Another tragedy, another excuse for Fox News talking heads to levy cheap partisan attacks and champion their pet causes of Obama/de Blasio-baiting, over-militarism and racial profiling. On a long and interminable “Outnumbered” segment, Fox News’ Eric Bolling used the opportunity to display his obscenely short memory, arguing that Charlie Hebdo is an argument that we should over-militarize our cops. As he puts it: “There’s been a very serious push from the left saying ‘let’s not over-militarize our cops.’ That [the Hebdo massacre] should put an end to that discussion. We should over-militarize.”…. “We are being hunted,” co-host Harris Faulkner adds, while, host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery suggests “the best thing that Americans can do is arm themselves.”
The reaction to a tragedy is something that can and often does reveal a person’s character. Look at the reaction of many in Paris to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and what you saw were many genuinely saddened but also very resolute in their determination not to cave to the darker angels of fear and reprisal. Frenchmen and women stood up and declared that they’re not afraid.
Here in this country, the response was often..well, very different. Many on the Far Right have engaged in all manner of race-baiting and ugliness directed at indicting the world’s entire Muslim population for murder. Others have trafficked in all manner of fear-mongering and overreaction, using the attack as the reason why the only “proper” reaction to terrorism is to arm ourselves and our police and to fear The Other.
It’s no surprise that the White Conservative talking heads at Fox News Channel are advocating for “over-militarizing” our police…because only when law enforcement becomes paramilitary will good, God-fearing White Folks be safe from the evil, swarthy brown heathens who hate the baby Jesus.
White privilege being what it is, there’s no reason the well-fed Whites at FNC would have anything to fear from police, “over-militarized” or not. I suspect few if any of them have ever had reason to fear the police in ANY sense. Why would they? Police too often only overreact when involved in a situation in which an African-American is an actor. As ANY real, patriotic American knows, Whites are not threats, while African-Americans are violent “thugs” who must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.
Not that there’s ANY form of racism at work here….
The reasons that FNC’s talking heads have ascribed to those responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre are as astonishing as they are ridiculous and inaccurate. Of course, when your role is to further a Right-wing agenda by stoking fear and feeding the prejudices of the already angry and hate-filled, facts and reason are entirely unnecessary.
