“The Duty of Journalists is to Tell The Truth”

He really needs to update his racist tropes. It should include at least Somali asylum seekers, or at least African immigrants, and mention how black people are also racist. Unless of course he is speaking the truth and knows something about the ethnicity of the rioters that no-one else does. Also I’ve just noticed the scare quotes around black.

No Shelley, the real problem is that immigrants still maintain something of a Caribbean accent and Mr. Myers just can’t understand them as they aren’t talking in Cockney rhyming slang

I haven’t seen any footage of the rioting so I can’t say anything about the racial composition of it, but I might be willing to believe that Myers has seen enough of them to do that. However, I don’t see how he claims to have any evidence that they share “absent father-figures” – and this seems to be important to his claim that the black and white rioters have this in common!

Interesting to call this “telling the truth”. But I guess many journalists don’t actually know the difference between statistical evidence, anecdotes, and wild guesses.

Here’s David Quinn, in the same newspaper, doing almost exactly the same thing:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-left-has-laid-the-groundwork-for-riots-in-ireland-2846388.html

2. Too right, Phillip. Everyone knows its all the fault of the muzzies. This guy is so pre 9/11.

I know nothing of this guy, but I was struck by the resemblance to Kevin Myers:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/35511.html

He’s remarkably blind on how Ireland’s experience with “male authority figures” worked out. Priests, bank managers, ministers, and our own Whitehall class. Heckuva job from them all.

On the general topic of pundit wailing over the riots, the Independent (UK) has a funny roundup of quotes — it reads better in the print edition (with layout and illustrations) than online.

Henry: “Goldberg is not, unless I am very badly mistaken indeed, a bigot in the sense that Kevin Myers is a bigot. He nonetheless appears eager to believe claims about generic European anti-Semitism that are propagated by Mr. Myers, without checking into his sources. ”

Goldberg is a bigot. Pure and simple. Please don’t cover for him.

weakening of patriarchy or perhaps indignity?

http://governingthroughcrime.blogspot.com/

sorry, typo – that should be ‘publishing’

On a similar vein, apparently now when the racial demographics of rioters don’t work out, just claim that rap music and the like means that “the whites have become black.”

I have noticed that certain academics like to take their colleagues’ favorite bogeymen words (such as “patriarchy” in this case) and use them in bold and unexpected ways – sometimes making a reasonable argument in the process, sometimes not.

Yeah, yeah, we’re all good nominalists around here, but isn’t there a way to make stuff work without all the word-trolling?

From the Daily Mail link upthread:

The taller, broader man already holds a pair of white and green trainers and a white T-shirt in his hands. Now, it seems, he wants the trousers too.

Impressive use of euphemism, although failed to mention perpetrator’s sense of rhythm.

The June 2006 issue of mother jones has a long article about the “boston miracle”.
It turns out that the sage du jour, W Bratton, had (a) nothing to do with the boston miracle strategy (which was due to an unkown academic) and (b) was actually advocating counterproductive policys.

Philip @ 2: I was struck by the same thing, the scare quotes.

“Admittedly, not all of the rioters are “black”: clearly, some white youths have joined in.”

Compare with:

“Admittedly, not all of the statements I make here are “true”: clearly, some bullshit has been added in.”

he doesn’t claim that the majority were black but that they were Afro-Caribbean so he seems to have some way of determining the ethnicity of black people from the TV footage.

To be fair, “Afro-Caribbean” is synonymous with “Black” in the UK, just as “African-American” is in the US.
But the broader point is wrong. The rioters in London are more racially integrated than anything outside a Benetton advert.

33: yes, it pretty much is really. Since there are now significant numbers of actual African immigrants in the UK, “Black British” is used as well, but using “Afro-Caribbean” to describe the appearance of someone who’s black would raise few eyebrows.

Well it seemed odd to me, but I’m not going to speak for the restof the UK. I think my point still stands though, he goes on to talk about descendants of immigrants those with a caribbean accent so he is making assumptions about the black rioters which you couldn’t get just by watching the TV footage.

Well, here’s a reporter whose journalistic standards Henry and all of you will surely agree with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyzbZrUdfEg

Harald, the bullshit part of your argument (I here use “bullshit” in Harry Frankfurt’s sense) is the implicit declaration that men who do grow up with present fathers reliably turn out better. In fact it isn’t so. In fact, father-glorifying subcultures seem to get up to all kinds of evil shit at all levels of power and wealth or need and poverty. The FIRE sector isn’t dominated by men from broken homes with absent fathers, nor is the Republican Party here in the US, nor are the Albanian and Croatian communities mentioned above, and so forth and so on. You haven’t done anything like show the restraining, civilizing influence you take for granted.

(It happens that I believe that nuclear and extended families can be forces for great good in the lives of their members. But they can also be forces for great evil, and their virtues can be had other ways by people who want them.)

“Africa” is not a culture. “Africa” doesn’t have just one culture.

Obviously, that is a gross simplification. I am speaking of sub-saharan Africa, in which there were basically gardening and mixed herding, fishing, and gardening economies. However, I would be the first to admit I am no expert in this area. But isn’t it true that these were societies in which children grew up with extended families, as pointed out above?

However, I am not suggesting any sort of determinism. Family structures can change and adapt rapidly — or not, as the case may be.

I do agree that “patriarchy” — which implies the extreme subjugation of women and younger men, is not an unmitigated good thing, to say the least.

The death of Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riot was caused by the incompetence of the NYC hospital system, which failed to notice a second stab wound and allowed him to bleed to death. Recently, my 80 year old uncle fell and was severely injured by a broken dog dish (of all things), and the emergency room failed for an hour to notice huge gash on his food that was bleeding prodigiously and required 24 stitches. Fortunately, his daughter noticed and loudly forced them to attend to it, or he too could have bled to death (this was at Lennox Hill, a luxury East Side hospital). The emergency rooms in NY are as dangerous as the street, especially if you don’t have a relative to advocate for you.

I don’t approve of rioting or stabbing people, needless to say, but running over small children with your car is not admirable either. The aggressive driving habits of the Hasidim are notorious in NYC. Aggression in all its forms is not compatible with urban living (outside of NY hospital emergency rooms).

Ah, the English Conservative party. First tell everyone that there is “no such thing as society”, then complain that people are becoming increasingly antisocial.

Tangurena,

Wow, you must really hate traffic accidents … or jews. Leaving the country does not cause you to avoid a civil suit. Gavin Cato successfully sued the organization that employed the driver. The drivers decision to move to israel was understandable considering the mis-information about the incident that persists, even to this day …

@NomadUK

why is it simply bullshit? care to explain yourself? no one is making any deterministic claims…