Righteous indignation buttressed by ignorance is an uncanny combination, even though it made “Archie Bunker” famous.
Friday, Kirsten John Foy, Northeast regional director for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, channeled his inner Archie Bunker when asked about the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association naming Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke man of the year.
Clarke, a ferocious critic of Black Lives Matter who spoke at the GOP convention, is black. But Foy somehow finds him reminiscent of the notorious white racist Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor.
Why exactly?
“I think of Mr. Clarke the same way I regard Bull Connor, the same kind of law enforcement officer who would sick fire hoses and dogs on elderly women,” Foy emoted to the New York Daily News. “I think he has a disregard for people of color. He has allowed the power that comes with the badge or the gun to cloud his true mission or perspective.”
Hello? Foy got the age group backwards.
Connor is notorious for unleashing fire hoses and dogs on young blacks, particularly children–not elderly women or men–during the 1963 Birmingham civil rights protests. Doesn’t anybody who at least graduated from junior high school know that?
Here is a good re-cap from PBS.org.
“Connor calls out his police dogs. Firemen turn on high-pressure hoses. When the water hits the children, they are thrown on the ground and roll screaming down the street. Police dogs bite three teenagers so badly they have to be taken to the hospital. A small girl and her mother who kneel to pray on the steps of city hall are arrested and taken to jail. Seventy-five children are squeezed into a cell built for eight prisoners. Television cameras capture, and broadcast worldwide, what is happening to Birmingham’s children.”
Another harrowing account, published in 2013, also doesn’t mention old folks. “In May 1963, thousands of Birmingham school children faced police dogs, fire hoses, and possible arrest to demonstrate against segregation,” wrote “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” reporter Kim Lawton. ”As hundreds more children showed up to demonstrate and face possible arrest, Birmingham police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor was anxious to restore order. He instructed his forces to bring out the fire hoses and the police dogs. Some of the most shocking confrontations happened in Kelly Ingram Park, where officials turned the water hoses against the marching children.”
Nothing online could be located today to indicate Connor targeted the elderly. Even more troubling than the historical inversion, Foy provided no evidence that Clarke brutalizes protesters of any age. The Daily News apparently didn’t bother to ask him for any examples.
Maybe one of these days journalists, particularly in Washington, can act like reporters and not stenographers?
If somebody with an overt racialist political agenda wants to equate a well-respected law enforcement figure with the most notoriously racist and brutal police official in American history shouldn’t he at least be asked to provide some evidence?
Or at least display a minimal understanding of the historical figure he is referencing?
Apparently not.
Foy did not respond to messages.