If You Can’t Say Anything Nice

The son and I were discussing a subject the other day, something we’ve been aware of for some time.  Once you die, nobody is supposed to say anything negative about you.  In fact, when someone dies, the survivors go out of their way to find something, anything, nice, to describe the deceased.

The people I’m talking about are usually ones we’ve read about in the newspapers, so the term, ”Known to police”, often applies.  You can abuse your wife and kids, kick your dog, throw rocks though your neighbor’s windows, screw hookers, and die by being run down by a big-rig while wandering down the middle of a road in a drug and alcohol-induced fog, and someone will still be quoted as saying, But in his entire life, he never once parked in a handicap spot.

Case in point, a body was found in a local park.  Two days later, the papers report that a male has been arrested and charged with manslaughter.  So far, nothing unusual.  The papers don’t give names, so the dead guy could be Bob, or, Nkwumbe.  But then, the guy named Bob gets easy, cheap bail, and Nkwumbe‘s relatives start wailing.  Black guy is killed and white guy gets out, it’s racism!  Two days later, about a hundred people, mostly South Sudanese, but with some whites among them, march on city hall.  Why city hall?  They acknowledge to the local paper, that they played the race card too soon, but now wish to complain that the police aren’t providing them enough information.  March on the police station.  See how long that lasts.

Bob says, he and his girlfriend were walking through the park, and the black guy accosted them with a replica pistol and tried to rob them.  He dug into his backpack, pulled out a knife, stabbed the black guy once, and they ran for it.  Nkwumbe’s mother and sisters insist that he would never do such a thing.  He just got out of jail after serving four months for assault, but, he was turning his life around.  He’s a good boy now.  Yeah, right!

I’m going to keep an eye on this story.  Even assuming that the black guy actually was the deserving criminal we believe he is, there are a couple of questions I have about the white “victim.”  If he really thought that the gun was real, how did he have the time and the presence of mind, to dig in a backpack, for a knife that he just happened to be carrying?  If he knew the gun was a fake, how and why did he get close enough to kill the black guy with one stab?  Having stabbed him and run for their lives, why didn’t they report the altercation to the police?  There’s more to this than meets the eye but, if Nkwumbe was at home on the couch, minding his own business, his mama wouldn’t have to whitewash a black man.

In another case of not taking responsibility for one’s actions, we have a man in Toronto on trial for murder.  He and his buddy, both crack addicts, were roaming the streets, when they encountered a man at an ATM.  They staggered over to harass the guy, and his friend sucker-punched him.  They giggled, and lurched on down the street.  Here’s where it went bad.  Like the Zimmerman guy in Florida, who shot the Negro kid after being told by police to ignore him and not get out of the car, the victim got four of his buddies from a bar and went out to find them.

Five drunks against two crack-heads, not good odds or conducive to a good ending.  They caught up to them at a pedestrian tunnel, where crackerbox bashed his head with a brick, and then stomped it several times, killing him.  Trying to beat the murder rap, he’s playing it as self-defense.  He claims that, after he hit him with the brick and knocked him down, the guy trying to stumble back to his feet constituted a danger, so he stomped him.  It was all spur-of-the-moment.  The victim’s grandmother asks, if it wasn’t premeditated, why did he have a brick?  It might have just been lying on the ground.  I know, if five guys approached me, at night, in a tunnel, I’d be looking for something too.

Now he’s trying to get sympathy, and lighter sentencing, from the judge.  His lawyer cited a difficult childhood and a troubled life.  He’s abused booze and drugs since he was nine.  Just once, I’d like to hear one of these guys admit, “My Mom and Dad were fine, I’m just a shithead.”  He’ll probably find Jesus in jail.  Why is it that so many jerks give their life to God, only after f**cking it up so badly, that nobody else wants it?

Meanwhile, it turns out that the victim, who was partying in a bar, and then went out looking for trouble with four of his friend, and found it, was an award-winning hockey player who was about to start a job with a Boston legal firm in three days.  And he liked kittens, and helped old ladies across the street.