Mumia and Geraldo: Birds of a Feather

The Associated Press reported today that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther convicted of murdering white police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, will serve life in prison, rather be executed as had been his sentence.  As far as I know, murder victims always remain dead, but those sentenced to death for murder almost never are executed.  Why?

Geraldo Rivera provided a “perfect” answer to the Abu-Jamal case this morning on Fox News when he rationalized that “It  [The execution of Jamal] only would exacerbate racial tensions in Philadelphia.”

Time to deconstruct Rivera’s comment and, in the process, to learn a little bit about race, crime, and journalism in America.

Geraldo’s remark suggests the “burn baby burn mentality” that implicitly or explicitly threatens mayhem whenever a “popular” bimp (black inner-city male person) is convicted of a crime against someone white.  The conviction always is framed as egregiously racist and indicative of the immorality of the “white” Justice System, even when that system is lead by a black Attorney General, in this case an “articulate fella” named Eric Himpton Holder, Junior.  No one ever worries that white people will burn down the city when O. J. Simpson-like "folks" go free.

Notice, too, that Geraldo Rivera uses the word, “exacerbate;” presuming that he, a New Yorker, knows all about Philadelphia.  He knows that Philadelphia is awash with racial tension because his saying so lends further credence, power, and urgency to his sage explanation of the logic of converting the death sentence to life imprisonment.   

Geraldo had his opinion about the mother of the apparently slain two year-old child, Caylee Anthony.  Her referred to that white woman, Casey Anthony, as a “narcissistic, child killing slut.”

So, what do we have here?  Geraldo Rivera, an attorney by education, had no problem with a sentence reduction for a convicted black cop killer.  On the other hand, he maligned the never-convicted Casey Anthony as a “slut.”  No matter what you or I thought about the Caylee Anthony death, to have her non-convicted mother mocked on national television was nothing short of a character assassination by broadcast.  Here we found Geraldo, a powerful, prominent so-called “person of color,” campaigning against a helpless white woman. Where were the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the sundry other groups who sanctimonious preach about women’s rights?