In Case You Had Doubts

On Thursday, Newsbusters posted an article about a recent comment by CNN’s Don Lemon.

The article reports:

Recently, CNN’s New Day has been on a streak of providing fairly objective reporting. Alas, it was a streak that Don Lemon decided to end this Thursday morning, ambling over from his nightly slots for what seemed to be a monthly Festivus tradition of his: complaining that the media isn’t doing enough to attack Republicans. Essentially openly opposing new CNN boss Chris Licht’s reported desire to bring CNN back to journalism and away from Lemon’s brand of partisanship.

The reason Lemon graced the TV screens at such an early hour was apparently due to an interview on Wednesday evening, where former Proud Boys spokesperson Jason van Tatenhove expressed fears of political extremists rising to prominence in the Republican Party, and NYU History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said, “I don’t think a lot of people know that on the local and state level there’s a lot of intermingling and fusion between extremists and the GOP, and I really see the GOP as an extremist entity now.”

The following quote from Don Lemon should leave no doubt in your mind as to what the mainstream media is doing:

We sit around and we talk about these things and we — we want to give this false equivalence to Democrats and Republicans. That is not where we are right now. Republicans are doing something that is very dangerous to our society, and we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that as Americans, we must acknowledge that as journalists, because if we don’t we’re not doing our jobs

Actually, their job as journalists is to report the news as it is–not to inject their opinion and not to (according to them) try to save the country.

The article also mentions Don Lemon’s desire to hold Republicans responsible for overturning Roe vs. Wade. So he believes that the Republicans are dangerous to society because they want to prevent the killing of babies. It seems to me that a society that values life might be less dangerous than a society that supports the killing of unborn babies.

The ‘Unknown Motive’ In Ferguson

In an attempt to explain recent events in Ferguson, some of the major media sources (CNN and some of the networks) have referred to an ‘unknown motive’ on the part of Michael Brown. Yesterday World Net Daily posted an article that might provide the answer to what the ‘unknown motive’ was.

The article reports:

Reporting from the scene, Lemon (CNN’s Don Lemon) said, “Maybe a minute, two minutes ago we heard a gunshot and watched people scattering. And we’re watching people on the roofs of cars, on the tops of cars and … Obviously there’s a smell of marijuana here as well.”

“Lemon’s comments sparked fierce backlash on social media,” reported Toyin Owoseje of the International Business Times. She said “many members of the online community” accused him of “adding fire to the flames and promoting his own agenda.”

I am not saying that marijuana is to blame for the rioting–I am saying that marijuana impairs judgment and that people under the influence of the drug might do things that they might not do otherwise.

The article also points out something that I have not heard elsewhere:

Rathbone points out that Kevin Torres, a reporter for KUSA in Colorado, where marijuana is legalized, has done a balanced story on the issue, noting that researchers from Harvard and Northwestern University recently found “younger marijuana users are more likely to have learning and mental health problems.” He cited an article from the New England Journal of Medicine showing high THC use being linked to paranoia and psychosis.

Michael Brown was not only high on THC but was apparently preparing to smoke more dope when Officer Wilson caught him walking down the center of a street and asked him to move to the sidewalk. The swisher sweet cigars Brown had stolen from the convenience store are notorious for being used to make marijuana “blunts.”  (emphasis mine)

The media has attempted to paint Michael Brown as an angelic gentle giant. Clearly, that is not the case. Michael Brown was obviously as flawed an individual as the rest of us. His death was unfortunate, but was also the result of choices that he made. If you take the marijuana out of the equation, you have no theft and probably no reason to attack a policeman. Marijuana may be harmless at times, but obviously this time it was fatal.