FERGUSON, MO: Let the games begin

There's a first time for everything. I actually agree with Chris Rock.

The most racist comic I know--are any of his routines about something other than race? --tweeted this a few minutes ago:

Doesn't take 100 days to decide if murder is a crime. It takes 100 days to figure out how to tell people it isn't.

It's almost like a game, isn't it? "How To Get Away With Murder."

Yes, several witnesses changed their testimony, saw things and then didn't see them, didn't see things and then saw them. That's the nature of eyewitness testimony: so unreliable in stressful situations as to be almost useless.

However.

There are several facts that did not change throughout the trial: that Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown for the grievous offence of walking down the middle of a street. That Michael Brown was unarmed. That he was shot at least six times, and at least one of those shots, perhaps many more than just one, came well after Brown could have even remotely been construed as some kind of threat. That his shooting was part of a larger pattern of blatant racial discrimination which sees black youths targeted far out of proportion to any crimes they commit.

As an e-friend of mine tweeted: "It's insane. No trial, no public inquiry, not even a disciplinary hearing for officer Darren Wilson. Scot free, no consequences."

And I'm sorry, but I can't help flipping the races around. If Michael Brown hadn't been so brown, (a) I'm willing to bet he'd be alive today; (b) if he had been killed, the black officer who killed him would have been indicted long before tonight.

We're in for some black days in November.

t has been noted that many of the protestors are being bussed in from out of state, as if outrage was a peculiar quality limited only to Missourians. On the one hand, everyone with any concern for justice or human rights should be ringing Ferguson, MO a hundred miles deep tonight. On the other--that's not such a good idea, becuase--

Riots solve nothing. All riots do is confirm people's worst prejudices. As *another* friend of mine noted, "it's highly doubtful there was a crowd of white people ready to set cars on fire and run off with big screen TVs had Wilson been indicted." Give me one good reason why a hard-working store owner should have his livelihood destroyed out of this. What did he do?

Peaceful protest is one thing, and it's more than warranted here. Riots will only result in more bloodshed. Is that what's really wanted?
I