MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Seeing is believing, as shown in Eric Garner case”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, August 24, 2014
Seeing is believing—or so we’ve always been told. But that moldy old canard has never been half as true than it is right now.
Thousands took to the streets of Staten Island yesterday to protest the death of Eric Garner—the videotaped death of Eric Garner. The adjective is crucial. Had a bystander not whipped out a smart-phone, tapped the camera icon and began to roll, it’s hard to imagine that the death of a 350-pound alleged street-corner loosie-salesman would have caused such a national police-brutality uproar.
But all of it was caught on video, right down to the dying man’s plaintive cries: “I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
It isn’t that every controversy now arrives on digital video. It’s that the ones that don’t are open to endless interpretation, right down to the most basic disputed facts. See Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri. The media-centric demo-riots outside St. Louis generated their own handy slogan on day one. “Hands up, don’t shoot.” But a week and a half in, there is still no generally accepted street-level narrative.
Who was standing where? Who confronted whom? How close was the range of fire? The autopsy and forensics are helpful. But without a video of the crucial encounter, the clash of eyewitness testimony and preconceived beliefs rumbles ever on.
“No justice, no peace,” the ralliers have been chanting in Staten Island and Ferguson.
They may have to change that soon: “No video, no peace.”
ROLL ’EM
- Light
- Speed
- Camera
- Action
- Convict
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
The next time you see one of those brightly colored BIMBO soccer jerseys, will it remind you that the Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo baking conglomerate just shut down the century-old Entenmann’s plant in Bay Shore?…Where does Ed Mangano’s $2.4-million speed-camera ticket amnesty leave Nassau Traffic Safety Coordinator Christopher Mistron? Didn’t he just spend his week defending the school-zone tickets and reminding speedy drivers about the existence of summer school?…After this cool summer, who’d bet against the Farmer’s Almanac prediction of an “above-average winter snowfall”? Any reason not to ready boots and shovels now?…Of the thousands who begin turning up today at the Hamptons Classic, how many come to see the world-class horses—and how many for the horsey celeb-watching, luxury shopping and other flashes of show-week extravagance? Ah, but dahling, why choose?…What lesson can be learned from the boat explosion that killed former Plandome mayor (and retired -NYPD captain) Bob Hogan? Just be grateful the freak blast didn’t cause a fuel-tank chain reaction up and down Manhasset Bay Marina?…How does the Labor Day moth-balling of Atlantic City’s elegant Revel casino affect gambling dreams off the LIE in Medford? Despite AC’s woes, backers note that the scruffy Resorts World racino at Aqueduct pulled in a cool $349 million last year.
THE NEWS IN SONG
“I was there,
and I saw what you did”
Chris Daughtry channels Phil Collins
“In the Air Tonight”
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
NEW YORK JETS
They abandoned us all those decades ago, and we’ve never gotten over it. What do the New York (!) Jets see in the swamps of Jersey anyway? Who knows? But despite the ancient hard feelings, the die-hard fans—11,000 of them—still turned out cheerily for Jets Family Night at James Shuart Stadium across Hempstead Turnpike for what was once known as Weeb Ewbank Hall. If you need explanations for those locations, you’re no history-minded Jets fan. Mad they left, happy they’re back (if only briefly), life goes on.
Related posts
