We Are Our Own Worst Problem

We should be getting pretty fuckin' sick of the cops saying asinine things about white murder suspects, and then having to listen to the Press Poodles report those asinine things like it's all just part of the deal somehow.

Daily Beast:

How does knowing that Dylann Roof was polite in jail or that Eliot Rodger couldn’t get laid help fix the problem at the root of the violence—that white men are seen as more human?

When Georgia law enforcement briefed the public on Wednesday morning about the 21-year-old white man who shot and killed eight people—six of them Asian women—at Atlanta-area massage parlors Tuesday night, it wasn’t helpful.

Officials made a puzzling series of claims of fact, despite being cartoonishly cautious about other aspects of the case. Officials claimed that 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long had a “sex addiction” but admitted they didn’t know whether sex work occurred at the places where Long killed people. Who told them that Long had a sex addiction? Was it Long himself?

They weren’t sure whether Long was motivated by the racial identity or gender of his victims, and thus said they couldn’t say with certainty that a hate crime had been committed, but then again, they said with certainty that before he’d committed the crimes the shooter had “a really bad day.” Who told them that Long had a really bad day? Did they fact-check that one, or did they once again simply repeat the words of a suspected mass killer into a microphone? (I think I speak for a lot of people when I say: I don’t give a flying-saucer fuck about what kind of day a mass shooter was having before opening fire.)

I don't know exactly what has to change, but I know that insistence on maintaining neutrality in the face of what is so obviously evil, is itself an evil that we have to address and eradicate.