Who is the real "scumbag"?

I loved Kenny Smith's eloquent open letter to his TNT colleague, Charles Barkley. Barkley needed a history lesson and a reality check. And, judging from the letter, Smith gave it to him.


Smith wondered why white Americans look to Barkley's insights on matters of race when he is not a civil rights leader or a politician.


It's simple. Barkley is a buffoon who tells white folks what they want to hear. Chuck, they are laughing at you not with you. He says outrageous things and slams his own race under the guise of being brave and not being afraid to speak his mind.


Well sadly, there is nothing courageous about it, because it is the easier and safer position to take.


Barkley called the looters in Ferguson "scumbags", and he admonished them for rioting and breaking the law.


This from a guy who spit on a little girl, lost over 10 million dollars due to a gambling problem, threw a patron through a bar window, and he was also busted for DUI while cruising for sex with a prostitute.There is more of course, but my hands will get tired of all the writing I would have to do. And yet Chuck calls the looters in Ferguson "scumbags". Wow! Pot meet kettle.


Meanwhile, in Dayton, Ohio, some of Barkley's buddies in law enforcement were caught doing something really despicable.


"The world isn’t fully convinced that there needs to be retroactive thought process on who we allow to police our citizens, look no further than the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Dayton, OH.Not too far from where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was gunned down, five Ohio deputies of the force are being probed for some serious racially charged text messages, said to be made while on duty.

In a statement on Tuesday, Sheriff Phil Plummer said that two of the five deputies — Sheriff’s Capt. Thomas J. Flanders and Detective Michael J. Sollenberger — had been placed on indefinite paid administrative leave starting on Dec. 1. According to WDTN, Flanders is in charge of the Montgomery County Jail, and Sollenberger works with the internal affairs unit and is a member of the SWAT team. The three other deputies had not been identified by name, and had not been suspended. Sheriff Plummer said that the deputies sent racial messages on their personal phones between November 2011 and January 2013.

Some messages were sent while the men were on duty, and some messages were directed at African-American deputies, he said. “The N-word was used several times as well as other racial slurs and jokes,” Plummer noted. “Racism will not be tolerated in this office" [Source]

OK then Sheriff. If you say so.


Then there is the troubling development in the Tamir Rice story.


No, not that that the cops repeatedly lied until they found out that there was a video tape of the shooting, but the revelation that the rookie policeman who shot the child in that park was unfit to be a police officer.


“Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak concludes. “For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”


If only the city of Cleveland had done their due diligence like they did in the city of Independence, Tamir Rice might still be alive today.