The proudly ignorant discount the value of words. To them, people who use words to convey important ideas are contemptible. Their brainless brayings are pitched as the voice of the common man, the voice of common sense over intellectualism. Think: Don Bankhead, Pat McKinley, and F. Dick Jones.
Others are more savvy. Slightly.
Following in the footsteps of Dr. Josef Goebbels they are well aware that words do convey meaning. Powerful meaning. These mouthpieces are not particularly articulate themselves, but they know what Fullerton’s Three Blind Mice won’t admit. Words convey meaning; propaganda is power.
It is particularly annoying when an institution that represents itself as an independent, Constitutionally protected entity breezily and contentedly goes along with the bullshit a government promulgates to mischaracterize its criminal malfeasance.
And so we come (finally) to the Orange County Register, a pathetic collection of intellectual flotsam and jetsam, stranded on the beach as the tide of journalistic integrity and competence retreated forever. Composed of sad nitwits like Lou Ponsi, Jim Radcliffe, and David Whiting, this diminishing band of high school newspaper stringers bravely soldiers on, regurgitating the banal nonsense peddled to it by city hall press releases and chamber of commerce newsletters. That’s all they can do, and their paltry livelihoods depend on it.
Ever since the story broke about the homicide of the mentally ill homeless guy, Kelly Thomas, at the hands of the Fullerton PD, the dim bulbs at the Register have fallen all over themselves to pass along a vocabulary intended to diminish the story. First, of course, is the outright stoogery of the tool Whiting. More subtle is the way Ponsi and his ilk have used language to subtly portray as fact the utterly nonsensical.
First it was a “scuffle” and a “tussle;” a veritable pillow fight that went on until Thomas (somehow) “became unconscious.” As the the truth emerged and the hideous images and eyewitness testimony have been revealed, the Defenders of the Faith have decide that well, maybe, just maybe, it was an “altercation” or even, perhaps, an actual “fight.”
A fight. Yes it was a fight. As a Fullerton PD goon’s knee crashed into his windpipe Kelly Thomas fought for air. Then he fought for life itself as six animals beat the life out of him, or stood to the side and watched as it was done to him. Were they laughing as they smashed the Taser handles into Kelly’s face? Register readers will never know.
The animals that murdered Kelly have their own demons they will have to contend with, if, in fact, they are capable of feeling any sense of guilt or remorse at all. But I hope that a particularly low circle of Hell awaits those who, when they had an opportunity to disseminate the truth, decided to join the gang of killers; and did so under the perforated shield of “impartiality.” They are cowards and thieves. They have robbed the public of the truth.
