As if the sight of demonstrators showing a group of dopes celebrating outside an LA hospital where two Sheriff's deputies were fighting for their lives after being shot in the head by an unidentified gunman wasn't enough outrage, we also have tweets from an NAACP chapter leader insulting those who were hoping and praying for the deputies' recovery.
On Sunday, Talbert Swan, who is also a church bishop, tweeted this:
And this......
I don't think the first tweet even deserves a response. It is simply too ignorant for words. On the other hand, I feel compelled to say something about the second. Up to this point, I have said nothing about the referenced case in which a young man (Kyle Rittenhouse-17) shot two people to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25 during the violence that was occurring during the Jacob Blake protests. This is a pretty comprehensive video of the incident.
Whatever you think of the video, I think there is a pretty clear distinction between the event in Los Angeles and the Kenosha shooting (and the police shooting of Jacob Blake for that matter). I think Mr Rittenhouse-especially at his age- made a very poor choice of going to Kenosha, Wisconsin from his Illinois home armed with a rifle. Whether he thought he was defending something or he intended to shoot people, I don't know. He should not have been there in the first place, and he should not have taken the rifle. It's not like his own home was being attacked.
That being said, the video shows he was being chased and attacked when he fell to the ground. There was clearly an element of self defense at the moment. It also appears to me that as he was walking away after having shot a couple of people, that the additional shots heard appear (at least to me) as having come from someone else. I think the video shows that someone else was also firing shots somewhere nearby. At any rate, the video will be critical to his defense in court. Whether that will get him off on all possible charges is another matter.
The point I am trying to make here is that Mr Swan made a poor choice of analogies.
The NAACP should be embarrassed at the first tweet issued above by Mr Swan. This is an organization that had a great history before and during the Civil Rights movement. Now it is just a bunch of partisan ideologues in my view. In that regard, Swan's comments are not so surprising. That he is a bishop and would make that comment about Black Lives Matters is very shocking. If he wants to make public statements showing his ignorance is one thing, but he is representing the NAACP, and he is representing his church. (His name on the tweets says he is a bishop.) I will excuse Mr Swan for the Kenosha analogy, but his comment on the LA Sheriff's deputies is shameful.
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