Fade To Gray

I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street - Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau)

The pay for play book review site Kirkus Reviews (reviews start at $425) says of this book “[A] Searing expose...superb reporting and vivid writing.” In the way of a response, I can only describe the book as, a steaming pile of dog shit, chock full of so many questionable “journalistic” missteps and short falls it becomes downright painful.

Bestselling author and Rolling Stone contributing editor is out with his accounting of the death of Eric Garner, a bloated, small time criminal who died while NYPD officers tried to take him into custody, following his arrest for selling illegal, untaxed cigarettes. In I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, Taibbi runs down a never ending litany of liberal talking points about the police, the suspects, the criminals and the legal system.

To call this “superb reporting” is outright malpractice on the part of Kirkus. Taibbi falls back on the classic Rolling Stone/liberal style of trying to pass off unnamed sources and second and third hand quotes that are three or four times removed as cold, hard “fact”. He “quotes” an unnamed, female corrections officer as saying that the police department is “highly racist”. I’m sorry, but anyone who gives that kind of bullshit any journalistic credibility is highly, high; and yes you can quote me on that.

While clearly any group of people, including the NYPD is far from perfect and certainly has some racists in it’s ranks, Taibbi is a master of the dog whistle -  spying in every statement or comment from Mayors or police commissioners or unnamed officer hidden, secret and coded messages that to him clearly signify racism run amok.

Taibbi paints a portrait of Eric Garner family man - who sold crack cocaine, but only out of necessity, as a way to feed, clothe and house his family. In the process he misses out on the irony of the illegality of the drug dealing and not mention the damage done to other families by the product Garner was selling. He can’t quite seem to manage to wrap his head around the fact that the guy he was trying to in some way elevate was in reality a criminal.

Taibbi makes Garner  sound like a teddy bear, and claims he was “not a kingpin” because of his down right lazy approach to dope dealing. I wonder how many real family men would even know where to turn to find a pile of rock cocaine to sell? Which speaks volumes about the real Eric Garner. Taibbi goes on to label the illegal sale of tax free cigarettes as “pseudo-criminal”. There is nothing pseudo about it.

But that is typical of liberals who are in favor of nanny state laws when they are enacted to protect you from yourself, but when it becomes inconvenient as in Garner’s case, then it becomes “pseudo criminal”. Taibbi goes so far as to blame governors of low cigarette tax states for not raising their taxes and thereby creating the black market for lower priced smokes.

Based on a reading of  I Can’t Breathe, you would likely believe that the NYPD has NO officers of color and that cops who employed the so-called stop and frisk program were all racists and despite the documented impact the program had in dramatically reducing street crime, that it should have never been allowed to occur.

It still amazes me that Garner’s case, like so many other high profile cases that spawned the so-called “black lives matter” movement could have been easily avoided if those involve had simply done what an overwhelming majority of Americans would do; comply with a lawful request from a police officer. Things like “open the window” or “get on the ground” if you comply, you go home alive and well. Don’t comply, and all bets are off.

Based on  Rolling Stones’ “journalistic” history (see UVA “Rape” Case story) why let facts get in the way of a good story. I do give the book designers credit here, the cover title fading to gray is the perfect match for liberals who see nothing in black and white, just shades of gray.