Monday, August 03, 2009

Conservative columnist slimes gay victims of violent crime

Town Hall columnist Mike Adams isn't known for his good taste when writing about the lgbt community. But I think he has gone too far today in writing about a possible hate crime that happened in July to two gay men in North Carolina.

Adams wrote the piece in what was supposed to be a satirical attack on hate crimes legislation. In pursuit of that vein, he doesn't let anything get the way of his point, such as the facts.

The original situation took place in Wilmington, NC on July 17. In early morning hours, Chaz Housand and Chet Saunders were beaten into unconsciouness by a group of thugs.

Housand suffered broken facial bones and lacerations; Saunders sustained a concussion and internal bruising, and says that his fine motor skills have been impaired. Neither remembers what happened so neither can say whether or not sexual orientation has a role in their attack.

However, there were witnesses to the attack:

Witnesses said three men had beaten the victims and kicked them when they were down.

“This is our town,” one of the suspects had said, before kicking a victim one last time and leaving, according to the account witnesses gave police.

. . .In the hours after the incident, police received multiple tips. First they got a description of the suspects’ vehicle, Blanton said. Then 911 dispatchers received a call telling police the suspects were at a home on Dapple Court.

Officers went to the residence and saw three men, who fit the suspects’ descriptions, sitting in the living room. One of them had blood on his shoe, Blanton said.

. . . Officers charged Melvin Freanthony Spicer, 25; Daniel Minwoo Lee, 21; and Jong Tae Chung, 27, each with one count of assault inflicting serious injury, according to a statement from Officer Crystal Williamson.


So why does Adams slime his way in? Apparently one of the young man who was attacked had been involved in lobbying attempts to change North Carolina's hate crimes legislation.

So, as Adams seems to imply, forget everything else. The young men probably got drunk and deserved whatever happened:

While neither Housand nor Saunders knows exactly what happened, both said they can think of no reason someone would attack them, other than their sexual orientation. I guess what they are saying is that they have easily discernible characteristics, which make them look “obviously gay.”

. . . People like Chaz Housand and Chet Saunders do need something to protect them from their own stupidity. Saunders told the local paper “I never really expected something like this to happen.” Clearly, anyone who believes he can get so drunk that he forgets much of the night in, of all places, downtown Wilmington is suffering from severe intellectual hernia.

So, let me be clear about where I stand on this issue: We should not, especially in a time of deep budgetary crisis, use public funds to protect the drunk and stupid from their own drunkenness and stupidity.

To the extent that the drunk and stupid are given protection from their own poor decision-making it should come from private initiatives. And so I’ve come up with an initiative that will save the North Carolina taxpayers from having to waste precious resources passing new, or modifying old, hate crimes legislation.


It amazes me. Rush Limbaugh and company seems to always praise conservatives for that "rugged individualism" and spirit that made America great.

I see very few conservatives embodying this image. I see a bunch of overpaid thinktank sucking hacks who really need to sit down before they ruin the public discourse any further.

I can't honestly say what happened to Housand and Saunders. But whatever the case may be, they don't deserved to be slimed by anyone, much less Adams.

What a coward.




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8 comments:

Bill S said...

Well, I've said before that Mike Adams is one of the most loathsome columnists writing for the Townhall.
I may as well have stopped at simply "most loathsome".

Cynical Nymph said...

I'm gonna go way out on a limb here and guess that this guy also thinks that rape victims were "asking for it" if they weren't, you know, wearing a burqa.

*sigh*

Buffy said...

Well, you know, those women were drinking and they were dressed rather provocatively. Why should we penalize the men for what they did when the women clearly enticed them? [/sarcasm]

Fiat Lex said...

What amazes me is that this Adams fellow reads a story about a guy who was beaten until he got a concussion, and then blames that guy's memory loss on drinking, which appears nowhere in the story. Rather than, y'know, the memory loss being the result of the concussion. And as for the guy who didn't get a concussion, he was busy getting his facial bones broken. Which is an activity not generally conducive to paying attention to what the bonebreaking thugs are saying.

Adams doesn't even have the excuse of being misinformed. My first knowledge of the Gates arrest case was having a perfectly earnest and sincere person explain to me that:
--Gates had not bothered to make friends with his neighbors, so they didn't recognize him while he was trying to get into the house.
--The cop arrived as Gates was struggling to open a first-floor window from the outside of the house.
--Gates refused to show his ID, which displayed his home address, even when the cop politely requested it, and instead launched into a stream of invective.

Two of those things, as I have since learned, are simply not true, and the other is baseless and prejudicial assumption.

It makes me wonder though, how many people regard Adams as their primary news source for events with political significance. How many people with otherwise fully functioning brains will be misled into repeating this man's slime because news is such a small part of their consciousness, and it's so much easier to be indignant than it is to be compassionate.

Maybe instead of thinking too hard about this, I should just get quietly drunk in the privacy of my own home, and hope that cops don't bust down the door and beat me to a pulp. Cause, y'know, if they did, it would totally be justified.

Sarah said...

The humor in this is that they were knocked out with their first hit. And holy crap, has no one ever been drunk before?
If not a hate crime, why else would someone do this and why would they say 'this is our town'? People like yourself show me the true meaning of ignorance.

BlackTsunami said...

Folks, I don't think Sarah meant that as an insult to me.

I think she was referring to Mike Adams. She is the sister of one of the victims and has created a webpage about the situation (http://chazmedical.blogspot.com/)

I warn you that it is intense. But it is also needed.

Sarah, my prayers go out to your brother and his friend. Stay strong ;p

afriKa said...

I post to that idiotic web site all the time, under the name afriKa. Many of the people there are respectable, but they are in the minority. There was, AND STILL IS, a lengthy discussion on the article at TownHall, filled with the most ludicrous trolls, who blame society's ills on The Homosexuals. They also presume anyone who opposes them is a gay activist, as if ordinary citizens cannot see that homophobia is loathsome.


Why not go over and voice your views?

http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2009/08/03/the_pink_berets

afriKa said...

I just went there and posted the below to all Adams most recent columns, and I will continue to. That guy is a TOTAL mo-ron.

=====

Just a bit of what Adams ridicules in his August 3 column:

http://chazmedical.blogspot.com/

An excerpt:
"After the bar was closing, he and his roommate were leaving. Before they made it 10 steps, they were both knocked unconscious from behind by 3 young men. While unconscious, they were severely beaten and left to die, while still unconscious and losing large amounts of blood. Their attackers walked away (slowly, no running or panicking), bragging about it, believing they were dead.

In the ER, Chaz awoke 10 hours later, remembering only walking out of the bar and then being hit and that was as far as his unconscious memory would serve him. The trauma center spoke of the fact that one more kick would have pushed the already broken orbital and cheek bones into Chaz’s brain and killed him instantly. His first hour in ER, they believed he was NOT going to make it. They used every technician on duty and every piece of equipment they had."

Why is such a person admired by anyone?

afriKa