[Erklärung des Titels / explication du titre.
The subject-line alludes to the old proverb,
“”What’s sauce for
the goose is sauce for the gander.”
A more contemporary equivalent would be, “Turnabout is fair
play.”
It is a wise and spicy saying; for, unlike the sullen, passive plea-or-protest, “Fair’s
fair”, with its insipid and unconvincing tautological form, the quip about the goose and the gander
(Gänserich, jars) points out, with a tasty culinary metaphor, that once you
have described Case A as to be treated by certain general principles, those
same principles may well apply, unexpectedly or against public sentiment, to
Case B.
There doesn’t seem to be any equally savorsome equivalent in
the other languages I’m familiar with.
The best my available dictionaries could do was by Wildhagen: “Was dem einen recht ist, ist dem
andern billig.” So true, so
true; but not near so
well-expressed.
On prie nos lecteurs de nous en fournir de meilleurs.]
[Update 19 July 2013] In today's low-key but eloquent address, the President has made many of the same points we put forward below.
It was a wise, sad speech; sad, because the President is well aware of facts like
these -- to take yet one more example, this from this very day:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bash-mobs-southern-california-20130719,0,1569435.story
[Update 20 July 2013] In France likewise, the bien-pensant
press normally refrains from any mention of the ethnicity of those involved in
large violent public disturbances, even when that fact is key to the
storyline; only, over there, the
ethnicity is different. And again,
French readers are not fooled.
Sometimes the journalist manages to sneak in a tipoff
without explicitly mentioning race creed or national origin: with us, a hoodie, with them, a veil:
Le garçon de 14 ans a été atteint
au cours des affrontements survenus dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi entre
habitants et policiers. Ceux-ci semblent avoir pour origine l'interpellation,
jeudi, d'un homme qui s'était opposé au contrôle de son épouse voilée.
Retour au calme samedi matin à
Trappes1 après une nuit de violences. Habitants et forces de l'ordre se sont
affrontés pendant plusieurs heures, dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi, devant
le commissariat de cette ville des Yvelines, avant de se disperser vers 3
heures du matin à la suite de prières spécifiques au ramadan.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/07/20/01016-20130720ARTFIG00183-retour-au-calme-a-trappes-apres-une-nuit-de-heurts.php?print=true
[Update, an hour later] Really, there is no shortage of such incidents. The following concerns the attacks on
police and looting, alleged to have happened at the scene of the worst train
disaster in France in many years.
Again, no mention of anything … sensitive … but “racailles” is a
code-word, and readers understand:
Brétigny-sur-Orge : «T'as trouvé quoi dans les bagages ?»
Des policiers ont trouvé des SMS
explicites dans le portable de jeunes interpellés le jour du drame. Une enquête
doit être menée pour savoir si les victimes du déraillement du train ont bien
été volées.
Les forces de l'ordre ont-elles été
«caillassées» à Brétigny, comme elles l'affirment, ou simplement accueillies
«de façon un peu rude».
Un texto d'un CRS envoyé à ses
collègues décrit même «des victimes pillées par des racailles». Un tract
de l'Unsa-police s'offusque du fait que «des individus» aient pu «profiter de
la détresse des victimes pour les piller et agresser les intervenants».
Ancien officier de police, élu UMP,
Bruno Beschizza, demande, lui, des explications au ministre de l'Intérieur. «On
s'aperçoit qu'il y a tout une machine d'État qui s'est mise en branle pour
démonter les faits!, s'indigne-t-il. Cela laisse présupposer une vraie chape de
plomb sur beaucoup d'autres incidents ailleurs en France…»
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
~ [the original post] ~
As usual, we are not trying to be political here, but simply
to make a single logical point. I have not been following the case
closely, so it may be that someone (or a hundred people) have made this same
point before, but I haven’t seen or heard it done, despite the point’s being
obvious.
First, if we just consider that narrow slice of
space-time in which Z. is on his back, apparently having been knocked
down by M., and M. is pounding his head against the pavement (vide
photos of the wounds), a plea of
“self-defence” is obviously plausible -- this is no doubt why the
police initially decided not to charge him, until political pressure
built up. Furthermore -- and it is remarkable
that so little comment has been expended on this key legal point -- this
would
seem to be exactly the sort of case that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground”
law was
meant to cover. That law may be ill-advised, whatever; but
the intent of the legislature is here prima facie met.
This defense begins to stick in people’s craw once we allow
our camera to pan back and take in a larger slice of space-time, where we see
Z. persistently looking for trouble -- “asking for it”, some might say.
But this is a grey area, one of shades and degrees, and mere logic has little
to contribute here.
But more starkly evident -- and this is the fact that I have
not seen referred to, an elephant-in-the-room fact, in other words -- is that
this same plea of self-defense could
be claimed by M. -- and would so have
been claimed, with at least equal justification, had chance so decided that the
scuffle over Z.’s gun (which Z. states took place) resulted in the death, not
of M., but of Z.
“At least equal”: actually, more.
For: Here is M., going about his business (possibly contemplating
mischief -- say, burglary, or preferring Brahms to Beethoven, or denying that names are rigid designators -- none
of that is anything to the purpose) when this “creepy-ass cracker” starts
stalking him, in the dark of night. (Some have tried to make hay
out of M.’s use of this colorful and alliterative phrase, but Beowulf would
have loved it, and even the exigent M. Gustav Flaubert would have admitted it
as le mot juste.)
Now,
people wanting to make Z. look bad (and this includes
everyone in the media I usually glance at) keep emphasizing the phrase
“unarmed
black teenager”, as though this a-posteriori assessment were some sort
of Carnapian Protokolsatz, and should have been obvious to Z.
“Gavagai!” he must have exclaimed to himself (on this widespread but
absurd account); meaning, in this instance,
“Lo! A youth, dusky of hue, yet undoubtedly unarmed, though it is too
dark
to tell.” So, we exonerate Z. of the media insinuation.
But this exoneration applies as well
to M. -- and indeed, again, much more
strongly. For here, not only did M. have no basis for assuming
that his pursuer was unarmed: in point of fact, the pursuer was armed, and M. knew this as soon as
he saw the holster (which, in Z.’s own account, M. did).
So now M. can quite reasonably picture himself in peril, not
merely of a beating, but of his life. What is he supposed to do?
Well, according to that same Florida law, he is entitled to stand his ground. And the safest defence in this case
is a good offense: to knock down your pursuer and attempt to wrest away his
deadly weapon.
So the predicament is actually symmetric, though it is never depicted as such: M. and Z., by
that point, had become two scorpions in a bottle. What, then, should the
law do in such a case? Who knows -- hard cases make bad law.
We may notice, though, that historically there is indeed a
whole class of cases of approximate symmetry -- and complete symmetry as
regards the instruments of violence: dueling swords, or pistols at twenty paces.
And the way European law traditionally treated such cases is: The victor got charged with a crime.
[Update, 14 July 2013]
The verdict is in, “Let the healing begin”.
And meanwhile … a spot of non-logical, apolitical, purely
psycholinguistic analysis. To wit:
Every splashy public case like this is, among other things, a kind of
global street-theatre, part of the société
du spectacle. The
principles that rule here, are not those of Frege, nor of the Founding Fathers,
but Freud and Jung. The narrative is shaped according to the
rules of literature and folklore, not forensics.
So, two persistent leitmotivs of the case; both, as in dreams, representing wish-fulfillments:
(1) The phrase “unarmed
black teenager” was repeated ad nauseam,
as though it were a fixed phrase, from which the epithet “unarmed” was inseparable,
like that of the wine-dark sea in
Homer.
One detects a certain repetition-compulsion, as though the
populace were trying to reassure themselves, to allay their anxiety of faceless threatening minorities at
large. (There is also a more
purely Freudian reading, which I shall not go into; as well as a subconscious Christian narrative, which I leave
as an exercise for the reader.)
(2) So what’s
with the Skittles? Over and over
we were told: the kid was carrying
Skittles, as though this were a decisively important (and indeed exculpatory)
element of the case. “You see,
Watson?” exclaims Holmes, as he retrieves the telltale candy-wrapper from the
shrubbery. “Skittles! Just as I suspected.”
~
Was für Krimi liest
wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?
Schauen Sie mal!
~
At the simplest level, what that meant was: “… and not drugs” (though the latter would have been equally irrelevant to the logic of the case). But there is more to it than that.
It really does matter that it was Skittles. It
renders their carrier
folkloristically harmless.
The word itself is cute (skittish
kitten, ittle-bittle); the
actual bonbons are like buttons, small and round and brightly colored, such as
would appeal to a tiny child.
Had the teen instead been carrying some jumbo-size chunky-nut chocolate-knobbly Baby Ruth bar, it would
have been much more unsettling, and swiftly dropped from the press.
*
The two sidelights above could have been noticed by any rhetorician, on the basis of
mere textual frequency. But there
is another aspect of the case that does not yield to linguistic analysis, but
must be intuited.
The case as it played out in court has been less race-based than people anticipated. Partly because (so we have argued above) the logical structure of the matter is entirely race-neutral; partly because people prefer to tiptoe around this issue. But there is another dimension entirely, that has played a role in this case, other than race; and this, almost entirely unremarked-upon. I refer to the matter of gender.
But before I extract that rabbit from the hat -- a word on
methodology. How to spot, that
something is afoot? Not, as in the
case of “unarmed” (used as an inseparable prefix) or “Skittles” (improbably personifying
the victim, month after month):
yet still, by noting an anomaly.
Such a modus operandi
is more characteristic of our colleague Holmes, than of our friend Freud. The latter had the luxury of asking his
patient to free-associate, beginning from anything that struck the good doctor
as salient, whether apparently anomalous or not. Whereas Holmes could not grill the criminal (his identity
yet to be established), nor even (in some cases) question the witnesses. As, in the celebrated case of the
purloined thoroughbred Silver Blaze (as schematized by Wiki):
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is
there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog
in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the
night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
And the key anomaly here, is not anything that anybody said,
or did, but something that the
Defense didn’t do.
~
~ Posthumous Endorsement ~
"If I were alive
today, and in the mood for a gripping mystery,
this is what I'd be
reading: "
(I am Sherlock Holmes, and
I approved this message.)
~
~
~
Legally, as opposed to emotionally, the key to the case was
the plea of self-defense. As we argued above, M. would have had
quite a strong right to such a plea, had the struggle over the gun (if one
took/had-taken place, as Z. contends) had resulted in the death of Z., either accidentally or
deliberately. Now, in
many states, the measures you are permitted to take in your own self-defense are severely circumscribed, even if the
threat is not in question: you can punch back, but not shoot to a punch.
But in Florida, the case of anyone so pleading is significantly
strengthened by the Stand Your Ground law. That, textually;
plus the law in question is not some obscure antebellum statute, but the
recent ratified will of the Florida legislature. A gift to the Defence, on a silver platter. Yet in the actual trial, as opposed to the pre-trial, the
Defense did not avail itself of that.
Why?
Note first how anomalous this is, legally. Typically, the Defense does not stand
on ceremony. The defence
attorney is not looking for a Mr Nice-Guy award, or a Political Correctness
commendation: if he’s any good, he
uses any and all wiles at his disposal to get the guy off. To have forsworn this one, requires comment.
Look again at the name of the (as it turns out)
unmentionable law: “Stand Your Ground!”
Grammatically, it is an imperative; not simply permitting, but enjoining. As such, it is straight out of the world of John Wayne, or
his less-salonfähig successors Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson. And the ethos behind it
speaks deeply to the soul
of any heterosexual male.
You will get no glimpse of this from the bienpensant commentariat:
but the Readers’ Comments, vox
populi, fill you in, with relevant references to Z. being “punked-out”, “sucker-punched”,
or “bitch-slapped”, by the blow
that felled him low, low, despicably low, to the ground. At
that
point, there was nothing he could do but fight back with all available
force, if he was to leave the field a honor with some shred of dignity.
And the same calculus applied to M., harassed and cornered by his
relentless armed pursuer.
That ethos is a fact, going back to prehistory; this is not
to commend it or condemn it. But
the fact is, just as there have lately been a great many laws specifically
tailored to address, or even to pander to, the demands of women, so this law essentially addresses the men.
And the defense attorney looked up and saw a female judge on
the bench, and an all-female jury.
And figured… Um… Let’s just forget that Stand Your Ground stuff.
The white-on-black account, or black-on-Hispanic, does not
capture this dynamic. It was Male
on Male.
*
“Hard cases make bad law,” the saying goes. And the bad laws thus inspired,
engender further hard cases.
Laws passed in the face of pressure from emotional
interest-groups are likely to be
hastily drafted and ill-thought-out. They are intended, after all, not really to work (in
the long term) but (in the short term) merely to appease. (Rule of thumb: Any law named for a specific
victim is likely to be of this
sort. And any law named for a cute little girl, definitely does.)
The “Stand Your Ground” laws, operative in a number of
States, do not quite fall into this category.
But their unintended effect may be pernicious, nonetheless.
*
Falls Sie im
Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium
weiterblättern
möchten,
Bitte hier
klicken:
*
[Update 28 July 2013] )* sigh *( And so it goes …
A Bethesda man was beaten and
robbed early Saturday morning in Adams Morgan by three men who yelled, “This is
for Trayvon Martin,” before attacking him.
[Wacky update, 29 Dec 2013]
The Beatification of Saint Skittles
In a California creche, the figure of Jesus is replaced with that of Trayvon Martin.
This sort of thing is the reason I retired from satire: You just - can't - make - this- stuff - up.
[Update 14 Oct 2014] Following Saint Skittles, we have: The Man with the Sandwich.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/10/breaking-gun-powder-residue-on-vonderitt-myers-jr-s-hands-t-shirt-jeans/?PageSpeed=noscript
[Update 14 Oct 2014] Following Saint Skittles, we have: The Man with the Sandwich.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/10/breaking-gun-powder-residue-on-vonderitt-myers-jr-s-hands-t-shirt-jeans/?PageSpeed=noscript
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