Many White Americans still clueless on Ferguson, finds Pew poll

Not surprising, but still very disturbing results from a Pew poll on the Ferguson situation.

47% of White Americans think “race is getting too much attention” in a story of nearly exclusively White police forces openly oppressing and attacking a two-thirds Black community after shooting down an unarmed Black kid without any known probable cause at the time.

Meanwhile, only one third of White Americans believe the “police response has gone too far.” You know, the response where police are firing dangerous nerve gas and bullet-alternatives (which have killed people in other cases) into crowds with children in them.

But in defense of the clueless masses, the mainstream news media reports keep uncritically repeating the fanciful law enforcement claims that they were under siege by “Molotov cocktails” no one has seen and “coordinated” attacks on their command center, which doesn’t seem grounded in reality. So, even if some people still wouldn’t have a problem with the police response when given the real facts of the situation, a larger proportion don’t have access to those facts in the first place to make an accurate assessment.

John Oliver interviews NSA’s Keith Alexander

John Oliver’s first interview on his new show: the head of the NSA. Oliver is already brilliant, just as he was when he guest-hosted The Daily Show last summer. This video is well worth your time.

I really almost choked from laughing when Oliver went off about the deeply misguided “needle in the haystack” metaphor.
Read more