Max Blumenthal wants you to know that he was right there when all the scary Negroes were about to riot over the Sean Bell verdict:

Unlike Rich, and what seemed like the entire Times Metro desk, I attended the demonstration that erupted in Jamaica, Queens — the neighborhood where Bell lived and died — just hours after the verdict was announced. While this protest did not end violently, it was large, brimming with anger, and anything but restrained. At one point, I found myself in the midst of what seemed certain to become a brawl between a faction of furious protesters and a squadron of cops they had surrounded. It appeared from my vantage point that the cops retreated from the melee only because they were badly outnumbered.

But don’t take me at my word. Watch the video I produced about the Sean Bell demonstrations, especially the latter half, which depicts the uncomfortable reality that Rich overlooked in his reductionist portrait of an imaginary post-racial America.

In the video, Blumenthal wrings his hands over Barack Obama’s difficulty in “maintaining his credibility” among black voters while reaching out to blue collar whites. I’m not sure what planet Blumethal is on, but it’s apparently not the one where Barack Obama is knocking Hillary into Nixon-like margins among black voters.  Son Of A Former Clinton Advisor Max Blumenthal knocks “former theater critic Frank Rich” for not “bolstering” his claim with statistical evidence, but the humiliating margin of the black vote Hillary Clinton is getting is notably absent. Who’s the one really having trouble walking that tightrope?

One person Blumenthal interviews says “where’s Hillary? She’s our state’s Senator”. An interesting question, since Governor Paterson suggested he might revive the office of the Special Prosecutor to investigate claims of police brutality. The Sean Bell shooting happened in her state, and yet Clinton has been mad quiet. I’m sure it’s not because voters in West Virginia and Kentucky might not want to hear what Clinton thinks about the Sean Bell verdict.

But all of this is less important than Blumenthal’s ultimate point, which is that the Sean Bell trial (and his uncorroborated description of a near riot, which is actually just people talking smack at the police at a protest) proves that America is too racist to elect Barack Obama president.

Of course, Blumenthal’s deep concern about issues of race and racism in America is by no means driven by his support for Hillary Clinton. He’s just really worried that people don’t understand how serious racism is, especially all those black folks who clearly have no idea, which is why we’re voting for Obama, because we just don’t know what it’s like out here.

The Obama camp could have made a similar argument about Hillary Clinton with gender, but it hasn’t, and it won’t, and that just makes what the Clintons are doing all the more messed up.

After all, why stop with the president? Blumenthal’s rationale extends itself to all spheres of life. Don’t make him manager, people won’t respect him because he’s black. Can’t let her into Yale, folks are racist, they might think she just got in because of affirmative action, and she might not be able to handle it. Might as well forget about going to medical school, because some white people don’t want a black doctor.

America is a racist country, and has a lot of growing to do. But whether or not America is ready to elect a black president is yet to be decided, and racism should never be an excuse to tell a black person they can’t do something.

There’s something so sick about Blumenthal’s exploitation of the Sean Bell tragedy to further a Pro-Clinton agenda. There’s nothing in that “documentary” about an independent body that would have actual power to hold police accountable and would replace the toothless CCRB, there’s no description of the increasing numbers of violations by the NYPD that have gone unpunished, just an assurance that black people are still angry and potentially violent.

Even Juanita Young, who was thrown down a flight of steps by cops after her son was murdered by the NYPD, appears as a mere prop in Blumenthal’s piece, the only point of which is to smear the black man running for president as a race traitor.

UPDATE: I accidentally identified Max as having worked for the Clintons and having sent the emails, it was actually his father Sidney. 

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