“She’s untruthful, unethical, hateful and often wrong. She makes America worse. Can her.
There she went again, smearing her vile invective across our screens, diminishing us all as human beings.
Poking her stink finger into another none-of-her-business, Nancy Grace managed to make the death of Whitney Houston somehow more tawdry. “I’d like to know,” the HLN host spew mused last week, “who let her slip or pushed her underneath that water.” She later un-apologized on Good Morning America, regarding Dan Abrams appeals to decency as “arguing with me over semantics,” accusing him of having gone to Harvard Law School and defending her blithe murder charges with her go-to pretense: “I still want the truth.”
The truth, to Nancy Grace, is whatever is handy and profitable. Her truth was that Gary Condit murdered Chandra Levy. Her truth was that the Duke lacrosse team raped Crystal Gail Mangum. Her truth was that Richard Ricci kidnapped Elizabeth Smart (when it later became true he did not, but had unfortunately died in custody, Grace said, “I’m not going on a guilt trip.”)
When she isn’t convicting people on spec, Grace spreads ugliness, fetishizing the disappearances of young white women and small white children, asking questions that not only don’t need to be asked (by her) but wouldn’t have been allowed when she was a prosecutor — as she should recall, having had two convictions thrown out by the Supreme Court of Georgia, once for insinuating unrelated rapes and murders into her closing arguments, and in the second instance being reprimanded, “the conduct of the prosecuting attorney in this case demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable.”
Grace has imported her injudicious style to television journalism, where it is also unethical, it may surprise you to learn. “I think she has managed to demean both professions with her hype, rabid persona, and sensational analysis,” Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University, told the New York Times last May. The professor is being too kind. Grace’s verdict first, trial afterward judicial philosophy “erodes the respect for basic rights,” as Turley says, but she also corrodes justice itself. Called on her pre-evidentiary convictions, Grace is quick to get technical, to point out that only a jury has the power to convict, but woe to the jury that disobeys her. When 12 people weighed actual evidence and determined Casey Anthony not guilty of murdering her daughter, Grace declared that little white Caylee’s “death has gone unavenged.” Did you hear that, loyal, rabid viewers?
And to justice, add truth to Grace’s swath of destruction. Her every vehement assertion that later proves false feeds into the fashionable but dangerous notion that the mainstream media cannot be trusted; her connect-any-dots arguments (All the evidence always points to the guilt of whomever is in her eye-line) promotes a cognitive approach favored by conspiracy thinkers. She’s not terribly bright, and she’s contagious.
Nancy Grace is a blight on cable television; she is bad for civilization.
She’s entitled to her opinions, of course, but in a truly just world, she would be spouting them from a dark sticky corner in some sour rat-hole. Pat Buchanan might even buy her a beer.“
“We have a situation now… it was the Black struggle that really defined morality in the United States. It defined the moral imperative. And the character of the country was measured by how well it answered the call of Black people for justice. But what happens when Black people stop asking for justice? I think you get exactly what we’ve got now—a President who is dropping bombs on Africa… which is un-thought-of; I mean, it would have been un-thought-of four years ago that Africa would be bombed—routinely! But it’s a routine matter now that the United States Africa Command [AFRICOM] would actively establish itself and militarize the US relationship with Africa. AFRICOM represents a kind of US imperial occupation of the continent that we haven’t seen since the days of outright colonialism of the Europeans. We are being told about issues that are “important”…, but we’re ignoring the real issues that are important! Henry Kissinger said that he couldn’t believe the amount of good will that was embodied in this president! But… what people like Kissinger don’t “get” is that this president sits on top of the historic Black struggle that characterized the United States to the world! People around the world thought that Barack Obama characterized the New United States! But… far from it! A lot of people got tricked and fooled and now… as philosopher Michel Foucault has observed—the every-day actions of ordinary people actually entrap them in “powerlessness”. … So, to break out of your powerlessness, you’ve got to break out of your existing paradigm. So, as long as Barack Obama is representative of the existing paradigm, this is what we’re going to get… because the existing paradigm is war and more war!”
“… Afghan relatives of those who died and Mohammed Tahir Safi, an adviser to President Hamid Karzai and the leader of the Afghan investigation team, said that those killed were young boys who had taken their sheep and goats to graze outside the village. They were cold and gathered under a rock and lighted a small fire to warm themselves. That was the place where they were struck by bombs. Photographs of the dead shown by Mr. Safi at a news conference this week included some of badly bloodied young boys and a couple of young men who might have been older. The father of one of the boys who was killed said that his son was 12 and that two nephews who were killed were younger. …
Brig. Gen. Lewis Boone, the NATO spokesman here, said … [the boys] “appeared to be carrying weapons and heading for nearby mountains. They were moving in open terrain in a tactical fashion and clearly keeping a distance from each other.”
… It is unclear whether NATO pilots were able to see clearly the size of the people they were bombing in the camera footage, and it is also unclear what happened to the weapons the boys were believed to be carrying.”
editor’s note: In an America, where states like Michigan can disband democratic institutions and disenfranchise tens-of-thousands of Black voters in a single fascist whim, or states like Virginia, which has instituted vaginal rape by prob, just pray to the sky fairy that your fetus is keeping a proper distance or your OWS protest is not in terrain formation.
