American Spectator's Lord: 'Three People Are Not a Mob'

American Spectator’s Lord: ‘Three People Are Not a Mob’

WingnutsJuly 2010 • Views: 2,868

Remember Jeffrey Lord’s rank piece of race-baiting at the American Spectator saying that Shirley Sherrod’s story of the lynching of a black man was a lie, because the man wasn’t hanged?

Well, that disgusting little rationalization brought some heavy criticism down on Lord, as you might imagine. So today he’s moving the goalposts in that wonderful wingnut way, and saying it couldn’t have been a lynching because “three people are not a mob.”

These freaks don’t even seem to realize how horrible this kind of sick garbage makes them look.

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36 comments

jamesfirecat Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:14:11am

You know what's even worse? Didn't somebody previously post here some anti-lynching laws that mentioned how if it was three or more people extra-judiciously killing someone it counted as a lynching?

So not only is what they're doing morally indefensible its not even "technically correct" in the context it is being used!

lawhawk Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:14:16am

Attempting to justify that a lynching was not a lynching. Classy. Real classy.

What's lost in all this was that Sherrod's father was murdered because he was black and this group engaged in an extrajudicial killing.

It was a lynching.

Varek Raith Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:16:56am

Damn. Some people need to learn to stop digging.
.
.
.
Dammit, early workday. Stupid economy...

wrenchwench Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:21:57am

Lord says:

And the three had "legal authority."

Legal authority to do this?

The arrest was made late at night at Hall's home on a warrant charging Hall with theft of a tire. Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to "get" him.

I believe the Supreme Court disagreed when they used the words

wrongfully beat him to death.

Three guys beating a handcuffed man is a mob, badges or no stinkin' badges.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:22:19am

The essence of lynching is that a killing was accomplished by some portion of the citizenry, with the tacit acceptance of a larger portion. Some sense of outrage at "incomplete justice" is often involved. Method has nothing to do with it, but some level of group complicity does.

Cato the Elder Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:22:42am

Reposted from last thread because this one went up while I was writing it:

So, we've now reached the point in this country where burning books (the Koran, non-KJV bibles) is no longer fun enough. People are making and burning effigies again.

These little Volksfests that are gaining new popularity have one point, and one point only: to stir up mob hatred.

Back in the early Naughties, a guy I worked with got fired. He was mad because he was in the process of staging a palace coup against the boss, and got caught at plotting, so instead of stepping into the top job he found himself on the street, polishing his résumé, without a recommendation.

So he fires off an email to everyone he knew in the company inviting us all to a barbecue where the main attraction would be a life-sized effigy of The Boss, for spitting and pissing on, stabbing with knives, and ultimately, burning.

Gee, what a great idea! Why don't you include a blow-up doll made up to look like his wife, and a few other dollies to represent his three children?

This guy went from having some sympathy to no one among his former colleagues wanting to be seen on the same block with him.

Fire 'em up! Show us who you really are!

laZardo Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:25:30am

New thread, time for bed. And meds to suppress my nervous system.

Taqyia2Me Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:30:50am

Thank you, American Spectator. I have finally found something to despise more than Illinois politics....You.

iceweasel Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:33:18am

Once again, Here's the definition of lynching as described in the 1922 anti-lynching bill introduced by Republican Rep. L.C. Dyer that Lord pretends to know something about:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the phrase "mob or riotous assemblage," when used in this act, shall mean an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense.

Asshole.

Summer Seale Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:34:11am

They should rename their publication from The American Spectator to The Antebellum South at this point.

darthstar Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:35:33am

re: #9 iceweasel

So wherever three or more of them are gathered and insane, there is mob, there is mob.

Brother Holy Cruise Missile of Mild Acceptance Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:35:53am

What else is new? When caught in a lie, move the goal posts. It's been standard on the fright-wing for a while now.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:36:14am

Can I call up the AS article without giving them an advertising count?

iceweasel Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:46:20am

re: #11 darthstar

So wherever three or more of them are gathered and insane, there is mob, there is mob.

I think there's something even uglier going on (as if that's possible) with this Lord piece-- I think it's about blaming the victim. "It was only three men beating a handcuffed man on the courthouse steps after having arrested him falsely in the middle of the night-- Why, a real man coulda defended himself! Just like in the movies! Hyuk-yuk!"

Really, it sort of reminds me of a certain kind of concern trolling/holocaust denier type-- "Gee, why didn't the Jews defend themselves? I don't get it." You know the sort of scumbaggery I mean.

I don't even have the words to say what I think of this guy yet. For now, just that he isn't some isolated racist freak, but speaking out of a very ugly Id that represents a lot of racists and neoconfederates, and it's all about revising the history of slavery and the civil rights movement. These people are horrible and evil.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:46:21am

re: #13 Decatur Deb

Just in case, here is a lift that is cached:

[Link: spectator.org...]

Alecto Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:46:50am

We could always call it gang activity since in most states you only need 3 people involved to constitute a gang.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:48:05am

re: #16 Alecto

We could always call it gang activity since in most states you only need 3 people involved to constitute a gang.

The difference is the illegal assumption of civic "authority".

iceweasel Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:49:10am

re: #16 Alecto

We could always call it gang activity since in most states you only need 3 people involved to constitute a gang.

"Three or more" is standard for conspiracy charges too in any area. RICO also IIRC.

In any case in the entire history of lynching and the attempts to stop it, as I pointed out above, the number was always three or more.

soap_man Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:50:38am

According to many small town and suburban municipalities, three people can be considered a mob if they were acting together to commit a violent crime.

I don't know how relevant this is. Just wanted to throw it out there.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:51:21am

Scanning AS, I just noticed that Ben Stein is Senior Editor--sad to see his fall.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:53:30am

Oh--Welcome, Alecto. You've arrived at the beginning of interesting times.

AntonSirius Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:54:03am

re: #10 Summer

They should rename their publication from The American Spectator to The Antebellum South at this point.

The tip-off that even Lord knows he's full of shit, and that he's just trying to get a reaction out of those dang libruls, is the signoff where he calls Balko at Reason Boo Radley, and himself... wait for it...

Atticus Lord.

No one is that un-self-aware. No one.

Cato the Elder Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:55:02am

Heinrich Heine, one of the greatest German poets of all time, and a Jew, to boot, wrote some famous lines about book-burning, by the way. Published in 1823, exactly a century before the Nazi Beer-Hall Putsch in 1923. It would be another ten years before the Nazis began their ceremonial book-burnings, including the works of Heine. He was a prophet.

Almansor:
Wir hörten daß der furchtbare Ximenes,
Inmitten auf dem Markte, zu Granada –
Mir starrt die Zung im Munde – den Koran
In eines Scheiterhaufens Flamme warf!
[We heard that the terrible Ximenes,
in the midst of the market, at Granada -
the tongue in my mouth dries up - flung
the Koran upon a flaming pyre!]

Hassan:
Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher
Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
[That was just the prelude, where people start burning
books, they end by burning people.]

Take heed, America.

iceweasel Tue, Jul 27, 2010 9:57:01am

re: #17 Decatur Deb

The difference is the illegal assumption of civic "authority".

Exactly, and that was one of the most terroristic aspects of lynching-- that these were extra-judicial killings carried out with the tacit or open consent and help of the authorities and the community. The help extended after the acts too, which is why allwhite juries wouldn't convict people involved.

Lynching wasn't just a couple of good old boys riding around in a truck. It was an entire system set up to subvert the federal government and terrorise the black population, with the collusion of local authorities at every level.
This is what the revisionists want us to forget.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:01:21am

re: #24 iceweasel

Yes--the act is social control masked as revenge or outrage. I post this periodically for ref:

Lynching Statistics, Tuskegee Institute

[Link: www.law.umkc.edu...]

garzooma Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:02:59am

I heard that Jeffery Lord has sex with dead cows. That's another total lie -- I saw one of them move!

iceweasel Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:04:07am

re: #25 Decatur Deb

Yes--the act is social control masked as revenge or outrage. I post this periodically for ref:

Lynching Statistics, Tuskegee Institute

[Link: www.law.umkc.edu...]

The newspaper coverage of lynchings at the time would often portray them as a righteously angry populace so revulsed by the terrible, horrible crime (*cough* what crime? no trials) that their fine moral sense compelled them to do what they did.

Decatur Deb Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:06:54am

re: #27 iceweasel

The newspaper coverage of lynchings at the time would often portray them as a righteously angry populace so revulsed by the terrible, horrible crime (*cough* what crime? no trials) that their fine moral sense compelled them to do what they did.

Here is the classic case of that. It's an extensive collection on one lynching, noted for a direct assault on the US Supreme Court's authority:

[Link: www.law.umkc.edu...]

allegro Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:11:40am

re: #27 iceweasel

The newspaper coverage of lynchings at the time would often portray them as a righteously angry populace so revulsed by the terrible, horrible crime (*cough* what crime? no trials) that their fine moral sense compelled them to do what they did.

Same argument many use to justify and even make a hero of murderer of George Tiller and other physicians.

abbyadams Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:19:27am

re: #23 Cato the Elder

Take heed America?
Ah, but they will not. Instead those who perpetuate this darkness will, at the end, fall back on the platform of the coward, and the "party of personal responsibility" will take none.

S'latch Tue, Jul 27, 2010 10:58:00am

How silly. Everyone knows that three is a crowd.

SanFranciscoZionist Tue, Jul 27, 2010 12:05:05pm

re: #14 iceweasel

I think there's something even uglier going on (as if that's possible) with this Lord piece-- I think it's about blaming the victim. "It was only three men beating a handcuffed man on the courthouse steps after having arrested him falsely in the middle of the night-- Why, a real man coulda defended himself! Just like in the movies! Hyuk-yuk!"

Really, it sort of reminds me of a certain kind of concern trolling/holocaust denier type-- "Gee, why didn't the Jews defend themselves? I don't get it." You know the sort of scumbaggery I mean.

I don't even have the words to say what I think of this guy yet. For now, just that he isn't some isolated racist freak, but speaking out of a very ugly Id that represents a lot of racists and neoconfederates, and it's all about revising the history of slavery and the civil rights movement. These people are horrible and evil.

This simply blows my mind.

Ming Tue, Jul 27, 2010 12:07:22pm

This right-wing insanity is especially horrible, considering that Ms. Sherrod's father was murdered. My heart goes out to Ms. Sherrod.

mr.fusion Tue, Jul 27, 2010 12:32:32pm

re: #23 Cato the Elder

[Link: www.splcenter.org...]

On Sept. 11, Terry Jones’ Dove World Outreach Center will hold the first “International Burn a Koran Day” ceremony on the steps of his church in Gainesville, Fla. According to the church’s website, the event was organized “in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!”

simoom Tue, Jul 27, 2010 1:03:47pm

Ugg. This part of the article is particularly awful:

Second. The larger point. My colleagues seem not to understand the connection between what they are seeing in the headlines everyday -- and history. There is, I'm sorry to say, a direct connection between Southern racists of yore and, say, the Obama Administration policy in Arizona.. The Black Panther case. And what Ms. Sherrod was doing in her speech when she ever so casually linked criticism of health care to racism, which is to say not supporting a (her words) "black President."

W - T - F.

[deleted] Wed, Jul 28, 2010 8:20:58pm

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