Patterico's Pontifications

5/17/2006

Invitation for Readers to “Fleming” Fleming

Filed under: Morons,Race — Patterico @ 8:44 pm



Meet Karl Fleming, the L.A. riots version of Robert Fisk:

IT WAS EXACTLY 40 years ago today that I, a WASPy, Southern-bred Newsweek reporter in a Brooks Brothers suit and a crew cut, was attacked and almost beaten to death by angry blacks in a melee on a smoggy street in South-Central Los Angeles.

. . . .

I’d seen whites do things to black people that filled me with shame and rage — in the South and out of it — including overt acts of racism and violence by Los Angeles Police Department cops just as raw as what I’d seen in Alabama and Mississippi. I also knew about the lack of jobs, poor education, broken homes and lack of healthcare that young black men experienced in South-Central.

But I’d never expected to be the target of violence committed by blacks.

So my feelings were confused. And when the media came to interview me in the hospital (a white reporter beaten by blacks was big news), I gave them an answer I am sure surprised them; it even surprised me a bit. I said that knowing what I did about what black kids growing up in Watts went through, I might, were I one of them, feel like hitting some anonymous white guy in the head too.

Yup, it’s hard not to be reminded of Robert Fisk, who opened a famous piece for the Independent with this self-loathing paragraph:

They started by shaking hands. We said “Salaam aleikum” – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

Ripping apart someone’s ridiculous piece line by line is currently known as “Fisking.” But perhaps, in America, it should be known as “Fleminging.”

Anyone care to “Fleming” Fleming’s piece?

4 Responses to “Invitation for Readers to “Fleming” Fleming”

  1. Be kind to him. He’s an old man trying to justify the foolish thoughts (maybe just one thought) of his youth. He sees only himself, certainly. He does not see that he was not the only victim — that the rioters caused so much more damage to their fellow residents who were black people just like themselves. His psychological assessment of his attackers may be the closest he can come to saying “What an idiot I was for being there in the first place”.

    nk (06f5d0)

  2. Or maybe he welcomes his beating because it serves as a badge of his own liberal martrydom: “I too have suffered for the cause of civil rights.” If you were a while liberal and couldn’t manage to get beaten up by a Southern sherriff, being stomped by rioting “Negroes” was apparently the next best thing.

    JVW (d667c9)

  3. I like the nice South-bashing while he’s at it. Are there no thugs or racists north of the Mason-Dixon line?

    sharon (fecb65)

  4. “Fleminging” is too hard to say. “Fisking” is just about right, and very close to a word that’s even more appropriate.

    Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1)


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