Megyn Kelly, sometimes the voice of reason on Fox News, switched into full-blown stupid mode again Friday by saying that “Especially in the days of iPhones…and social media where, you know, every encounter gets caught on camera. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s happening more.”
She appeared with racist Ex-LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, who is frequently trotted out by Fox News to cover racially-charged events, like when Freddie Gray was shot in Baltimore and Fuhrman (again appearing with Kelly) called blacks “these people,” and was told by liberal guest Richard Fowler that “I really think you live in an alternate universe.â€
Well, hello, Fox News.
Watch the most recent alternate reality segment from Friday’s The Kelly File, courtesy of Media Matters for America:
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MEGYN KELLY (HOST): There’s been, you know, a big brush. A lot of these folks paint with a very big brush, Mark, and they find a couple of shootings that are deeply problematic. There’s no question we’ve seen that over the past year and try to push a narrative that all cops are bad, and all cops are out to kill innocent young black men.
MARK FUHRMAN: Well, Megyn, we could have done this for the last five decades, 10 decades. You can always find something that doesn’t look like justice was served one way or another, where somebody made a mistake, somebody was overzealous, somebody was overaggressive. If you’re going to take this micro-moment in the history of a city, a county, a state or a country and use that as a movement, you can never combat this. There’s always going to be something. It’s like having a perfect family. It doesn’t exist.
KELLY: Especially in the days of iPhones, Brad, and social media where, you know, every encounter gets caught on camera. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s happening more. It’s getting caught on camera more. But the vast majority of police officers out there want to protect us and want to enforce the law and don’t run around shooting innocent people. However, you don’t hear that message forcefully brought by all the people in power.
So what are the facts and how do they compare with Kelly’s and Fuhrman’s alternate reality?
Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, told The Washington Post on Friday that police “feel unfairly painted with a broad brush.†Well, we could say in response that blacks feel unfairly painted with bullets.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has faced double-condemnation from conservatives by being both black and Muslim, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Thursday,
“There is a systematic targeting of African Americans and a systematic lack of accountability when police use excessive force. This is a national problem. It’s deeply disturbing. And it has real-life effects.â€
According to The Washington Post, Philando Castile was “at least the 506th person “shot and killed by police so far in 2016” and “one of 123 black Americans shot and killed by police so far in 2016” (emphasis added). The Post pointed out that about 10 percent of black victims were unarmed at the time of shooting. Castile was legally licensed to carry his firearm and had even told the officer he had it, but was reaching for his wallet.
The Post says 990 people were “shot and killed by on-duty police officers during 2015” (“well more than double the average number reported annually by the FBI over the past decade”) and reported that,
A review by the Minneapolis Star Tribune conducted last year found that since 2000, at least 143 people have been killed by police in Minnesota and no officers have been charged in any of these deaths.
Politifact’s PunditFact looked at the 2014 claim of Michael Medved that “More whites than blacks are victims of deadly police shootings.” and determined that yes, more whites are shot than blacks, but “whites also represent a much bigger chunk of the total population.”
A 2002 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that the death rate due to legal intervention was more than three times higher for blacks than for whites in the period from 1988 to 1997.
Medved said at the time, “If you defer and don’t try to challenge a police officer, he may insult you but he won’t kill you,” and Megyn Kelly herself has said, “Even If You Know The Cop Is In The Wrong, Comply And Complain Later.”
Obviously, Castile did nothing either Medved or Kelly would have disapproved of (short of being a black male) and ended up dead anyway. Yes, social media meant it could be live-streamed. But the pervasiveness of iPhones and social media don’t mean these events don’t happen more often to black people than to white.
Megyn Kelly and Mark Fuhrman are wrong. As a percentage of the population, blacks are victims of police shootings more often than whites, and it doesn’t only seem that way because of iPhones and social media.
As Punditfact concluded in 2014,
Medved said that police kill more whites than blacks. In absolute terms, that is accurate. However, the statement ignores that there are more than five times more whites than blacks in America. When comparing death rates, blacks are about three times more likely than whites to die in a confrontation with police.
The police may feel like war has been declared on them, but in absolute terms (the terms preferred by Kelly and Fuhrman), it would seem more true to say the police have declared war on the rest of us. According to USA Today, “26 police [have been] killed so far in 2016, up 44% from 2015 when the total at this time of year was 18.
So much for Fox News whitesplaining, and Kelly’s false and outrageous message that since blacks aren’t being shot more often now than before, quit griping.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
