A Couple Points

Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone! And thanks to Bev and Koshcat for filling in earlier in the week! I am getting back to normal and we should have a regular schedule again next week. We'll also have T-Rav's article tomorrow and a film review at the film site... the very unfunny Ted. In the meantime, here are a couple thoughts I've had watching the news this week.

● The Martin Case I: There is a belief, which is particularly prevalent in conservative circles, that we can always trust cops and prosecutors. In fact, I've seen this go so far that a great many conservatives actually believe that if someone is arrested, then they must be guilty. This is wrong, as the Martin case shows again. With lots of nasty things now being revealed about the prosecutor, it should be clear that not all prosecutors are good people. This woman is an unethical liar who slanders people, abuses her office to get anyone who crosses her, politicized her agency by firing anyone who wasn't a brown-noser, overcharges suspects, and withholds evidence. Sadly, she is not unique. There are many prosecutors who are just as rotten and just as political. That is why rule of law matters and why we cannot simply trust the people in the system to not trample on people's rights. You would think conservatives, who innately mistrust government, would realize this and demand greater protections for defendants, stronger rights for all persons, and narrower criminal laws. But not all of them do. Remember this the next time some politician tells you they are "tough on crime." Are they really or are they just tough on the accused?

● The Martin Case II: The response to the Martin case has been both encouraging and depressing. For encouraging, look at the public... in response to the verdict, there have been a handful of protest marches nationwide, typically involving a few hundred people in the biggest cities. Except for a couple of thugs (mainly in Oakland), they've been peaceful. Denied their story of outrage, the news networks have moved on, as have most of the pundits. Even liberal talking-head attorneys now are saying the jury got the law right. Jimmy "the ass" Carter and Obama both said the same thing as well. That's all very rational and very muted. That should make America pretty proud of itself. That is encouraging.

On the other hand, a lot of celebrities are exploiting this to gain publicity. That's disgraceful. It's twisted and cynical. Go back to rehab folks. A couple of dinosaur-age race baiters are out there too trying to regain their relevance. That's a fancy young girlfriend you got there Mr. Sharpton. Anyway, that's disgraceful too.

Unfortunately, there's another group too that needs to be mentioned. If you visited Drudge over the past couple days, you would think the country was in the grips of a civil war. He reported the most fringy comments as if they were widely-believed official administration positions. He had headlines about people in hiding, about roving gangs attacking whites. He's been reporting rumors and conspiracy theories as facts, linking to places like InfoWars, trying to connect unrelated murders and muggings to "the response to the verdict" to make you think there are riots everywhere, and doing so under headlines that basically scream: "BLACK PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU!!" It's Al-Sharpton-esque. Several radio talkers are doing the same thing, even as they ironically claim they are only warning you that liberals are obsessed with race. One host this afternoon actually cautioned people to watch for gangs "looking for whitey."

Right now, there are two groups of people pushing identity politics: the extreme left and the extreme right, and I think the right is pushing harder than the left. But as we showed in that poll last week, few people see blacks, whites or anyone else as inherently racist, i.e. few are obsessed with race -- only about two in ten. So don't let these people push you into thinking the world is like the nightmare vision they are selling. It's not... not even close.

● The Summer of Flops: Finally, the summer of flops continues with three new ones likely joining the list: Pacific Rim is officially a flop, Turbo is being seen as a likely flop, and R.I.P.D. looks like a megaflop. I was kind of looking forward to R.I.P.D.. In any event, it sounds like it's time to service the Plot-o-matic 3000.