printOn the one hand, there’s Brooke Baldwin. She’s a CNN bimbo, not as bad as a Fox News issue—the spandex swaddled Gretchen Carlson comes to mind—but nevertheless a prototype airhead, on the air for her looks. Brooke’s brief at CNN is the enforcement of progressivism, the deconstruction of conventional news broadcasting and morality.
On the other hand, you have Charles Barkley, “basketball analyst for Turner Sports and former NBA great.” He’s no philosopher king, but high concentrations of cutaneous melanin have qualified him to be a philosopher king in contemporary America.
Barkley called the Ferguson rioters “scumbags,” a perfectly reasonable descriptive for “the rioters who set buildings and police cars on fire in Ferguson,” not to mention murdered a cracker or two.
In the universe Brooke brings to her CNN viewers, berating black looters and murderers is controversial, a position that requires “defending,” or so she framed here interview with Barkley:
“Charles Barkley defends calling Ferguson rioters ‘scumbags.’”
Dr. Ben Carson, a self-made man who has never relied on race to excel, has no problem articulating immutable moral truth: “The Community Has to Recognize That a Thug Is a Thug.”