CBS News: Lightweight Edition
Before we get to more serious stuff—on my drive home from the grocery store last night, I tuned into CBS News: Late Edition. After stories about Hurricane Laura, the shooter in Kenosha and the Bucks and Brewers boycotting their games to protest Jacob Blake’s shooting, here’s what I heard from anchor Pam Coulter:
The theme of the third night of the Republican Convention is “Land of Heroes” and the featured speaker is Vice President Mike Pence, who will speak from Baltimore’s historic Fort McHenry. Political analyst Larry Sabato: “Pence is much more inoffensive than Trump is, but he’s also less interesting.”
That was it—two sentences. All fifteen seconds of it. The news is now delivered in micro-segments, like chopped celery.
What caught my attention was the sound bite that they chose to run from Larry Sabato. When I think of a “political analyst,” I think of someone who offers cogent insight that isn’t easily accessible by schmucks driving home from the grocery store. But what does CBS give me? “Pence is much more inoffensive than Trump is, but he’s also less interesting.”
If this is the most helpful thing CBS could pull for us to hear, I’ve missed my calling in life. This is opinion parading as analysis, and it’s not very deep. Sabato’s comment doesn’t help me understand Pence or his politics any better. It’s not like I’m looking for an essay, but couldn’t CBS have found a meatier statement by one of the nation’s most respected political analysts?
Don’t Bring a Skateboard to a Gunfight
(WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES)
In yesterday’s Broadside I wrote about our slow march toward Civil War 2.0. I ended the commentary with a set of photos showing lots of guns that civilians are carrying these days in multiple states. I said that I see them as “more accessory than utility.” Then I asked, “But will they stay that way?”
Kenosha may have answered that question. On Tuesday night, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, carrying a rifle, was chased by protesters. In the first part of the incident, he was chased across an auto shop parking lot until he got to a group of parked cars, then turned and shot his closest pursuer, killing him.
In the second part of the incident, he fled from the parking lot while being chased by even more protesters. In the middle of a street, he tripped and fell, and three or four protesters attempted to stomp on him. One of them swung a skateboard at his head; as he went by, Rittenhouse swung his gun up and pulled the trigger. It looked like the round probably hit skateboard guy in the chest; he took a couple of steps, collapsed, and looked like he died on the spot.
Rittenhouse also shot a third man who lunged at him with a handgun. This is the result.
We now have a verified case of a citizen being attacked by protesters who shot three and killed two of them. What happens next? Does everyone take a deep breath and stand down or does everyone arm up and prepare for a gunfight at the next encounter? Do we see more organization and strategic planning or do we have running gun battles across towns and cities as people take sides?
See story and photos in the Chicago Tribune, here.
I don’t expect that will happen today or tomorrow. But it’s sobering and you can bet that people on both sides of the protests are paying attention because it just got a bit more dangerous.
The tragedy? Jacob Blake, the man shot in the back by officers as they tried to arrest him, admitted that he “had a knife on the floorboard of his car when he was shot by police.” In other words, the cops were justified in their use of force.
Rittenhouse is being charged as an adult with murder. The names of his two victims haven’t been released.