In another of his attempts at mimicking the shock-jock mentality of Ann “say anything for a buck” Coulter, local conserv-o-partisan Dan Proft asks the intentionally leading question, “BET racist against black people?” He opens with the mellow and understated line:

If the Aryan Nation plotted to develop a media property designed to denigrate and destroy black culture, could they do a better job than Black Entertainment Television (BET)?

Pure brilliance, Mr. Proft. Pure. Brilliance. The entire sad attention-seeking commentary is apparently what Mr. Proft thinks passes for a reasonable comparison between the “Jena 6″ and the “Little Rock 9″, ostensibly in reaction to the occasion of two of the Jena 6 teens being feted during the BET Hip-Hop Awards.

The following passage is one example of Mr. Proft’s dismissive attempt to muddy the waters and dilute the import of trying to understand and confront the racial dichotomy that is found in Jena (and, by extension, is still happening throughout our nation even today):

In Little Rock in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower intervened to protect the students, enforce desegregation, and uphold the principle that all are to be treated equally under the law.

In Jena in 2007, Al Sharpton intervened to do exactly the opposite, advocating essentially that the law may be disregarded if one has a racial grievance.

Actually, what Al Sharpton was doing was pointing out the very different treatment standards between white teens and black teens in the Jena judicial system and under the local District Attorney. The fact is Mychal Bell — the black teen painted as the “head” of the Jena 6 — has already served 10 months in jail as an adult. Rev. Sharpton has said that, yes, he should have been punished for his role in the fight but, no, not punished as an adult for the crime of attempted murder — and argues that this should be Mr. Bell’s argument in the court of law, not the court of public opinion. In Rev. Sharpton’s own words:

The response is very simple. Mychal Bell has done ten months in jail as an adult, that even the Louisiana courts are saying he should not have been tried with. I think that, one, no one ever said that we condone schoolyard fights, but that’s what it was. And the punishment should have been a schoolyard fight. Had these young men been dealt with in juvenile court in a regular proceeding for juveniles like any other juvenile, including the white student that pulled the gun, the shotgun at the school, and the white student that beat up, I believe it was young Mr. Bailey at the party, I don’t think there would have ever been an issue, local or national.

It’s too bad for Mr. Proft’s fictional little world that the Internet exists and any one of us can go and look up the facts to dispute his wild-eyed claims.

The underlying racial tension in the city had been boiling up into racial violence for weeks. A black student had been punched when trying to enter a party the weekend before the “Jena 6″ fight broke out. Why the kids throwing the punches chose to target their victim is unclear, but they were after him for something — it wasn’t a spontaneous fight.

Rough stuff indeed and they should be punished, but fights happen all the time at high schools across the country (though most of those fights are likely over girls, “turf” or whatnot instead of race) and the kids involved are rarely charged with attempted murder and tried as adults … especially since white kids who were beating up a black kid in the days before are treated with white gloves in comparison.

Far be it from Mr. Proft to actually read about what had been happening in Jena, Louisiana and inform himself of little things like … facts.

The kicker is that his entire vacuous post is ripe with similar inanity and commenters at Prairie State Blue (including myself) noted such. Mr. Proft then felt a need to post a bizarre and whiney retort commenting on the comments…

I enjoy seeing my material on PSB and seeing the remarks it elicits from the over-the-top (”survivors” of the “jena horror”–I didn’t realize they had been rescued from a concentration camp) to the typical name-calling (”vacuous inanity”) in lieu of argument that is so characteristic of the temper tantrums on the Left.

No matter how obvious the point or clear the reality of a situation, certain people, like those posting here, refuse to concede anything.

Because you are not open to being persuaded, you’re rhetorical excesses are not persuasive. [...]

You’ll note I focused my commentary on BET and what BET had chosen to do and chosen to say, neither of which point their intended targets to a better way.

Let’s start at the end. His commentary began with BET but went off into his own myopic “comparison” between Little Rock of 1957 and Jena of 2007. In other words, his claim that his focus was on BET is contradicted by his own original post.

As for the rest of his lament, Mr. Proft apparently doesn’t appreciate having the truth behind his own words pointed out to him (seems to be a theme among conservatives, especially their spokespeople and the people they elect).

PSB commenter Bored Now was the fellow who made the “Jena horror” remark. His reference was clearly in relation to the racial tensions pervasive in that region — but Mr. Proft failed to even comprehend that (he didn’t have to agree that racism is a “horror”, but he didn’t even bother to try understanding it).

And I was the one who wrote that Mr. Proft’s essay was so much “vacuous inanity” — because, as I’ve briefly shown, it is. His points are hollow because they cannot be supported by facts and his entire premise is pointless because it serves no purpose toward actually improving the given situation (ie, racism).

My own reply to his tantrum-filled rejoinder:

Mr. Proft ironically writes, “No matter how obvious the point or clear the reality of a situation, certain people, like those posting here, refuse to concede anything.”

Couldn’t have said it better…

As Mr. Maggos points out, you’ve dodged the actual issue in question here. Funny that you would claim to be seeking to avoid “preaching to the converted” given that is precisely what you’re doing.

Issuing false comparisons and hollow epithets about BET which are designed to imply the Jena 6 are somehow “less than” the Little Rock 9 is your own attempt at avoiding the obvious point about the reality of the situation in Jena (ie, it is vacuous inanity … so many words about nothing).

The issue isn’t BET. It is the racism which seems pervasive even to this day in Jena.

One form of racism isn’t worse than another — they are all equally despicable — nor are the actions of a given person (say, a fistfight) some sort of rationale for accepting racism.

But nice try at changing the subject with your vacuous inanity.

(PS: It’s not name-calling. It’s telling the truth about your pointless spin designed to avoid the topic of the racism that exists in this country to this day. If you don’t like it try thinking about your next essay’s topic a bit more thoroughly.)

Think about that. Mr. Proft complains: “No matter how obvious the point or clear the reality of a situation, certain people, like those posting here, refuse to concede anything.”

It’s strange that he thinks his points were “obvious” or “clear” simply because they’re based on his own contrived falsehoods and spin, yet in the same sentence he whimpers that progressives posting at PSB “refuse to concede anything” even as his entire essay is about refusing to concede the horrible effects of under-the-radar racism in modern times.

Mr. Proft ended his original post with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Given his attempts at trying to imply the incidents in Jena are somehow unworthy of our nation’s attention, it’s clear that Mr. Proft completely misunderstands that statement. Whatever affects blacks in Jena does affect even Mr. Proft and I indirectly as our nation will never be whole and can never achieve the best it can achieve with such racism dragging us down.

Mr. Proft is lucky enough to have his very own theme song (R-rated warning) and it’s by a white guy who can’t rap which somehow seems fitting in relation to Mr. Proft’s weak attempt at being inflammatory. He ought to spend the 99 cents to download it and think about those lyrics in relation to his own refusal to concede anything.

Certainly no one’s out to get Mr. Proft (despised his arm-flailing “wow” comeback at PSB), but it sure would be nice if he’d drop those scales from his eyes and realize that reality — and its interrelated nature — is far different from what his rose-colored glasses lead him to believe.