WTF Of The Week: Missouri Riots Edition

Throughout this past week I have been listening to the radio, reading the articles, and watching the news surrounding the protests, riots, and general insanity taking place in Ferguson, Missouri. I have been hearing people talk about the militarization of the police in the this country and I have been watching Al Sharpton stirring up the crowds filling the streets in an attempt to further incite the racial hatred that continues to brew. All of this stemming from a tragic incident that no one is able to explain or even tell you exactly what happened. The only thing we really know for certain is that a community is so pissed off that they have decided to riot and tear apart their own community.

Yeah, I don’t understand it either.  

This is one of those events that is playing out across this country fueled by visceral reactions. Like many of the other polarizing heinous acts that we have all witnessed, people are taking to social media, writing editorials, and screaming from the sidelines without having any facts to support their intense feelings. This incident has also served as the jumping off point to further the agenda of those looking for a reason to leverage race to make and accusation of racism and inequality…. like Al Sharpton.

This just goes to show that the fact that we do have are being forgotten namely that we doing know what happened and that tragedy doesn’t have a race. Insisting that tragedy is associated with race is inherently racist. But this is what debates have come to today especially those that touch upon, in any way shape or form, politics. Knowing that we have a crappy President is, according to today’s standards, racist. Forget the fact that he is just a crap President who has played more rounds of golf since he took office than Tiger Woods (look it up).

And it is this liberal mentality that has many newspaper outlets scared. It doesn’t matter if you are telling the truth about what is going on in Ferguson. If people don’t like what the picture is portraying they will let you know and, in the case of the Philadelphia Daily News, force the publication to change the cover. After all, media is a business. And with newspaper sales in the toilet, they can’t afford to alienate any readers. It’s not like the days when you your audience was so expansive that you didn’t have to worry about losing part of your audience. Of course, at that time people cared about the facts more than the emotion.

Given that the more confrontational and overall vocal portion of the audience is of the liberal persuasion, this is a big reason why journalism is beginning to rot away under heavy liberal bias required by much of the readership. Facts have become secondary as credible sources and quality reporting have become a target of doubt rather than news. Only time will tell if this will bring about the eventual downfall of the media as we used to know it or if the media polarization will soon neutralize and return to an unbiased state (or at least get close).