Saturday, February 09, 2008

Mass Murderer was a “Hero,” Say Blacks

By Nicholas Stix
Last updated at 5:04 p.m., Saturday, February 9, 2008.

Kirkwood, Missouri Police Sergeant William Biggs, 50. KPD Officer Tom Ballman, 37. Director of Public Works Kenneth Yost, 61. Councilman Michael H.T. Lynch, 63. Councilwoman Connie Karr, 51.

All dead, all white.

Mayor Mike Swoboda, age unknown. Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith, 36.

Both wounded, both white.

Shooter Charles “Cookie” Thornton, 52, black.

Sergeant Biggs was a “cool, calm” man who had been a cattle rancher in Colorado, before returning home to the St. Louis County area to become a Kirkwood city policeman 20 years ago.

Officer Ballman had been a Marine, a corrections officer for two years, and a Kirkwood city policeman for eight. The old Marine’s ability to defuse prison conflicts was legendary.

DPW Kenneth Yost, known both for his strict adherence to rules, and for his helpfulness towards citizens navigating the city codes, had been married for 41 years to his high school sweetheart, the former Cathy Voss.

Councilman Michael Lynch was an architect and Special Business District booster.

Councilwoman Connie Karr, a former journalist, planned on running for mayor.

Charles Thornton was a local businessman who owned an asphalt company. He didn’t see why he should have to obey the local parking regulations, which he deemed “racist,” and had thereby amassed 150 parking tickets for illegally parking his asphalt mixing trucks. He had taken to disrupting City Council meetings, and when he got himself arrested twice for disorderly conduct in 2006—with Officer Ballman serving as the arresting officer both times—he filed suit in Federal Court, charging that his First Amendment rights had been violated. His suit had been thrown out of court last month.

The city had considered barring Thornton from all Council meetings but, considering him a harmless nuisance, dropped the idea.

Although Charles Thornton wasn’t interested in killing any non-whites, the shootings of Thursday night's Kirkwood Massacre weren’t racially motivated. Black-on-white mass murders and execution-style murders and torture-rape-murders (see also: here and here) never are. Just ask any expert.

And yet, at a community meeting in a local black community, Meacham Park, Ben Gordon said,

To me, Charles Thornton is a hero. He opened a business. He went to court, but the system failed him. … We are sorry, we grieve, but (Kirkwood officials) share in this responsibility.

Gordon was quoted in “Shooting reactions reveal racial divide,” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Adam Jadhav, Jake Wagman, and Tim O'Neil. At first reading, I thought that the reporter who quoted Ben Gordon had neglected to ask him for whom he was sorry, for whom he was grieving. But then I went back and re-read an earlier section of the story, and got my answer.

Many say they are sickened by Thornton's brand of vigilantism. But others say they're left outside the mainstream and oppressed by unfair rules. Those people mourned Thornton and directed their anger back at Kirkwood officials.

The killer’s (or is it “hero’s”?) brother, Gerald Thornton, said “This was an act of war by my brother. He had people that he was in battle with.”

Gerald Thornton has refused to “judge” his brother. English translation: He supports what he did.

And Gerald Thornton possesses expertise in such matters: He murdered a man in 1996, and did five years in prison for it, yet another victim of racially discriminatory sentencing.

If you’re a Thornton, you’ve got to “represent.” Family and racial traditions are at stake.

In case you were wondering, Charles Thornton is dead.

Carrying a gun from home, Thornton approached Sgt. Biggs, who was standing on the street outside of City Hall, where the City Council was meeting, shot him dead, and took his weapon. But before Thornton shot Sgt. Biggs, the policeman managed to hit the “alert tone on his radio,” to summon backup. In the City Council chambers, Thornton entered shouting something about “justice” and “Shoot the Mayor!” and firing away with both guns, killed Officer Ballman first.

Thornton chased white City Attorney John Hessel around the room. Hessel told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Steve Giegerich that he yelled, “Cookie, don't do this, don't kill me. I'm not going to let you do this.' I picked up a chair and threw it at him.”

Between Thornton having to duck, as Hessel threw one chair after another at him, and his stumbling over victim Kenneth Yost’s body, Hessel bought enough time, so that he was still alive when two officers responding to Sgt. Biggs’ distress signal arrived, and shot Thornton dead.

But the massacre wasn’t racial. It wasn’t racial. It wasn’t racial. Just repeat that to yourself a million times. And if that doesn’t work, sign up for some more diversity training—I’m sure you’ve already had some; haven’t we all?—so you can learn that white racism drove Charles Thornton to do what he did, even though what he did wasn’t racially motivated. And if that doesn’t work, try and wash away the contradictions, with a fifth of scotch.

Every white in the world could commit suicide, and blacks would still blame the “legacy of (white) racism” for all of their problems.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the experts and police chiefs and reporters and editors and tenured professors who constantly tell us that these black-on-white atrocities aren’t racially motivated, is that blacks don’t believe that for a second. They know that they are racially motivated, they say so, and they celebrate them for it.

As Gerald Thornton said of his brother, he went to war. You may not be interested in race war, but race war is interested in you.

* * *


Greetings to readers from VDARE, Cassandra Redux, and Mangan’s Miscellany. Why no trackback appears from VDARE is a googlian mystery, but I know that VDARE’s James Fulford has blogged on and linked to this article.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

The city of Kirkwood did not have a racist motive with Cookie Thornton. This war goes back many years to when Kirkwood annexed Meachem Park. The citizens and businesses in meachem park were harrassed to no end by the city.
My business was forced out by the city in such ways that the term war , is the best way to describe it. Kirkwood took away many peoples rights and destroyed their lives, made promises they had no intention of keeping.
They used a technique I call selective code enforcement. in my case they even took my landlords
land with the promise that the city would go easy on him if he did this. For a short period of time, the code officials would back off of their trumped up code violations. but let a few months pass, and they were right back there
herrassing property owners and businesses in a gestapo like fashon.
I was forced out. The city forced my landloard to evict me using this tactic. I was doing research of all the documents related to the code violations the city filed, in the kirkwood building department office when I found a handwritten note written by the head building inspector saying that my landloard would " do whatever it takes to get me out of the building" The building inspector was sitting right across from me at the table. we were discussing the various code citations against me and my laandloard when I when I told him what was on the note. he said "no way". I had the note in my hand, I turned the note around and showed it to him. he grabbed the note out of my hand crumpled it up and got up from the table and said GET OUT OF HERE and demanded that I get on the other side of the counter, out in the hallway, then he said this conversation was over and that he was calling the police. About 4 weeks later I was evicted. I was the best tennant in the building, always paid my rent on time, did things to bring the whole building up to code and helped him in many ways.
I could go on and on for days, I've got 2 inches of documents that show all the abuses the city put on just me, let alone the promises the city made such as assistance to relocate and financial support.
I was very lucky because I inherited some money, not a lot, but enough to relocate my business.
Three times I've been caught up in the repurcussions of eminent domain and abuse of personal property rights and have gotten the short end of the stick.
Am I going to go out and kill 5 people hell no, do I understand Cookie Thornton's rage ? the answer is yes. Do I understand the anger of the people of Meacham Park? the answer is yes. Should there be an investigation of the effects of Kirkwood taking over Meacham Park? the answer is YES.
Do the citizens of Kirkwood have any idea what really went on with the annexation of Meacham Park and the many many human abuses at the hand of thecity of Kirkwood? the answer is NO. will they ever? the answer is NO. Is it sad that many prominent businessmen who knew Cookie and did business with him and supported him would just say "well thats Cookie" with a chuckle and hope his strife would go away? yes it is, 5 people are dead. Did anyone EVER show Cookie any support and understanding in any of these prrocedings? I think I did once,back in 1999, but it was strictly by accident because I was at the courthouse for "selective code violations" myself. I just said that the city was oversteping their bounds.
Other then me, i doubt too many other people did.
I could go on and on, but what I have to tell and say will fall on deaf and denying ears. Will I ever live in Kirkwood? only when there are many changes made,
It is time the people of Kirkwood realize that instead of saving a few trees or saving the "historical integrety" of their neighborhood is not the most important thing. Perhaps saving the individual rights of people in
all of Kirkwood would be a more noble thing to do.

My race? Does it matter?

My hopes? I hope some collage does some research on the effects of the annexation of Meacham Park
and the impact it had on all of the people that were affected.
I don't know for sure, but my bet is the research would not bode well for society, or the Tax increment financing lobbyist's

May God Help Us All






rds

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir,

Thank you for writing. I have no idea whether what you say is true, or whether, even if I accepted your report regarding your particular case, it is true to the degree you say it is. I do share your hope, however, that some honest researcher—whether an academic or a journalist, or a team of same—will study the charges you have made about the Kirkwood municipal government. I also share your pessimism that that will ever happen.

I am going to append your letter to later submissions of this column, but I cannot guarantee that anyone else will publish the column.

Anonymous said...

P.S. For what it's worth, I'm sorry if the government terrorized you.

Anonymous said...

I have no reason to lie. This horrible event has brought back many memories of what happened to my wife and I, as well as many others from the late 1990's which
I've put in the back of my mind and never wanted to think of again.
My stomach is churning as I slowly type this reply. Thoughts that were suppressed, I will be reminded of almost every day for the rest of my life. I will remember this tragedy long after the news media is gone and the bloody carpet is removed,
"With Liberty and Justice for All" and "The Golden Rule" is how I was raised. It's only a pipe dream.

Anonymous said...

Nicholas Stix, well done. It was obviously a racially motivated crime. I am saddened by the decline of civil discourse and increase of violence by Blacks who can't seem to find alternatives for their frustrations other than picking up a gun and start shooting.

I don't care how "unfair" Kirkwood's practices are or were. It still doesn't justify mass murder or ethnic warfare. Shame on those who defend such an atrocity.

Anonymous said...

I've been monitoring racially motivated black-on-white murder for almost 20 years. The reaction is the same today as it was in the 1980s (and probably before).

1. The media will not report the race of the white victims or the black murderer.

2. Once some racial information leeks out, they will bring in a phalanx of "experts" who can assure us the motive was not racial.

3. Blacks interviewed will express unqualified support the murderer. Some will say he went about it the wrong way. But almost all will "understand" why he did it: to fight white "racism" which is the cause of 100% of their problems.

4. Whites will not organize, march or even complain very much. In fact, they will defensively assure everyone that they are not racist. The murder will not be linked to the thousands of similar cases of racially motivated black-on-white murder.

5. There will be no talk of hate crime charges or including the murder in "diversity" seminars or in multicultural school curriculum. That would be reserved for the James Byrd, Medgar Evers and Emmett Till murders.

6. A handful of whites will get an excellent education on the real meaning of racism in America. Children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends will grieve in silence, but they are white so nobody cares. Nothing will change. Blacks will go on killing whites (and other non-blacks) because of their skin color. Schools, the media, universities, politicians, churches, businesses and every other institution will go on endlessly about white racism and black victimization. Blacks will get more racist. Whites will get even more weak and timid.

7. Repeat cycle.

Anonymous said...

Whites are not tribal, unlike the other groups in this country.

Nicholas should compare the Jena 6 "incident," to the mass murder at the My-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving, Texas from a few years agp. The assailant was black; the victims were white and Hispanic. I cannot even find mention of it even with the aid of Google. I had to use Dogpile, the meta search engine, to find it. http://www.vpc.org/studies/wgun000320.htm

Now do the same for "Jena 6" with Google. There are well over one million entries.

Blacks are DVGs, as in "Designated Victim Group." John Derbyshire concocted this term. The whole of the Democratic Party consists of nothing but DVGs.

Make sense now?

Howard said...

I like the part when you said," if every White committed suicide blacks would still blame them for their problems." That's true.

Anonymous said...

All the murdered were government parasites, so it was a win-win situation.
More attacks like this are needed to get the much-needed civil war started.

susanna said...

Just had to comment on the post from "chester" recounting how big, mean
white people forcibly annexed poor innocent little Meacham Park.

I lived in St Louis for many years, and still have relatives who live near
Kirkwood. "chester's" comments are a load of nonsense.

Meacham Park is a little bit of ghetto in the middle of the burbs. In
reality, the residents of MP voted overwhelmingly for annexation because it
meant lots of white taxpayer money flowing their way. Kirkwood and St Louis
County have spent gazillions of dollars on MP over the years -- and in
return have received what white liberals usually get. Just Google
"community development meacham park" and you'll see what I mean. Here's a
city of Kirkwood web site with a few of the details
http://www.ci.kirkwood.mo.us/com-dev/meacham-intro.htm

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"Nicholas Stix, well done. It was obviously a racially motivated crime. I am saddened by the decline of civil discourse and increase of violence by Blacks who can't seem to find alternatives for their frustrations other than picking up a gun and start shooting.

"I don't care how 'unfair' Kirkwood's practices are or were. It still doesn't justify mass murder or ethnic warfare. Shame on those who defend such an atrocity."

Sunday, February 10, 2008 2:02:00 AM PST

Thank you. Beyond blacks' response to their frustrations, the frustrations themselves tend to be insane. A phrase was coined during the 1960s to describe black nationalists' insatiable demands: "People who won't take 'yes' for an answer."

And those demands have since been adopted by the overwhelming majority of blacks.

The demands are put in a rhetoric that says, "This is what is due us, based on the requirements of justice, and to make America whole," just as Michelle Obama now says that whites are obliged to vote for her husband in the primaries and the general election for the same reasons. But the mentality behind the rhetoric (including the case of Michelle Obama), which readily becomes apparent to anyone with a lick of sense who is watching and listening is, "We hate you now, and we will hate you always, no matter what you give us (which is just given out of fear, anyway), and we will take everything you have, and then destroy you."

I believe that the truth is the opposite of what black racists and white leftists say, and the truth bears me out: It was not withholding things from blacks that led to their riots and reign of violence, it was giving them almost everything under the sun.

Historian Fred Siegel, a self-described social democrat, has written extensively on this history, both in his book, The Future Once Happened Here, and in many writings available for free on the 'Net.

Anonymous said...

Blogger susanna said...

"Just had to comment on the post from 'chester' recounting how big, mean white people forcibly annexed poor innocent little Meacham Park.

"I lived in St Louis for many years, and still have relatives who live near Kirkwood. 'chester's' comments are a load of nonsense.

"Meacham Park is a little bit of ghetto in the middle of the burbs. In reality, the residents of MP voted overwhelmingly for annexation because it meant lots of white taxpayer money flowing their way. Kirkwood and St Louis County have spent gazillions of dollars on MP over the years -- and in return have received what white liberals usually get. Just Google 'community development meacham park' and you'll see what I mean. Here's a
city of Kirkwood web site with a few of the details

"http://www.ci.kirkwood.mo.us/
com-dev/meacham-intro.htm"

Monday, February 11, 2008 12:30:00 PM PST

Thanks for the heads-up, susanna. I googled, and ended up at the link you had given me.

Those awful white people were giving blacks living in $20,000 homes new $90,000 homes, and not requiring they pay back one cent of the difference. And giving black homeowners who weren't eligible for the buyout free, $37,000 "loans."

Oh, the horror! Oh, the oppression! No wonder the blacks of Meacham Park are outraged, and support Charles Thornton.

I say, give me and mine some of that horror and oppression and "free" money.

As my mother always says, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Anonymous said...

I want to send my condolences to the innocent victims of this killing spree. They need to be foremost in everyone's thoughts on this.

You're absolutely right. It was a racist killing spree.

What makes me even sicker is the one-sided media coverage. An hour or 2 after the killings a mini press conference was held with just one of the shooter's brother. No victims' families, just the shooter's brother. He was lamenting how the system had pushed his brother to this. How disgusting. No lamenting the victims, just making excuses for his lowlife murdering brother. Then the next day the shooter's wife and 2 other family members were all dressed in black, scowling at the cameras, and made a half hearted "we're sorry" statement and then spent the next few minutes explaining they needed sympathy too, they suffered loss, etc.

This black disregard for others is rampant. It shows up a lot in those "Shocking Video" style TV shows. The way they get so violent so quickly against anybody you can tell that they don't fear the consequences. Because often there are no consequences.

I just wish more white people were upset about this. I wish whites had more of the self righteousness that blacks do, too.

Anonymous said...

No ghetto dweller I have known likes to think of themselves as a part of the ghetto problem.
In their minds, they are all "surviving the ghetto".

When pushed, prodded and chivvied to clean up and fly right, they often fight back with remarkable tenacity as did Mr. Thornton.

They can warmly fantasize about living in a lovely house with well trimmed yards, but never imagine their neighbors telling them to keep the noise down, bathe regularly, pick up the dirty diapers strewn around the yard, stop taking short cuts across other people's yards, and remove disabled junkers from the streets.

As one black neighbor in a "changing neighborhood" told me, "if you don't like me honking my car horn at 6AM to wake my grandson up for school, just move to the suburbs."

So we did.

Mr. Thornton apparently liked parking his tar-encrusted vehicle wherever he desired and did not want to "waste" money renting an empty lot in a distant industial area where he could park his vehicles. He saw it as racial oppression. I fear many ghetto folks do.

The resentment is not unique to black folks, however. There are a tens of millions of us who do not like to get up early and drive far away to work, who don't like to mow our grass, who don't like to pick up trash in our yard, who don't like to paint our house, and who don't like to rent a parking space somewhere else for our extra vehicles.

We do it because we recognize that nice neighborhoods are not "found" but are created by everyone working together and sacrificing.

This lesson of mutual obligations and mutual restraints is something that black ghetto dwellers like Mr. Thornton cannot understand. I doubt he imagined he would ever have to "act white" when Meacham Park was annexed.

Like a primitive cargo cult, ghetto dwellers think that when the white folks take over, the houses will miraculously get painted, the yards picked up, the streets and sewers magically installed, and it will cost them nothing and not discomfit them, because the white folks of Kirkwood have some strange magical power to make a town, a city, a country beautiful, while still letting us park our asphalt trucks and paving machines wherever they like.

In many ways I think it is unfair to expect ghetto dwellers to adapt to a modern, "code-dominated" white culture. Personal freedom to live the way they like, much like the attitudes of white Ozark Hillbillies live (I grew up among them, so I know whereof I speak) is a guiding principle of their lives.

Before the annexation, someone really needed to take the folks of Meacham Park aside and explain to them the cost of living in a white town: you will have to get up to go to work, bathe regularly, pay your taxes, cut your grass, clean the trash out of your yards, paint your houses, keep your broken down cars off the streets, stop having loud parties until one AM in your backyards, ask permission before adding a lean-to to your house, etc. Someone should have madde it clear what the personal costs of living white would be.

If you do not, the frustration of having to live white -- to act white -- combined with the visceral white hatred taught by such preachers like Obama's minister can have bloody results.

My advice? Let them live in their ghetto. Don't try to reform them or improve them, and don't believe them when they say that is what they want. They don't, not really.

... that is, not unless the white folks can make it happen "magically" and at no cost to them.

Anonymous said...

Stix, I believe the wise course here is not to tether your wagon too tightly to this one.

I salute you for the yeoman work you've done thus far exposing not just black-on-white crime, but the unholy marriage of entitlement and remorselessness that animates a too-large swath of the black community. It's truly the unreported tap-dancing elephant in the living room, and must be confronted.

But this story, heinous as the Thornton clan undoubtedly are, is too thorny with secondary plot-threads (such as Chester catalogued, and rather eloquently) to make the Kirkwood Massacre the slam-dunk it first appears to be. I think violent black racism is simply too urgent a national emergency to risk losing the focus by getting tangled underfoot in a case which, were Thornton a white man, might be applauded in a burst of involuntary schadenfreude by more than a few law-abiding white folks who've themselves been driven to/past the point of despair by the tinpot martinets and outright fixers who all too often "govern" us - particularly in quiet, out-of-the-way zip codes where municipal corruption isn't going to draw the interest of outsiders.

Besides, it isn't as though the next horrific black-on-white atrocity isn't right around the corner. They always are. Can you imagine how many Knoxvilles and Wichitas there'll be, for instance, should anything untoward befall Golden Boy Obama this summer?

Nicholas said...

Thank you for your kind words and for your advice, Ragno. When first I read Chester’s response, I thought the same thing. But the more I delved into the matter, the less connection I saw between Chester’s complaints and Charles Thornton.

Another reader, Susanna, sent a link about the eminent domain issue.

http://www.ci.kirkwood.
mo.us/com-dev/meacham-
intro.htm

If the City of Kirkwood is to be believed, black homeowners in Meacham Park in the area that was turned into the shopping mall made off like bandits. The City replaced $20,000 homes there with new, $90,000 homes elsewhere in M.P. Cost to the black homeowners for the difference: $0. (Remember, this is pre-Kelo.) Black homeowners who were not in the area slated for the shopping mall, and thus ineligible for the 20K-for-90K deal received “loans” for up to $37,000 in home improvements that did not have to be paid back. The developer created a leafy buffer zone between the mall and the closest homes, so the residents wouldn’t have to look out on the mall. And the blacks of Meacham Park got racial set-asides and first call on jobs building the project, and in businesses that were housed there.

If that’s oppression, I want me some.

If anyone benefited from the annexation of Meacham Park, which the blacks there overwhelmingly voted in favor of, it was those blacks, the developer, and the Kirkwood swells, whose palms he greased or who owned a piece of the operation. As for those who were harmed, that would be the middle and working-class whites of St. Louis County, who paid for the project through additional “TIF” taxes, and in particular, the whites of Kirkwood, who now had to share their public services with the blacks of Meacham Park, and lose family members murdered by racist, Meacham Park blacks.

Let’s look at Thornton’s law suit. He did not charge that he was the victim of discrimination, in getting so many tickets and fines, or that the City of Kirkwood was waging a war to dispossess black residents of Meacham Park through eminent domain. (BTW, while Chester’s landlord may have been forced out, that does not mean that the City refused to recompense him. I’m not sure Chester would be in a position to know that, although he’s free to correct me on the matter.) Rather, Thornton claimed to have been the victim of discrimination for having not been permitted to disrupt City Council meetings at will. Note that Thornton represented himself in federal court. As the old saying goes, “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

http://www.firstamendment
center.org/analysis.aspx?
id=19647

Let’s look at Thornton’s black defenders.

http://wikilou.com/wiki/index.php?title=Opinion:_Kirkwood_racism_boils_over_into_violence

http://www.pubdef.net/2008/02/obs-all-we-want-is-justice.html

All they have on their side are lies and the same attitude I have talked about before: A black man has the right to kill any whites who get in his way. (I’ve received some off-the-wall letters, too, from scholars schooled in the Black Supremacist Jailhouse Theory of Law.)

The anonymous wikilou guy can’t even get the smallest facts straight, such as that Thornton left home with one gun, not two.

Perhaps the most despicable of his many lies is his claim that the Kirkwood police were somehow responsible for the July 5, 2005 death of then-19-year-old street thug Kevin Johnson’s 12-year-old half-brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long, of heart failure, and thus that Kevin Johnson was justified in murdering KPD Officer Bill McEntee (who wasn’t even present at Boom Boom’s death) two hours later.

(By the way, blacks have already vandalized the memorial to McEntee.)

If Thornton had any sort of legitimate beef, as opposed to simply black race mania, why can’t blacks come up with anything more than lies and their own black race mania in his defense?

And concerning “martinets” and such, not only did prosecutor Hessel say that he had told Thornton that he was willing to forgive all of the tickets (none of which Thornton had paid), but retired white principal McCallie, an ardent civil rights man and old friend of Thornton’s himself said that Thornton had told him of the offer, but refused to take it, claiming that some sort of “principle” was involved. His defenders say it was a matter of “justice.”

Whenever I hear blacks speak of “justice,” I go for my pistol with one hand, and my wallet with the other.

With all that said, what if Chester has the facts on his side, and the black racists somehow f----d up, and got it right, in spite of themselves?

Well, I’d like to know just what the truth is. If things should be proven to be murkier than they at first appeared, I can live with that. It still wouldn’t justify what Charles Thornton did, and it wouldn’t have any effect on the work I have thus far done exposing black race mania and its violent expression. Exception proves the rule. Besides, murder victims aren’t obliged to be saints, not even in St. Louis County.

Anonymous said...

I hear you - particularly after encountering the same Hassell interview you did late this afternoon. That significantly alters the overall picture.

Not that I wasn't mildly ashamed - which of course I should've been - to have even counselled anyone to avert their eyes from such inhumane butchery as happened in Kirkwood for the sake of pragmatism and sharper talking points.

But like the wiseguys say, it is what it is. Advising you to take a pass on Cookie Thornton in the "hope" that another Colin Ferguson might appear...and it may yet prove the wiser course!....is pretty gruesome testimony, not just to the true state of our union these days, but to the moral compromises that become second nature in battlefield conditions.

We're at war, all right.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

As a white male Republican voter that lives in Kirkwood, Missouri, I've probably got the greatest claim to "being a minority" around here.

I've resisted blogging on this topic because it is a little "too close to home" for me, mind the pun. The shootings took place roughly 10 blocks away from here.

As I said over on the Autonomist blog, there are plenty of examples of black-on-white murder sprees with a racist motivation. This isn't one of them.

But in the aftermath of the killings, it's damned shameful that Thornton's family have made their disgraceful comments and the Meacham Park neighborhood "community leaders" are making a race martyr of Cookie Thornton.

But, I knew Cookie Thornton. He was no racist, and if it were another black man that went in and killed the city council, the Cookie I knew would be arguing against these same "community leaders" and chiding them not to make a racial firestorm out of it. Cookie had many white friends, and actually was well liked in the community, at least outside City Hall.

But, it wasn't another black man that killed people, it was Cookie.

That's the most shocking thing to me.

Chester's post above about "selective code enforcement" is a bullseye. That's precisely what this is about.

For me, the math is simple.

White Democrats vs. a black man trying to make a living without resorting to drug dealing or pimping or falling into the welfare recipient lifestyle. The Democrat dominated city government of Kirkwood wasn't going to stand for that.

Had Cookie resorted to the "thug gangsta" stereotypical "black" lifestyle rather than attempt to be a self-employed legitimate businessman, he'd have never been harrassed. Especially if he ran a crack house or meth lab in Meacham Park.

What Cookie did was wrong, I can't make excuses for it.

I just know this town's politics and knew Cookie Thorton well enough to know the shootings were politically motivated, not racially motivated.

That doesn't take the sting out the wrongness of Cookie's actions, because ultimately whatever point he was trying to make before he went off the deep end is now lost.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I think it should be pointed out a not less than a few of St. Louis' TV news personalities also live in Kirkwood, and have a stake in selling controversy rather than news. That definitely has an effect on how the story is told, or rather not told.

St. Louis itself is divided into two political parties - white Democrats and black Democrats, and they fight each other quite fiercely. Mostly a spectacle for the media that thrives on heightened racial tensions.

To this Republican's eyes, the solution is simple. Look at how "red" Missouri is outside "blue" St. Louis county and city.

Where ever Democrats rule, chaos reigns.

But somehow, it's always "Republicans" that "scare blacks away from the polls" in these Democrat controlled districts.

You'd think Bull Connor was a Republican and Martin Luther King a Democrat, to accept this clear ignorance, brought to us by...

...Democrat dominated media, education / teachers unions, etc.

It's a sickness.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

If the City of Kirkwood is to be believed, black homeowners in Meacham Park in the area that was turned into the shopping mall made off like bandits. The City replaced $20,000 homes there with new, $90,000 homes elsewhere in M.P. Cost to the black homeowners for the difference: $0. (Remember, this is pre-Kelo.) Black homeowners who were not in the area slated for the shopping mall, and thus ineligible for the 20K-for-90K deal received “loans” for up to $37,000 in home improvements that did not have to be paid back. The developer created a leafy buffer zone between the mall and the closest homes, so the residents wouldn’t have to look out on the mall. And the blacks of Meacham Park got racial set-asides and first call on jobs building the project, and in businesses that were housed there.

If that’s oppression, I want me some.


No you don't.

Not if the assessed annual property taxes on your home suddenly jumps up higher than your income level can afford to pay.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

(By the way, blacks have already vandalized the memorial to McEntee.)

Uh, no.

The memorial, which stands roughly 30 or so feet outside the back door of the Kirkwood Police Department, has not been vandalized, nor (as of this writing) does it appear to have ever been vandalized.

(Unless there's another memorial here in my town no one knows about)

I think we can call this attempt at race war hype a foul ball.

Anonymous said...

For the record: I'm the one who wrote the WikiLou article. It was written the morning after the shooting, when the tiny details were not yet clear or reported (such as him having two guns, but only leaving home with one). Also, I'm white. And yes, I do sympathize with Cookie. Never knew him myself. I certainly don't sympathize with you racist bastards.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous [Coward] said...

"For the record: I'm the one who wrote the WikiLou article. It was written the morning after the shooting, when the tiny details were not yet clear or reported (such as him having two guns, but only leaving home with one). Also, I'm white. And yes, I do sympathize with Cookie. Never knew him myself. I certainly don't sympathize with you racist bastards."
Thursday, April 3, 2008 5:03:00 AM PDT

So, let me get this right. You openly sympathize with a racist mass murderer, simply because he was black and his victims were white, but I'm a "racist bastard"?

Wrong. You are the racist; indeed, you are the face of white racism today.

Unknown said...

Nick -

Mom is in the ICU - cardiac thoracic unit at Long Island Jewish Hospital. She is having the triple bypass surgery on Monday. Surgeon gave her very good odds of survival. You can reach her by calling the nursing station, they will connect you to her room.

Phillip Logan said...

It's been some years since I lived in the St. Louis area. Haven't kept fully aware of what's gone on there, but if Kirkwood annexed the Meacham Park cesspool those Kirkwood politicians must have lost their minds. If so, I hope the voters sent them back to their gated, guarded communities and got that abomination reversed.--PL