So, if someone says something that implies something outrageously false, like Marable's comment implies that the body count of the NYPD is in the neighborhood of the Salvadoran Death squads, then one can't correct it without it being a "spin," a defense of the NYP? Surely you see that this lets the irresponsible make whatever statements they want without refutation.
In Sovietology, a former indulgence of mind. there were people who would make wild estimates of the Stalin death tolls: 20 million! 50 million! 100 million! Twice the population of the USSR-Stalin was so evil that he killed everyone TWICE! Paul Getty has devoted a grim and responsible career to getting the figures right. The documentable Stalin death toll is about 8-10 million, of which 7-8 million are due to the collectivzation famine. Unsurprsingly, Getty has been trashed as a Stalinist apologist.
The analogy should be clear: facts is facts. They don't carea bout your ideology. It's moronic to suggest that the NYPD is as graet a bunchof murderers as the Salvadoran death squads. If they were, Art would long since have been tortured to death and thrown by some street in Harlem or Jamaica, Queens as warning. That doesn't mean the NYPD aren't a menace, especially if you area black male. But they are a menace of a different order--whether it's an order of 12,000:1 or somewhat less, 3200:1, if the 80,000 figure forEl Salvador is right--doesn't matter much. That's not apologetics. It's sanity.
jks
>From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Marable weighs in
>Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 19:07:06
>
>>Carl Remick wrote:
>>
>>>Has it come to this then, clapping the NYPD on the back because it
>>>has a better human rights record than some Latin American death
>>>squad?
>>
>>No. Where in god's name did you get that idea?
>>
>>You spent too much time in PR. You can't read anything without spinning
>>it.
>>
>>Doug
>
>Or rather, I can't read anything without seeing the spin therein. Any
>argument that runs, "The NYPD doesn't look so bad compared to ...," is not
>an argument I'm inclined to heed.
>
>Carl
>
>
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