Willie Horton, We Hardly Knew Ye
In Kerry Healey's campaign for governor of Massachusetts, she asks this question of her opponent: "What kind of man would defend a rapist?"
Um...the kind of man who is a defense attorney?
The ad is just stunning. Typical Boston, too: as Kerry Healey is saying "brutal rapist" the camera pulls closer to Deval Patrick's black face. Black face = brutal rapist. Res ipsa loquitur in Beantown.
I don't just say this (just) because I'm a leftist crackpot or part of the "victim culture" or whatever. It's true. Boston has some serious (and seriously unexamined--thanks, liberal complacency!) race problems. For 12 years, 12 years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers the Red Sox management refused to integrate. And if they hadn't really needed a pinch runner, I wonder how much longer old Pumpsie Green would have stayed on the bench.
Part of the problem is that Boston's solution to race relations has been to keep the races as separate as possible--it's a heavily segregated city, and it's segregated along race lines (rather than class lines). This segregation makes a black face a convenient bogey man. Healey is as savvy as she is cynical in showing Patrick's black face with the voiceover: "brutal rapist."
In this town, that's all most people need.
This is the town of Charles Stuart, after all. Remember Charles Stuart? Had a wife and couldn't keep her, so he pulled the trigger at her head, and said a black man shot her dead.
And so Boston's finest started sweeping Roxbury and Dorchester and roughing up 63 year old mamas on the strength of this description: medium build, jogging suit, black. Vague much? Then there were the unsettling facts: Charles Stuart had been pressuring his wife to have an abortion, he'd taken out huge sums in life insurance, he claimed that the gunman shot him in the stomach from the back seat of the car, the police picked up William Bennett and considered the case solved.
William Bennett was, after all, black. And he had a jogging suit and a long rap sheet. And he lived in Mission Hill. Res ipsa loquitur. QED.
Except, of course, that he didn't do it.
But the police response to the Charles Stuart case is precisely why people like Deval Patrick were so vigorous in their defense of "brutal rapist," Ben LaGuer. Although it now looks as though LaGuer was at the scene and is likely guilty, the facts of the case for a long time seemed to add up about as well as the case against Willie Bennett. The whole case against him rested on the eyewitness testimony of the 59 year old white victim who suffers from schizophrenia. Eyewitness testimony is not terribly reliable and the victim's mental illness further complicated matters.
LaGuer's case became a kind of cause celebre, and his supporters included dozens of lawyers writing amicus briefs; Noam Chomsky; John Silber, the president of Boston University; and the novelist, William Styron, among others. It is because of these people that the DNA test which points toward LaGuer's guilt was done at all.
It was not unreasonable to think that LaGuer might be innocent, given the history of the case and the history of police work in 1980s Boston. None of this, of course, is mentioned by Healey. Just that Deval Patrick defended a "brutal rapist."
What is perhaps most disturbing is where I started this overlong post: the fact that Healey doesn't seem to know that the "type of man" who defends rapists is the type of man who is a defense attorney. Have we really drifted so far away from our country's values that we no longer believe that the accused have the right to a defense?
What type of person vilifies a man for upholding the Constitutional rights of the citizens?
Addendum: Maybe if LaGuer were Irish, Healey wouldn't mind that he had a vigorous defense. The Romney/Healey administration gave a citation to Edward MacKenzie for his involvement in civic activities. Eddie Mac's civic activities used to include being an enforcer for Whitey Bulger. He boasts in his autobiography that he once chewed off and ate a man's finger. Healey described the convict as "a nice man."
Um...the kind of man who is a defense attorney?
The ad is just stunning. Typical Boston, too: as Kerry Healey is saying "brutal rapist" the camera pulls closer to Deval Patrick's black face. Black face = brutal rapist. Res ipsa loquitur in Beantown.
I don't just say this (just) because I'm a leftist crackpot or part of the "victim culture" or whatever. It's true. Boston has some serious (and seriously unexamined--thanks, liberal complacency!) race problems. For 12 years, 12 years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers the Red Sox management refused to integrate. And if they hadn't really needed a pinch runner, I wonder how much longer old Pumpsie Green would have stayed on the bench.
Part of the problem is that Boston's solution to race relations has been to keep the races as separate as possible--it's a heavily segregated city, and it's segregated along race lines (rather than class lines). This segregation makes a black face a convenient bogey man. Healey is as savvy as she is cynical in showing Patrick's black face with the voiceover: "brutal rapist."
In this town, that's all most people need.
This is the town of Charles Stuart, after all. Remember Charles Stuart? Had a wife and couldn't keep her, so he pulled the trigger at her head, and said a black man shot her dead.
And so Boston's finest started sweeping Roxbury and Dorchester and roughing up 63 year old mamas on the strength of this description: medium build, jogging suit, black. Vague much? Then there were the unsettling facts: Charles Stuart had been pressuring his wife to have an abortion, he'd taken out huge sums in life insurance, he claimed that the gunman shot him in the stomach from the back seat of the car, the police picked up William Bennett and considered the case solved.
William Bennett was, after all, black. And he had a jogging suit and a long rap sheet. And he lived in Mission Hill. Res ipsa loquitur. QED.
Except, of course, that he didn't do it.
But the police response to the Charles Stuart case is precisely why people like Deval Patrick were so vigorous in their defense of "brutal rapist," Ben LaGuer. Although it now looks as though LaGuer was at the scene and is likely guilty, the facts of the case for a long time seemed to add up about as well as the case against Willie Bennett. The whole case against him rested on the eyewitness testimony of the 59 year old white victim who suffers from schizophrenia. Eyewitness testimony is not terribly reliable and the victim's mental illness further complicated matters.
LaGuer's case became a kind of cause celebre, and his supporters included dozens of lawyers writing amicus briefs; Noam Chomsky; John Silber, the president of Boston University; and the novelist, William Styron, among others. It is because of these people that the DNA test which points toward LaGuer's guilt was done at all.
It was not unreasonable to think that LaGuer might be innocent, given the history of the case and the history of police work in 1980s Boston. None of this, of course, is mentioned by Healey. Just that Deval Patrick defended a "brutal rapist."
What is perhaps most disturbing is where I started this overlong post: the fact that Healey doesn't seem to know that the "type of man" who defends rapists is the type of man who is a defense attorney. Have we really drifted so far away from our country's values that we no longer believe that the accused have the right to a defense?
What type of person vilifies a man for upholding the Constitutional rights of the citizens?
Addendum: Maybe if LaGuer were Irish, Healey wouldn't mind that he had a vigorous defense. The Romney/Healey administration gave a citation to Edward MacKenzie for his involvement in civic activities. Eddie Mac's civic activities used to include being an enforcer for Whitey Bulger. He boasts in his autobiography that he once chewed off and ate a man's finger. Healey described the convict as "a nice man."
posted by Feemus at
6:31 AM
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