News Flash

HERE'S Roy with the story of NatRev's abiding concern for the welfare of African-Americans. Here's Pierce destroying it.

Two things. First, in the world of assessment of fact and rhetorical analysis, the world our Free Press now mimics like a pet mynah, this matter would be closed, and Rich Lowry would be told, nay, forced to shut his pie hole.

Second, as far as the Where's The Media Concern When…argument, which is now old enough it creaks as much as I do when I try to stand up, allow me to mention that this is the same United States of Corporate America where all I have to mention is Missing Blond Girl before everyone in my hearing understands what I'm talking about, and can name the case which brought matters to a head. (With no appreciable change in media behavior. Yeah, shocking.) Black-on-black crime? The vast emptiness that is the corporate Press doesn't cover black-on-black anything, unless it's played with a ball.

Let me trivialize this for you (we all do what we can). I live in a city which is 25% African-American. A guess is that 80% of the African-American faces I see on my local news--meaning the ones which aren't being paid to read the stuff--are commenting on a local crime (of violence), or being perp-walked to arraignment, or they're shown in mug shot. What they aren't doing is discussing the common concerns of the impoverished and unsightly. Once in a while they get on to discuss the rich cultural heritage of blacks in Indianapolis, in a way that makes everybody, and especially the local news outlet, feel better about themselves; occasionally some non-whites will get caught in a round-up of holiday shoppers or irate gas purchasers. That's the slot. That's the script. It's carefully not-racist, and carefully devoid of anything that might suggest minority opinion, or experience, except for the semi-annual police beating or gunning down of a young black male, in which case someone sends a camera out to the Concerned Clergy rally, then asks the Mayor about it.

Whites fled downtown Indianapolis in the 50s and 60s, like they did in a whole lotta elsewheres. In the late 60s then-Mayor, now Senior Senate cadaver Dick Lugar rode shotgun on the Republican effort to annex the rest of the county wholesale into Indianapolis, the better to control the vote for the next quarter century. Carefully left out of that plan were the suburban school districts those white people fled to. Today, in a city that's 25% African-American, "Indianapolis public schools"--the only thing left of the old city limits--are 62% African-American.

Those stations broadcasting the evening news on the public airwaves are licensed to serve Indianapolis, not All the White People Whose Cable Companies Carry the Signal. Quaint, I know, but still in effect. So try tuning in some time to catch the sports scores for Indianapolis high schools. It's not that we don't cover high school sports. We love high school sports around here. All the locals have big loud graphics, and helicopters, and several beat reporters on site, and School of the Week Spotlight in their schtick. And those copters are there so they can fly to the white suburbs. So help me. You can watch a five-minute segment some nights and wonder if high-school basketball is still a whites-only sport in Indiana. Channel 8 has an African-American sports director, and their coverage is no different. I'd love to call in some night and ask him to name all IPS high schools.

Where's the coverage of black-on-black crime? Hell, where's the coverage that might make the comfortable white wingnut squirm, just a little, to confront something he knows nothing about?