the Internet, everyone's up for a spot of the old ultraviolence.
179: I can see some admiration for the handcrafted, artisinal murder.
Footcrafted.
Isn't w-lfs-n so extraordinarily gay that he's supposed to toddle along and make fun of the misspelling of "artisanal"?
170: Jena Malone...umm, fine young actress whoe career probably has peaked
Gretchen Ross! "Peaked"? You lie, sir, you lie! I demand satisfaction!
It would be great if the Jena Six were actually a roving group of heroes-for-hire who could be signalled to put a stop to injustices like this. Specifically Jen(n)a-related injustices.
Damn. I saw that on the quote, and was hoping no one else caught it.
213:After abortion becomes illegal, should women stop getting abortions? Yes women did get them before Roe, but what is even more offensive to me is the internalization by women of the oppression before Roe, which was, and still is, far too widespread.
What is important to me in this story is that despite obvious remaining institutional and structural obstacles, the blacks still appeared confident and empowered.
Revolutions and liberations, social, politial, cultural are very seldom legal and approved by majorities, power elites, process liberals. They very often include violence or the threat of violence.
Do I approve of the very minor action of the Jena Six? Or disapprove? I ain't the prosecutor, judge, or jury. and obviously never would be. But the law has little value in the world I live in, or perceive. Just institutionalized power relations.
Whoops. Jury duty on the 25th.
Bob is definitely getting it right here.
This is a pretty minor issue. But then again, it's one that public opinion can have an effect on, unlike what the federal government does.
221:I think that comment can be taken as threatening.
229: That's nothing. Just wait 'til Flippanter gets going about the joys of "the old moloko-plus."
Well, 231 was supposed to have more words than just that...but I won't bother putting it in context.
Less is more. This way we can all just supply our own context and nod knowingly to ourselves.
Do you like my tight sweater?
Now that context is all late 90s. The surprisingly popular brief sub-sub-sub-genre of "drum n' bass and acid jazz inspired musical acts that are couples where the man is the producer and the woman is the vocalist" vanished pretty abruptly around 2000. Only the similar-to-the-uninitiated house inspired couple acts are going today.
Would that be the genre that includes the Sneaker Pimps and the Supreme Beings of Leisure, or is it less broad than that?
I forgot completely about the band Moloko. They sounded interesting. Wasn't there a similar band called Hoover?
In retrospect, beaten with much better subtlety by Doctor Slack. Still, the sudden flash of this genre and its subsequent disappearance even in the underground mystifies me to this day. As long as someone else out there occasionally gazes wistfully at a shelf of albums by Laika, Lamb, Portishead, Moloko, Mono, etc., I will feel like I have company on this earth.
The Hoover I'm familiar with was a DC hardcore band.
Now that context is all late 90s.
Those halcyon days when IED just meant "I'm on Ecstasy and Dancing".
238: It's a very small and entirely arbitrary genre, defined by not only the style of music produced (which helps exclude Mu and Herbert) but also on the number, gender, and band roles of the members. I doubt anyone else believes in it as a legitimate music grouping, I just thought it was really weird when was listening to all these records from good groups who mined the same, very distinctive sounds, had nearly identical personal stories and who cropped up at nearly the same time.
It's not an uncommon pattern in music, with the fads that record-buyers and major labels A&R reps go through, but I can't think of any other instances where it was so stark (excluding super poppy music where huge numbers of nigh identical girl and boy groups will appear and disappear every couple decades).
Portishead and Mono were the only ones to be popular in the US, I think.
Hooverphonic is the one I was thinking of.
Those halcyon days when IED just meant "I'm on Ecstasy and Dancing".
Or someone was slurring the name of their birth control method.
This came up a lot when I was 12, you see.
240 - Yeah, on Dischord. They played at the first punk show I ever went to, with Philly's Franklin and DC not-punks Tsunami.
Moloko's albums were pretty interesting, though. Much more than just trip-hoppy stuff. Roisin Murphy's stuff with Matthew Herbert is good, too.
Also, would Dani Siciliano's albums with Herbert count?
"That's not an aspersion, that's the truth."
Schmibertarian shenanigans!
Nu, this makes sense *maybe* in the world that Ayn Rand creates anew everyday, but not even then.
Those kids are up against a racist, white supremacist power structure that will NEVER, EVER, EVER give them justice for the brutality they've suffered. Look at the facts: The school administration is racist. The school board is racist. The police are racist. The DA's office is racist. The judges are racist and the juries are racist. And guess what? Apparently, a siginificant chunk of the white student body, including the kid who got jumped, is racist too. These are the people, in their role as the hoodless neo-Klansmen of the far right, who are destroying this country. I don't shed a tear for any of them that gets what's coming to him.
What other solution is there now? Perhaps baa thinks that the black people of Louisiana should just commit mass suicide, to arouse the world to their cause? None of us would know a single thing about this situation if those six young men hadn't had the courage of their convictions and the will to take the fight back to the oppressors.
For the Jena 6: Freedom and praise!
For the white supremacist power structure and its apologists: A taste of their own medicine.
247: In my head, rhythmic complexity was a musical hallmark of these groups. That's why I claim they're all inspired by drum and bass. Herbert's music is really all house, though it is awesome and, other than rhythm-wise, in a very similar vein.
I hate to comment without reading through the thread; I've read some of it, and apologize if I cover ground already covered.
1) The media version of this seems pretty close-- there was an assault that was a juvenile court matter the prosecutor made worse and racism seems the only explanation.
2) This is a scary place from the standards of race *by rural deep south standards* going all the way back to the Civil War. It was one of the bloodiest places during reconstruction (read Nicholas Lehman's Redemption, in which major parts of the action take place there.
3) I've been to Jena, though only twice, and my limited experience gives me more confidence in what i said in points 1 and 2.
4) So, I think this is something FL might get behind and feel ok about it if he so choses, but that does raise the question of how he can make a difference?
More about this later if I have time....
248: Do you think MLK would have renounced nonviolent protest if he'd known what his fate would be?
251: It seems kinda unlikely, given the "I've been to the mountaintop" speech. Of course, in that speech, he did say: "And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed."
Does 44 years feel like much of a hurry to anybody here?
Deferred=Denied, Silence=Death, Looting=Life.
Umm, yeah, 39 years.
Of course, we could take it back to 1492. Or back to the first dreadful step down the authoritarian road in 8,000 BCE or whenever it was.
This one seems to be a victimization of those black kids by the system. But there's also a fair amount of black-on-white hate crime out there. Glorifying violence does nobody any good., it's just a useless cycle. That's all I'll say.
Responding to a specific incident by handwringing about unspecified generalised violence elsewhere is why the Democrats will never win!
Violence is not a tactic you should resort to at first instance, but if you exclude it from your options there will be situations you cannot solve. You can be polite, you can exhaust all the legal options, but nine out of ten times the power structure only responds if there's the threat of violence as well, as long as there's enough popular support for your cause.
See also Revolution, American.
"as long as there's enough popular support for your cause."
but if there's enough popular support for your cause, why do you need violence?
but if there's enough popular support for your cause, why do you need violence?
Because, as Martin points out, the goddam British will otherwise send regiments of Hessians to lay waste your farms, mutatis mutandis.
How many Hessians are there nowadays?
Hmmm, 6 million. It would take an awful lot of violence for me to be able to overcome that. On the other hand, I would know the lay of the land around here, and the British/Hessians wouldn't.
It seems that today's globe-trotting entry-level mercenaries are often from Fiji, oddly enough, rather than Wiesbaden and Darmstadt.
I met a Hessian here in the US not long ago. She was a Green. She didn't understand my jokes.
Hesse's a nice place. They make a really good apple cider.
