But nobody cares, because they’re black?

CBS 2 Chicago reports that over the summer of 2008, more people were shot and killed in the city of Chicago than the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the same period. 123 Chicagoans were killed, while only about 118 soldiers lost their lives.

Where are the protesters demanding a halt to this senseless violence? Where are the Code Pink wingnuts chaining themselves to the doors of the crack houses that serve as recruiting stations for Chicago’s street gangs? Why are the lives of these victims, often women and children who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, less deserving of outraged attention? Where are the convention protesters marching with homemade signs that read “GANGS OUT OF CHICAGO”?

Surely it can’t be true that the Left is content to let our cities remain deathtraps as long as it’s just blacks, Hispanics and Asians killing other blacks, Hispanics, and Asians…can it?

Analysis of Wednesday night speeches at GOP convention

This was the first and probably the only night of either convention that I was actually able to watch almost all of. I’ve already posted below about the GOP’s “minority voices” hour and CNN’s deliberate censorship. This was followed by speeches by Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, two successful CEOs who had been mentioned as possible VP picks. While both came across as substantial, their speeches were boring.

The first major speech of the night was Mitt Romney. I was looking forward to hearing what kind of tack Romney would take. Unfortunately, I thought his speech was a poor one. It sounded like Romney was giving the first speech of his 2012 presidential campaign. He was quite obviously aiming for the right wing of his party and said nothing that would appeal to independent voters. Worse, every time he mentioned the nominees of his party, it sounded as if the speech had originally been written to refer to Romney himself and then edited at the last minute. While Romney’s comments on policy areas seemed genuine, that was the only thing that did. I don’t doubt Romney’s commitment to the ticket – he understands how to play the good soldier – but it’s clearly not motivated by anything more than self-interest. He said nothing about McCain and Palin that couldn’t have been scripted for any generic Republican ticket.

Mike Huckabee spoke next. His speech would have been thoroughly unmemorable except for a terrific story he told about an elementary teacher who had all the desks removed from her classroom to drive home a point to her students about the sacrifices made by our nation’s military veterans. It was powerful and moving, as it was meant to be.

Rudy Giuliani was the warm-up act for Sarah Palin. He gave a strong speech full of criticisms of Obama and Biden and praise of the GOP ticket. Pretty standard stuff, but executed well. He avoided the social issues where his views differ from those of most of the delegates, and the crowd rewarded him with genuine applause.

Then of course it was time for the main event. The media has already analyzed her speech to death, so I’ll limit myself to some brief comments. Governor Palin is clearly an attractive lady, and her wardrobe did not appear to be chosen to hide her femininity. At one point duing her speech, she actually blew a kiss to one of McCain’s fellow POWs in the audience. Her remarks concerning her family, and subsequent interactions with them on stage, seemed very natural. She delivered some brutal barbs toward Obama but with a smile on her face that seemed to rob them of malice, a neat trick. She seemed to be enjoying herself and looked at ease. The vibe she exuded could be summarized as: “I’m a girl, and a damn clever one at that. I’m confident and not afraid of anything so you might want to think twice about messing with me.” Her charisma is undeniable.

The speech was light on policy and strong on partisan rhetoric, but then, it was supposed to be – this is the traditional role of the running mate, and she performed it as well as anyone. Anyone expecting her to fall on her face was disappointed. McCain seemed enormously pleased with himself when he came out and hugged her after her speech. Seeing the two of them side by side, I couldn’t block out the idea that Palin looked like she could be McCain’s daughter – yet it didn’t seem like a negative image. On the contrary, the father figure image, though new to him, seemed to sit well on McCain.

Of course, one speech does not qualify a person for the Vice Presidency. It remains to be seen how Palin will perform in her debate and on the campaign trail. However, I doubt there will be any underestimation of her from this point forward.

Racial diversity at the conventions – The real scoop

I’m getting really irritated by a handful of articles about how lily-white the GOP convention (and by extension, the Republican Party) is. It’s no secret, and hardly news, that the Democratic Party has a much higher percentage of racial minorities than the Republicans do. And we could discuss the various reasons for that. However, what’s disturbing about these pieces is the extent to which the writers deliberately overlook any mitigating factors that might weaken the point. (If an argument requires you to avoid facts, it’s probably not a very good argument.)

Thus, it falls to me to present two points regarding racial diversity at the conventions which you won’t hear from the mainstream media:

Point One: The media have made a big deal out of the fact that you see a lot more black, Hispanic, and Asian faces in the crowd at the DNC than you do at the RNC. And that’s quite true. However, none of these so-called journalists care enough about the truth to remind you that the Democrats have quotas for their state delegations. In other words, Democrats aren’t electing more minorities as convention delegates because they freely choose to do so. They are forced to do so by party rules which specify that a certain percentage of delegates must be women, blacks, Hispanics, etc. The Democratic party, at its core, does not trust its members to actually demonstrate the “commitment to diversity” they like ot talk so much about. So they stage-manage the process to ensure that they have enough smiling black, brown, and yellow faces in the crowd to prove to the media how diverse they are. Now, one could reasonably argue that Democrats would still elect a more diverse delegation than Republicans without the quota. In which case, one is compelled to ask: Why have them? The answer is that they mirror the quotas the Democrats would impose in all aspects of our lives, beginning with our schools and offices. Again, find me one member of the mainstream media who has mentioned this, even though they all know it. I guess it would be too inconvenient to share this truth with the masses.

Point Two: The media has criticized the Republicans for not having minority speakers in prime-time slots. Again, the accusation is true. Republicans simply do not have enough minorities elected to higher office, so their big names tend to be white males. However, note the hypocrisy: Last night the GOP convention devoted an entire hour to speeches by ordinary folks who happen to be minorities – black, Hispanic, Asian. I saw those speeches on C-SPAN, which broadcasts the conventions gavel to gavel with no commentary. However, if you were watching CNN, you would not have seen or heard these speeches, because the network deliberately refused to show them. Instead, their reporter was interviewing the youngest delegate to the convention, a 17-year old blond white boy with a crew cut who even I thought looked like the poster boy for the Hitler Youth.  Later on, switching back and forth between the two networks, I noticed C-SPAN had a lot of camera shots showing ordinary delegates, many white but also showing black faces and Pacific island delegations. On CNN, though, the only delegates whose faces were shown were white, and most of the time they focused on Cindy McCain or other superdelegates.

Question: If the GOP is so bereft of minorities, why is CNN afraid to let voters see the ones that are there?

Again, I’m not trying to pretend that the GOP doesn’t have to do a better job of reaching out to minorities. I’m just trying to illustrate the appalling way in which the media doesn’t trust you to figure these things out yourself, but deliberately manipulates what you see and hear to make *sure* you draw the “correct” conclusions.