September 29, 2009

Failing Upward

A reader writes regarding the video of the gang fight in a Chicago school in which a 16-year-old passerby was killed.
This is where I grew up.

What's sad is, the crime was a lot higher when I was in elementary school (900 murders a year versus 400 murders a year today).

However, the media attention is greater today since:
1. this crime happens on the south side of chicago
2. Barack Obama lives on the south side of chicago

The Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh are sending the message to Obama and Rahm "fix your house before you try to fix mine".

This is actually the neighborhood Barack Obama "organized" as a community organizer. If you read his books, he talks about helping people in the Altgeld Gardens community, and one of the gangs in this fight lived in the Altgeld Gardens community.

Obama's career consists largely of Failing Upward. It's nice work if you can get it. (That said, Obama's lightweightness compares favorably to our last President's, who would have lost in a Presidential election in which the only other candidates were his siblings and the only voters his parents.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

By Steve Sailer on 9/29/2009 Labels:

35 comments:

ed said...

Huh. So Obama somehow "failed" because there is a lot of crime in Altgeld gardens? Even though there is less crime there than there used to be? Curious argument.

(Of course, I believe Obama himself became disillusioned with community "organizing," and he wouldn't presume to take credit or blame for current crime trends in Altgeld gardens.)

9/29/09, 1:43 PM
kurt9 said...

I don't like any of Obama's domestic policies and ideas. However, I still prefer him to Bush. I think both of these men are no good as presidents. The only president that we have had since I have been alive that I liked was Reagan. All of the rest of them were no good.

9/29/09, 1:52 PM
Anonymous said...

OT, but what has happened to Drudge? His site is now only updated once or twice a day. He's just about lost my business.

9/29/09, 1:52 PM
dearieme said...

Bush the Elder was a passable Pres. Since then you've had three duds in a row.

9/29/09, 1:59 PM
headache said...

O has the right tone, that's about it. U can take 50000 white guys with the same intelligence and teleprompter-ability, and even with the 600mUSD they wouldn't cut it coz the MSM would willfully ignore them. These elections were decided by the MSM which means the internet has not had the impact which was always suggested it would have.

9/29/09, 3:22 PM
Bruce Banned said...

Yeah, all America needs is some community organizin',the Chicago way. Give us some lovin','Bama!

BTW, did you read this: "Obama camp optimistic Chicago will win 2016 Olympics"?

http://tinyurl.com/obama-20016chicago-olympics

9/29/09, 3:29 PM
Anonymous said...

That video explains why there is suburban sprawl better than 10 Harvard professors ever could.

9/29/09, 3:47 PM
Svigor said...

These elections were decided by the MSM which means the internet has not had the impact which was always suggested it would have.

If the suggestion was immediate impact, it was wrong. Assuming corporate America doesn't strangle the Internet in its crib, we're looking at a multi-generational war of ideas here. It took roughly a century to screw America up to this extent, it's going to take a long time to fix it.

Until Americans REEEAAAAALLLY grok the idea that the media is ACTUALLY HOSTILE towards them, we won't fix things.

That isn't an easy idea to grok. It's a fundamental shift in worldview. It's the kind of thing you have to raise your kids under, and then THEY can really get it.

9/29/09, 3:54 PM
Fred said...

Ed makes a good point: according to Steve's own posts on Obama's books, the ostensible reason Obama got into politics in the first place was that he saw the failure of community activism to solve the problems of black urban neighborhoods.

Of course, politics (of the lefty sort Obama advocates) isn't capable of solving their problems (or the problems of middle class whites) either. Obama is in the process of learning that. It will be interesting to see if he can transcend his dogma and make the necessary course corrections. I doubt it though.

9/29/09, 4:13 PM
Anonymous said...

I think black America is finally getting their Macacca moment. A couple of years back the media was obsessed with getting videos of white politicians saying anything that could be construed as racist and running it 24/7. An example is when George Allen said Macacca which as widely interperted as meaning that he called some south asian guy a monkey or something. I think the worm has turned.

9/29/09, 4:20 PM
Anonymous said...

These elections were decided by the MSM

And the Goldman Sachs moles in the Bush Treasury Department.

I think the worm has turned.

Yeah, I'm starting to feel that way, as well - that there's been a sea change in the zeitgeist, and that people are starting to realize that we are heading into a terrible storm.

9/29/09, 4:49 PM
Gilbert Ratchet said...

Altgeld Gardens! What a name - Obama organized some "old money," did he?

9/29/09, 4:56 PM
Anonymous said...

That's why we need school uniforms!

9/29/09, 4:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Obama is a fellow who reached his Peter Principal level sometime between his sophomore and junior year in high school.

9/29/09, 5:06 PM
Christopher said...

No disrespect, as they say, but, is it just me or did the dead kid take a swing at some other kid just before getting whacked?

9/29/09, 6:21 PM
Anonymous said...

"That's why we need school uniforms!"

A good one!

9/29/09, 6:29 PM
Marvin said...

There are Chicago police officers who maintain a blog. To get their view of this incident follow the link below:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13350456&postID=7541904293056570138

9/29/09, 6:34 PM
Let's! said...

OT, but check out today's (9/29/09) transcript from the public radio program Marketplace where Kai Ryssdal just can't figure out what the difference is between Nigeria and Norway!

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/09/29/pm-crude-q/

Host Kai Ryssdal: It occurred to me reading this book that oil is maybe the best example ever of too much of a good thing being a bad thing.

Journalist Peter Maass: Some people refer to it as the resource curse. And what it means is that, indeed, if you have so much oil, and you depend on it for income, for exports, etc., that it can actually hurt your economy. You don't become richer from it, but you become poorer from it. And that actually, instead of becoming more peaceful and prosperous, you actually can become more violent.

Ryssdal: There are countless examples in your book. The best one has to be, I think, Nigeria.

MAASS: Nigeria is really the saddest story of all because it's earned about $400 billion from the oil that it's exported over the last several decades, most of which has gone to the United States. Unfortunately there's about 80 percent of the population that still lives at or below the poverty level, and one out of five Nigerian children die before the age of five. And there's also kind of a low-level insurgency that's going in the Niger Delta, which is where the oil comes from.
...
Ryssdal: There are outliers, of course, and I have to give a shout out to my Norwegian heritage here. I mean they've got North Sea oil, more than they know what to do with, they're a stable democracy with a great social-safety net. How do you explain that? [emphasis in the audio but not in the web transcript]

MAASS: Norway is a wonderful kind of outlier, which shows the lesson that it's best, and in fact, kind of almost imperative to discover democracy before you discover oil. Because Norway had, when it found this oil and natural gas in the North Sea, very solid civic institutions. ...

9/29/09, 7:00 PM
AL said...

It's not germane to this discussion, but the kid who was murdered is being characterized as an "honor student" and an innocent victim by every news outlet covering the story, including those on the right. One news story here in Chicago lamented that he merely "lacked the street smarts" to avoid this melee.

That seems pretty convenient, and it gets more suspicious when you look at the actual video which has been widely circulated. A couple seconds before he first gets clobbered with a board, he can be seen walking toward the center of the fight and throwing a punch at one of the fighters.

That suggests that this kid could just as easily be perpetrator as victim. I wish somebody somewhere would report on this... but I don't hold my breath.

9/29/09, 8:51 PM
texas first said...

I can't believe posters have accused Steve of being anti-Chicago. It's not possible to be anti-Chicago enough! If Chicago is awarded the 2016 Olympics, I say let's boycott.

9/29/09, 8:54 PM
Anonymous said...

It sort of looked like the news team fight from the movie Anchorman....did one of those kids have a trident???

Dan in DC

9/29/09, 11:01 PM
Anonymous said...

Not only was the kid an honor student but just hours before he had discovered cold fusion in the High School lab....tragic really

Dan in DC

I'm on fire btw

9/29/09, 11:05 PM
CJ said...

OT, but what has happened to Drudge?

You are indeed OT, but if Steve will permit a response, the answer is Andrew Breitbart. He maintained the quality of the DR for years, and now that he's gone Matt's people just aren't doing the same quality of work. Breitbart himself however is doing some great stuff -- I believe it was he who funded the ACORN expose.

9/29/09, 11:37 PM
headache said...

I think black America is finally getting their Macacca moment.
If so it ain't terribly difficult to record. I mean blacks don't seem to care how they come across, it's as if they relish being seen as thuggish, violent and racist.

9/30/09, 12:22 AM
headache said...

And the Goldman Sachs moles in the Bush Treasury Department.

Yeah, that was my immediate impression when Paulson and Bernakne stepped before the camera on that fateful Friday. It's funny how they always choose a Friday so it's a fait accompli.

9/30/09, 12:25 AM
Jerry said...

"(900 murders a year versus 400 murders a year today)."

-The difference is mostly due to the great strides made in trauma care. The "secondcitycop" blog keeps harping on this. People get a half dozen bullets pumped into their chests, and two weeks later they're walking.

I did my PhD at the U of C. Don't miss that place at all. Brrr...

9/30/09, 3:09 AM
Anonymous said...

It's not germane to this discussion, but the kid who was murdered is being characterized as an "honor student" and an innocent victim by every news outlet covering the story, including those on the right. One news story here in Chicago lamented that he merely "lacked the street smarts" to avoid this melee.

Paging Tom Wolfe, paging Tom Wolfe!

9/30/09, 3:29 AM
Truth said...

"I'm on fire btw"

Your sexual orientation is of no concern here.

9/30/09, 8:27 AM
Anonymous said...

"The difference is mostly due to the great strides made in trauma care. The "secondcitycop" blog keeps harping on this. People get a half dozen bullets pumped into their chests, and two weeks later they're walking."

Easy to test this assertion if you care to. Just find the number of attempted murder and murder charges for each year and base the comparison on the combined number. Should give a better idea of serious criminal assult even if its not perfect.

9/30/09, 11:06 AM
Anonymous said...

Now if you look at what happened to the murder rate in the United States, as the Warren Court burdened the police & prosecutors with nonsense like the Miranda decision [1966], and as you watch the little boys of the Baby Boom move into their most violent years [a boy born in 1946 turned 18 in 1964], then you see the following:

YEAR / POPULATION / % AGED 15 TO 24 / MURDERS / MURDERS PER MILLION

1960 / 179,323,175 / 13.7 / 9,110 / 50.8
1961 / 182,992,000 / 13.8 / 8,740 / 47.8
1962 / 185,771,000 / 14.5 / 8,530 / 45.9
1963 / 188,483,000 / 15.0 / 8,640 / 45.8
1964 / 191,141,000 / 15.4 / 9,360 / 49.0
1965 / 193,526,000 / 15.9 / 9,960 / 51.5
1966 / 195,576,000 / 16.4 / 11,040 / 56.4
1967 / 197,457,000 / 16.8 / 12,240 / 62.0
1968 / 199,399,000 / 17.0 / 13,800 / 69.2
1969 / 201,385,000 / 17.5 / 14,760 / 73.3
1970 / 203,235,298 / 18.0 / 16,000 / 78.7
1971 / 206,212,000 / 18.4 / 17,780 / 86.2
1972 / 208,230,000 / 18.5 / 18,670 / 89.7
1973 / 209,851,000 / 18.7 / 19,640 / 93.6
1974 / 211,392,000 / 18.9 / 20,710 / 98.0
1975 / 213,124,000 / 19.1 / 20,510 / 96.2
1976 / 214,659,000 / 19.3 / 18,780 / 87.5
1977 / 216,332,000 / 19.4 / 19,120 / 88.4
1978 / 218,059,000 / 19.5 / 19,560 / 89.7
1979 / 220,099,000 / 19.4 / 21,460 / 97.5
1980 / 225,349,264 / 18.9 / 23,040 / 102.2

SOURCE: United States Crime Rates 1960-2005
SOURCE: No. HS-3. Population by Age: 1900 to 2002

I.e. what you see is an explosion in murders after Miranda in 1966 [way, way out of proportion to the increase in young men due to the Baby Boom], but then, after 1980, the thing mysteriously levels off around 20,000 deaths annually, as the advances in trauma surgery from the Vietnam War begin to make their way into the trauma surgery departments of the nation's trauma centers [and, coincidentally, as the nation starts to "get tough on crime" and lock up more of these little thugs].

Yet, at the same time, while advances in trauma surgery have allowed more and more of us to survive an aggravated assault, the rate of aggravated assault is now 750% HIGHER than it was when we enjoyed a truly "civil" society.

PS: This stuff is probably true of highway traffic deaths, as well - it's probable that advances in trauma surgery artificially masked the danger of switching to smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient cars.

9/30/09, 1:21 PM
Anonymous said...

"An example is when George Allen said Macacca which as widely interperted as meaning that he called some south asian guy a monkey or something. I think the worm has turned."

It was interpreted that way because that's what the word means. Allen's mother was a French Jew from North Africa and "macacca," which means monkey, was what the colonist there called natives. It's a racial slur.

9/30/09, 6:26 PM
Mr. Anon said...

"Let's! said...

OT, but check out today's (9/29/09) transcript from the public radio program Marketplace where Kai Ryssdal just can't figure out what the difference is between Nigeria and Norway!"

Thanks for posting. That was funny. Hmmmmm, Nigeria, Norway, why could they be so different? They both have oil. They both start with N. What's the reason? A real poser......

"Marketplace" is a perfect guide to SWPL sentiment, like every other offering on NPR. I wonder how many real businessmen actually listen to it.

10/1/09, 10:04 AM
Mr. Anon said...

"(900 murders a year versus 400 murders a year today)."

Could this be due to population replacement of blacks, with their high murder rate, by hispanics, with their still high but lower than black murder rate?

A similar phenomenon has been seen in L.A.

10/1/09, 10:08 AM
Anonymous said...

Breaking:

Fenger Officers Dumped?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Posted by SCC at 8:00 AM
secondcitycop.blogspot.com

...This is the sixth principal that these officers have been at Fenger under and now suddenly they are the problem? Jesse Jackson met with the principal and now it becomes the officers fault...

10/1/09, 11:56 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm curious, are the any terms used to describe whites that can be "racist"?

dogberry

10/1/09, 10:49 PM

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