AmSpec's Antle points out Lord's definition of lynching excludes Till, Byrd
July 27, 2010 2:06 pm ET by Media Matters staff
From a July 27 post at The American Spectator by associate editor W. James Antle:
For a variety of reasons I have not wanted to pile on, not least being my respect for Jeff personally and for his fine work. But I am afraid his latest post is wildly unpersuasive, to put it mildly.
By the standard Jeff is employing here, Emmett Till was not lynched because he was murdered by only two men and he was not hanged. Nothing was hung around Till's neck until his murderers wanted to weigh down his dead body after dumping it in a river. (Though I realize we've gone from implying that a lynching must be by noose to quibbling about the number of people it takes to form a proper lynch mob.)
Similarly, according to this idiosyncratic definition James Byrd was not lynched because he was murdered by three men and dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pick-up truck. Both of these high-profile, racially motivated, 20th-century murders are widely and popularly described as lynchings. Shirley Sherrod said her fair share of crazy things in her full, unedited speech but I think most people would regard her use of the word "lynch" as reasonable.
Even if we adhere to Jeff's precise requirements for what constitutes a lynching, I cannot fathom how nit-picking over the proper terminology to describe the brutal beating death of a black man strikes a blow against the New Black Panther Party, the federal lawsuit against Arizona, and all the assorted misdeeds of the left mentioned in his post. Instead it is a distraction that will leave most people bewildered if not offended and an argument that does not meet Jeff's normally high standards.
Previously:
American Spectator writers distance themselves from American Spectator lynching story
EXCLUSIVE: Experts on history of lynching rebut Jeffrey Lord's Sherrod claim
The American Spectator's embarrassingly ignorant attack on Sherrod
What crazy things did she say in her speech? Oh, wait, there weren't any crazy things.
I love how he HAS to pile on Sherrod, even though, his post is NOT about her. At all.
Better to avoid such radioactive trivialities, so they can proceed with pushing their phony narrative.
So, let me get this straight. If one shares one's experiences and you don't agree with them, they're "crazy things?"
Got it.
So, if I remember being chased out of a public park my parents taxes helped to support by whites in the 1960s, it's a "crazy thing" even if it has stayed with me until this day?
Got it.
I understand very well what you're saying, Antler Boy, but that doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. It's painful for you to acknowledge the history of race in America, so you de-legitimize Ms. Sherrod's experiences by giving them the label of "crazy things."