As a former videotape editor for CNN, I know how to make a “news package.” It’s an industrial process. Meat (fires and fatalities) goes in one end, sausage (2:30 news stories) comes out the other. In this example, the barely coherent bereaved women around whom the piece is constructed challenge the news machine to keep the anti-pistol party line from spinning off into space. Did Samantha Brown really say her peers should “work to set an example” to “break the cycle of gun violence”? Doubtful. The fact that Delasia Dutrieuille was “involved in activities that she shouldn’t have been involved in” is shrugged off, in favor of highlighting the victim and shooter’s ages. There is no “there” here—except an anti-gun bias so profound it’s practically invisible. How great is that?

 

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32 COMMENTS

      • Good book; he was one of those guys, like Malcolm Lowry, who had ONE book in him; one GREAT book.

        Yep… “involved in things she shouldn’t have been involved in…”. But there’s no consequences in running with ticks or fleas, RIGHT?

        But my gnawing question is: “WTF is that THING on that poor girl’s HEAD?”

    • I’m not familiar with that book or author, so I immediately thought “conspiracy of dunces” was an error and instead recognized the term “confederacy of dunces”; from Jonathan Swift’s “Thoughts on Various Subjects.”

      From distant memory here, so please excuse my likely less than exactitude:

      “When a true genius appears, you will know him by this sign: all the world’s dunces will be in confederacy against him.”

  2. Rankin. Yeah, I am sure it was just one mistake. How quickly they pivot to “raise money” for – for what exactly?

    • For… MONEY. It’s good, I’m sure. Not sure how it prevents gun violence. I thought that was PARENTS.

      • I was thinking to but more of the stuff “that she shouldn’t have been involved in”

  3. Yep. Same ol’ song and dance. Interview clueless and clueless. The deceased young person is always a ‘good’ person who made a ‘mistake’. Generally involving gang banging, drugs, prostitution, etc. Sorry those two 16 year old made ‘choices’. One already paid the price for choosing poorly, the other is/may pay for making his choice (I say may, since one never can tell what the criminal justice system will do in these cases.).

    • Lol it’s always the little angels who just get caught up in the wrong place, wrong time and are acting totally out of character. Nobody can ever just be described as a bad motherf******.

  4. The mother of the 4 and 5 year old not liking guns, and not wanting her kids to even play with water guns, is part of the issue. When you forbid children from having something, they want it. When you never let them do something, it’s unique and fun. Once a person has been doing something for a long time, it becomes everyday, and not a bid deal. Who’s more excited about driving? A 16 year old or a 50 year old? Drinking? Buying 18-only products? Guns are the same way. Obviously some of the younger generation have zero experience with guns (Mic/Mac confusion). If all parents would teach their children about guns, and actually keep track of what their kids were up to half the time, a lot less of this would happen. Crappy parenting for every person involved in this story.

    • A novel idea! They never heard that before, and never will be exposed to it.

      Their parents? No gun exposure. Their parents’ parents?

      NAH.

    • I watched three kids and a father shooting each other with Nerf guns this weekend. This was in MA also. I am surprised the cops didn’t arrive with the SWAT team. One little girl shot another little girl right under her chin. I have a feeling not a single one of those kids will grow up to be a violent felon.

  5. Its they hood, deez baby momma’s are just caring fo they babeez.

    Gunz blazing in the hood aint good keeds. Take it owt to Whities hood gnome’I’sayin?

      • @Greff the Jiz

        They are unwilling to admit that no amount of White mans funny money will stop Knegaz behaving like Knegaz. That however will not stop them climbing over childrens bodies to ask for the chance to prove me wrong, and despite my freedoms being put on the chopping block.

        • Oh. That’s better. I still remember all the hate and anger when it was suggested by scholars to make Ebonics it’s own language. It’s funny how some of these “urban” people can start speaking English when it comes down to it. P.S. I knew white teens in the sticks that spoke Ebonics too… But doesn’t mean it needed to be used ever.

  6. It’s easier to talk about “gun violence” than gang violence. Guns are objects, but gangs are people, mostly friends and relatives. Nobody wants to blame their friends or relatives. And for damn sure nobody wants to take responsibility for creating a cesspit of gang violence, even if it saves one child.

    Legacy my @ss. If my toilet was full, I’d flush it. Maybe Samantha Brown should do the same.

      • GENERATIONS of life in the city (“the hood”); rural blacks in the deep south (especially the Mississippi Delta) migrated north in the forties, esp. Chicago. Been there ever since.

        A “piece” is either a bad thing or a necessary thing. Sometimes both. The entire CONCEPT is twisted and distorted; their world is a million miles from most of ours.

  7. No, your sister and the boy, no doubt, made a whole series of mistakes, not just one.

    • If we only had gun laws to prevent 16 yrs from having guns legally. Oh wait that is already a crime. Gang bangers kill each other, life moves on.

  9. So your sister is hanging around drug dealers? Perfect example of what the rest of the countries gun owners are doing…. *eye roll*

    • They are wrong as wrong can be; no argument. All I am saying is we have no idea how different the world looks to them. Their parents don’t know better than they do, either. THAT’S the “Confederacy of Dunces.”

  10. One mistake? Sounds more like about a few thousand mistakes, spanning a few generations.

  11. Ugh!… Yeah the kid made ONE mistake… it cost her her life. How many other and similar mistakes previous to the final one? The family either won’t ever admit it, not even to themselves, or they’ll deny knowledge to save face if there were other mistakes. But all it takes is one lousy mistake to cost something dear.

    Will the news ever admit what that “mistake” was? Probably never for fear that the family will get bent out of shape and sue, OR never just because it isn’t their target and the weapon of choice is. Reality is she could have had her belly opened up wide, or her neck slit ear to ear, or her head bashed in with a bat/tire iron/pipe/2×4. They’ll ignore that part though and paint her as someone who made one single mistake and the gun, not her mistake/activity or those whom she interacted with was the cause of her death. [Sigh.]

  12. One mistake…?

    Noone pulled the chain, so the bowl’s still full. That’s the mistake.

  14. all i hear is clouded emotional rambling.
    the news reporter airs it out @ 1:26 “police said she was involved in activity she shouldn’t be involved in”

    when you hang out with a bad crowd bad things happen?

  15. THIS IS HER COUSIN (BY BLOOD) . Everyone is out here bashing the situation and family for what happened however ALL of you are looking from the outside in. The news will say anything to get their ratings up. I knew the real Delasia and best believe she made one mistake and she wasn’t a gang banger or affiliated in any of that. She was the type of girl who would give you her last when she didn’t even have anything. The type of girl who would give you the shirt off of her back just to make sure someone else was ok. She was an amazing aunt, daughter, sister and cousin. She was full of life, funny and had many goals set in life. So instead of showing negativity towards the situation, stop and think if it was one of your loved ones & you knew the TRUE person that they are.

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