This story premiered on the fantastic RED STATE website
White Reporters’ Beating by Norfolk Black Gang Ignored by Media, but Real Question is, What is Happening to America’s Cities?
The “major” news media still has not seen fit to tell the story of the two white reporters attacked by a black mob in Norfolk, Virginia. Bill O’Reilly is virtually alone among major media in reporting on this, and noting that the Norfolk area “Virginia-Pilot” did not see fit to cover the local story.
Denis Finley said it was merely a “simple assault” and his paper doesn’t cover such, despite the attack taking place on two of their own reporters, who were out of work from injuries for an entire week, which the police classified as “not grave injuries.”
In case you missed the story, two white reporters – Dave Forster and Marjon Rostrami – had been stopped at a red light when their car was attacked by a black teen who threw a rock at the car.
When Forster got out of his stopped car to confront the rock thrower (and presumably stop further damage to his stopped car) the nearby crowd of 100 surrounded him and several started beating him violently.
When the female reporter got out of the car to try to help him she too was attacked. She managed to get a call off to police – after four attempts – and the police came to disperse the crowd.
Several things are noteworthy about this incident. I will address this in the order of what I feel is most significant, and the first, has not been addressed even on the Bill O’Reilly show.
One of the “Die Hard” movies showed what would happen to a white who is on foot in a “bad neighborhood”. Our intrepid hero in that movie was forced to set out on foot in Harlem, a “bad” neighborhood – for whites. It was the major opening scene of the movie.
Did anyone complain that this depiction of what would happen to a white who is on foot in Harlem, provoke any complaints that it was exaggerated? If so I missed it.
It is a sad fact in America today that in many cities you don’t want to be white and on foot in “the bad neighborhoods.”
Is it because you are white and those who will attack you are black? Is it because the people there are poor and they perceive you are rich? Is it a territorial thing, ie. you should have known better than to come into the “wrong neighborhood”?
Is this a joke? Is there anyone in America besides The Virginia Pilot’s Denis Finley who says what happened to the reporter is not a hate crime, and who thinks there’s nothing noteworthy about this, nothing worth their reporting on?
In fact, if this is not noteworthy, if this is not worthy of a news story in the Norfolk newspaper or in any national media (except for The Blaze online and Bill O’Reilly on Fox TV) then it proves my first point.
Of course, there’s nothing unusual about this story because everybody knows if you are white and you get out of your car in an inner city, high crime, black neighborhood, you will do well to escape with your life, and you will very likely be beaten and robbed very shortly.
It is nice to see that the police, after a few weeks of news silence on this story, did finally arrest a 16 year old for this crime – and he is now an accused felon.
And, since the outcry generated from Bill O’Reilly’s Fox news report, the editor has at least attempted to make excuses. Finley wrote that he had (at last) discovered that “race has entered the equation.” You think?
And, the solicitous Finley also wrote that he’d not reported on the story earlier because his two suddenly bashful reporters did not want their names in the news. One wonders if he is usually this solicitous with other crime victims?
My further conclusions from this story, aside from the fact that everybody KNOWS it is dangerous to be white and on foot in an inner city in America, and everybody knows you aren’t supposed to say or write this, follows.
First, and most fundamental, is that it is only marginally LESS safe to be a black stranger, dressed upscale, and appearing to NOT BELONG to that neighborhood, and be on foot in a black neighborhood. Black on black crime, like the Rodney King riots of many years ago, is the under reported news in America’s inner cities.
The biggest victims of black criminals are blacks who live in their inner city territory. Not the rare white who happens to have made the mistake of being on foot, or stopped at a traffic light, in such a “territory.”
Second. Bill O’Reilly makes the point that Denis Finley denies: if this were a story in Norfolk, Virginia (or any other city in America) of a gang of whites attacking a nice, young couple who happened to have been stopped at a traffic light, we’d have been seeing 24/7 news coverage of this on al the network news channels, radio stations and newspapers in America, for the last few weeks.
Far LESS of a racial motivation has been shown in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, but the intensity of the media coverage has been incredible.
Third. There is an underdone to this story, if you read between the lines, that the white couple were stupid to have driven their car in that neighborhood, deserved what happened to them. And that they were extra stupid to have got out of their car.
This “blame the victim” mentality of course, completely excuses the criminal. Of course it is true – if they hadn’t been in that neighborhood, and just drove off (including RUN THE RED LIGHT, ESCAPE!!!!), they would not have been hurt. But this “blame the victim” thing is pretty awful, in my view.
Fourth. The liberal media operates on a double standard. Of course they are not going to cover a story like this. Liberals HATE stories like this because they think it plays into the hands of conservatives who are all male racists (according to them).
A story like this would seem to justify their bad behavior so it should not be covered at all.
Fifth. There is a paternalistic mentality at work here on the part of the liberal media. They think you should not hold black criminals to the same standards as criminal whites. They will excuse behavior of blacks, which they would never excuse for whites, because they actually think blacks are stupid, inferior.
They are pathetically racist with this mentality.
Sixth. Many who read this may be shocked but, there is actually a mentality among the liberal-left that says the crimes of whites against blacks – starting with the crime of slavery – is the reason that blacks have a lesser standard of living in the United States, and that only reparations paid by whites to compensate for the several generations of “criminal conduct” against them, will balance this equation.
This is not the mentality of socialist “spread the wealth around” which we have seen and heard from Barack Obama and other leftists. This is reparations for “crimes” by whites against blacks.
Of course this is silly.
Why would a black who came here from Jamaica or from Nigeria three years ago, need “reparations” to pay for what happened to a black slave over 100 years ago?
Why would an Asian Indian or a Russian who drives a taxi in New York City since they arrived in America five years ago, be required to “pay” for the supposed crimes of whites over 100 years ago?
Why would the descendants of people whose “gave the last full measure of devotion” on the battlefield to end slavery, as commemorated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, be required to pay reparations?
Why would the side that won a victory at Gettysburg for the idea that you do not have to pay for the crimes of your parents nor have a title or other “tradition” bestowed on you based upon the accident of your birth, now be told that they must pay “reparations” for the supposed sins of their great grandparents?
How did we get to this point in America where an attack like this is covered up instead of reported for what it is – an indication that there is a problem with the criminal justice system in America, especially in our cities, and that there are too many underage inner city troublemakers roaming about without jobs, without hope, but with plenty of bitterness and rage?
How did we get to the point in America that in most cities, everybody seems to think a crime like this is not a wake up call for us to take action but a sign that two white people were in the wrong place and at the wrong time?
Seventh. The argument was actually offered on camera by someone from the neighborhood to Bill O’Reilly’s producer, that the attack by a black mob on two whites was to get even for the death of black Trayvon Martin in Florida.
This is ridiculous on several levels. First, two wrongs don’t make a right. Second, the facts of the two cases are totally different and in Florida are in dispute but there is no disputing that the two white reporters did not attack the black gang. Third, and most important: there were loud and repeated demands that the white be arrested during 24/7 news coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. There has been a media blackout of the Norfolk, Virginia incident.
Eighth. Finally irony about the story. The girl is from Iran. If a group of whites had attacked her, would that have generated a media firestorm? Would we have seen an outpouring of “Muslim immigrant attacked by American mob” or “Female Iranian Immigrant assaulted by The Ugly Americans” for 24/7? Would we have seen repeated demands that the criminals who assaulted her should be found and arrested?
What happened to Dave Forster and Marjon Rostrami is wrong. Skin color should not enter into this topic except to note that it was clearly a motivation on the part of their attackers.
It is wrong, and we should be asking the question about American cities which Dr. Edward Banfield wrote about in The Unheavenly City (1970) – liberal solutions add to the decay, boost the frustration and bitterness, skyrocket the crime rate and solve nothing.
Banfield was not any kind of a “movement conservative” but if you accept the premise that sometimes, we ought to look at issues from a “right and wrong” perspective, then he offers a lot of reasons why liberalism in American cities doesn’t ever work, and why conservative ideas (such as the enterprise zones his book helped motivate/inspire) should be tried instead.
If you keep boosting taxes in American cities and driving off business and the middle class you end up with an ever increasing number of gangs roaming about, looking for some hapless person to stop at a red light where they can throw a rock or do worse.
Liberals have had virtual monopoly control of most of America’s cities for several generations and the ugly truth is, their ideas don’t work, but make it worse, to the point it is now very dangerous in the cities they control. It isn’t hard to see why there is so much “flight” to the suburbs from the cities of America.
The question isn’t what happened in Norfolk on May 1 to two white reporters. Nor is it, what motivated a gang of troublemakers, nor even why is it liberal media covers up stories like this?
Rather, the question is, what is happening to America’s cities, and what can we do to reverse the trend that makes it dangerous to stop at a red light in the wrong neighborhood in so many cities in America? *
This concludes my third month (12 weeks) writing here at RED STATE 5x a week (on weekdays) where I have offered 130,171 words in 58 articles, averaging 2,224 words each.
*
HanoverHenry of RED STATE is Pat Henry on Facebook, and he is on the lookout for new friends there
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