“The folks at MSNBC were at it again Monday,” Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters, truncating a minute-long answer on the topic of stop and frisk down to a five-second soundbite that completely distorts the meaning of Bloomberg’s answer:
JOY-ANN REID. SUBSTITUTE HOST [of the Martin Bashir everything is racist show — Ed]: I want to play something for you that Mayor Bloomberg said in his news conference today, he was talking about Stop and Frisk in a way that’s interesting because it recalls what President Obama said would happen had he had a son. Just listen to this and I’ll get your response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: I think if I had a son and that son was stopped, I would have some real questions about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: So Mayor Bloomberg is essentially saying that if he had a son and he was stopped, he would feel differently about Stop and Frisk. How do you respond to that given how vigorously he and other proponents of this kind of policing have defended the practice? They’re essentially admitting that if this were happening to their children, if it were happening to their sons, they wouldn’t like it. Why can’t they take that next step and then understand why these communities that are experiencing don’t want it?
Here’s Bloomberg’s complete answer, as transcribed by Noel:
BLOOMBERG: I think if I had a son and that son was stopped, I would have some real questions about it. Having said that, I think if I thought long and hard about it, I actually thought that [New York City mayoral candidate] Bill Thompson (D) said it right. Bill Thompson said he didn’t like Stop and Frisk, but he had a son. He wanted to make sure the kid didn’t get killed, and the only way we should do that is get guns off the streets.
If you’ve got a better answer, and one that you’re willing to try and see whether, “Well, let’s see if another few hundred people get killed. Okay, it didn’t work, and we’ll go back.” This is, we’re playing life and death here, and this is just not something. But, yeah, if anything, if it’s personal, if you have something happen to you, you feel about it very differently. That doesn’t mean you can’t stop and say, “Wait a second. No matter how much I dislike it.”
Take a look at public housing. Five percent of the public lives in public housing. 20 percent of the crime in this city is in public housing. We have to do something to stop that. Nobody likes cops in the halls in public housing, but they dislike the fact that they’d be taken away even more because that’s what’s protecting them to the extent we can possibly do it.
Mr. Auric Goldfinger, suave, albeit supersized Euro-supervillian once said, “Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.'” How would he define MSNBC getting caught deceptively editing at least eight clips since 2009?
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Update: Of course, none of the above is meant imply that Mayor Mike isn’t fully capable of some rather boneheaded moves himself:
NOTE: Bloomber has pointed all these seized guns AT THE AUDIENCE. pic.twitter.com/IqPLeL201U @jdavidgoodman
— Matthew DesOrmeaux (@cynicusprime) August 19, 2013
More at Twitchy, as “Katie Pavlich schools Mayor Bloomberg on four rules of gun safety.”
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