Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Brittney Watts Case: What Was Murderer's Motive? APD Bigwig Calls Craven Killer “Bold”
Murder victim Brittney Watts.
By David in TN
Last updated at 4:51 a.m., on Tuesday, July 19, 2011.
In the Brittney Watts, 26, murder case, the suspect, one Nkosi Thandiwe, 22, turned himself in and already has a lawyer. He has been charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Although according to the excerpted Atlanta Journal-Constitution story below, Thandiwe murdered Watts and then stole her Prius, there was no mention of a carjacking charge, though that may have to wait for the feds.
Brittney and Brian Watts married in November, 2008.
Defendant Nkosi Thandiwe.
This took place in a parking garage in the middle of the day in Atlanta's business section. The suspect seems to have been waiting for the victim. He was a security guard where she worked, no less.
You can guess at a possible motive-maybe he asked her for a date and Miss Watts said “No.”
The suspect also shot (one seriously) two women walking by the entrance to the parking garage as he drove out.
Although the security company Thandiwe worked for, AlliedBarton Security Services, maintains that he passed a background check, there is one red flag so far: A neighbor says that some of the people living in Thandiwe’s family’s house liked to shoot off guns into the air in the backyard. And the defendant’s father appears to be a belligerent soul.
No word, of course, on whether the suspect and his father are immigrants. [They lived in the same house since the defendant was about seven. If they were immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, that would entail another red flag, because South Africa is the world's murder capital, and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa is only marginally more civilized.
The name “Thandiwe” is Xhosa for “loving one.” The Xhosa language is spoken by almost eight million people in South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho. Not terribly “loving,” this one.
Will the defense be diminished capacity? Or “they called me the N-word?”
* * *
[“Bold”? I can think of many words to describe a craven, racist killer who hides, and then shoots unarmed, unwary women who had no idea what to expect, but “bold” isn’t one of them.]
By David in TN
Last updated at 4:51 a.m., on Tuesday, July 19, 2011.
In the Brittney Watts, 26, murder case, the suspect, one Nkosi Thandiwe, 22, turned himself in and already has a lawyer. He has been charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Although according to the excerpted Atlanta Journal-Constitution story below, Thandiwe murdered Watts and then stole her Prius, there was no mention of a carjacking charge, though that may have to wait for the feds.
This took place in a parking garage in the middle of the day in Atlanta's business section. The suspect seems to have been waiting for the victim. He was a security guard where she worked, no less.
You can guess at a possible motive-maybe he asked her for a date and Miss Watts said “No.”
The suspect also shot (one seriously) two women walking by the entrance to the parking garage as he drove out.
Although the security company Thandiwe worked for, AlliedBarton Security Services, maintains that he passed a background check, there is one red flag so far: A neighbor says that some of the people living in Thandiwe’s family’s house liked to shoot off guns into the air in the backyard. And the defendant’s father appears to be a belligerent soul.
No word, of course, on whether the suspect and his father are immigrants. [They lived in the same house since the defendant was about seven. If they were immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, that would entail another red flag, because South Africa is the world's murder capital, and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa is only marginally more civilized.
The name “Thandiwe” is Xhosa for “loving one.” The Xhosa language is spoken by almost eight million people in South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho. Not terribly “loving,” this one.
Will the defense be diminished capacity? Or “they called me the N-word?”
Family, friends and co-workers Saturday mourned the loss of a UGA graduate killed in a Midtown shooting spree, while her alleged assailant waived his rights to appear before a Fulton County magistrate.
Nkosi Thandiwe, 22, remained in the Fulton County Jail, charged with first-degree murder in a lunchtime triple shooting that left Brittney Watts, 26, of Decatur dead and two other women wounded Friday. The shooting occurred in a parking deck at 14th Street and Crescent Avenue….
The shooting occurred shortly before noon Friday. Police say Thandiwe, a security guard at the Proscenium building, was hired to protect the building where the three victims worked.
Authorities said Watts encountered the gunman as he lay in wait on the third floor of the parking deck. He fired one shot, hitting her in the neck, then got into her Toyota Prius and drove away.
Police issued an area-wide lookout for the car, including a license plate number described by witnesses, and for a man matching Thandiwe's description.
Maj. Keith Meadows, head of Atlanta Police Department's major crimes division, said investigators believed the gunman was waiting for Watts.
Atlanta PD Major Keith Meadows: Killer was “bold.” (Background: Mayor Kasim Reed.)
As the gunman exited the parking garage, he fired several more shots, hitting Lauren Garcia, a 23-year-old intern for Midtown public relations firm the MSL Atlanta, and her co-worker, Tiffany Ferenczy, 24. Police believe they may have been random victims….
“All of a sudden, the car came out [of the garage entrance],” Wright said. “The car was blocked and the next thing you know, the guy comes out of the car and started shooting. That's when two of the victims got shot … my daughter and the other girl.”
What followed was pandemonium, witnesses say.
Meredith Smith ran into the parking deck for cover when the shooting began.
“We were crossing the street and we heard a ‘pop, pop, pop, pop’ and we ducked for cover inside the garage,” Smith said. “When we came out, we saw a lady laying face-down in the middle of the street.”
John Kupersmith, who works at Tin Lizzy’s, heard the gunshots from the restaurant’s patio. He said rather than driving people inside, the shooting brought more people out of the nearby buildings.
“I was seating tables when I heard four to five gunshots in quick succession,” Kupersmith said. “Everybody went to look. I came out and stuck my head out onto Crescent. There was a pretty big group of people on the street.
“And a lot of people were surrounding the lady who was face-down on the ground.”
Garcia lay in the street, a bullet wound in her back, her purse and shoes strewn out across the ground in front of the entrance to the parking deck.
Ferenczy was hit in the leg….
Watts was found in the parking deck dead, a single shot to her neck, police said….
Meadows said the two survivors were taken to area hospitals where they are in “satisfactory condition” and talking with investigators.
Investigators are looking at whether the gunman was a disgruntled employee who targeted Watts.
“It was a pretty bold move of him to shoot so many people in the middle of the day,” Meadows said….
[“Bold”? I can think of many words to describe a craven, racist killer who hides, and then shoots unarmed, unwary women who had no idea what to expect, but “bold” isn’t one of them.]
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The Republican Way to Talk About Race
By Nicholas Stix
Jonah Goldberg is a Republican writer who makes a handsome living bashing “liberals” and, as I recall, is sometimes funny, while doing so. He generally avoids the topic of race, and a good thing, that, but once every year or two, he just can’t help himself, and tries to talk about race … without talking about race. It’s the Republican way.
Well, he just had one of his episodes. In “‘That’s Racist’: The accusation becomes a punch line,” Goldberg talks about blacks’ second-favorite phrase.
Goldberg is chugging along, on the way to expose the dishonesty behind racist blacks’ attempts at “explaining” the mockery behind the ironic use of the phrase, but never gets there. Suddenly, the Republican version of the pc (socialist/communist) deus ex machina, the non sequitur, comes down from the stage’s ceiling to save Goldberg from speaking a home truth about race in America, turning his column into an exercise in Republican disinformation.
Non sequitur! They’re making fun of racist blacks. But he knew that, right? He can’t possibly be as dim as he appears… right?
By the way: Racist blacks are still using their second-favorite phrase to terrorize whites, often in conjunction with the hoax charge that the whites in question used blacks’ favorite phrase of all.
Jonah, I’ve got a tip for you: The next time you don’t want to talk about race … don’t talk about race.
A tip ‘o the do-rag to James Fulford.
By Nicholas Stix
Jonah Goldberg is a Republican writer who makes a handsome living bashing “liberals” and, as I recall, is sometimes funny, while doing so. He generally avoids the topic of race, and a good thing, that, but once every year or two, he just can’t help himself, and tries to talk about race … without talking about race. It’s the Republican way.
Well, he just had one of his episodes. In “‘That’s Racist’: The accusation becomes a punch line,” Goldberg talks about blacks’ second-favorite phrase.
Goldberg is chugging along, on the way to expose the dishonesty behind racist blacks’ attempts at “explaining” the mockery behind the ironic use of the phrase, but never gets there. Suddenly, the Republican version of the pc (socialist/communist) deus ex machina, the non sequitur, comes down from the stage’s ceiling to save Goldberg from speaking a home truth about race in America, turning his column into an exercise in Republican disinformation.
“That’s racist.”
It’s a comedic catchphrase these days, popularized by an online clip from a 2005 TV show Wonder Showzen on MTV2….
Perhaps the greatest sign that the punch line has gone mainstream came last week when NPR’s All Things Considered reported on “that’s racist.” Correspondent Neda Ulaby explored how a phrase once considered one of the most serious accusations possible has become a gag line. The only problem? It’s not clear she actually gets the joke.
Ulaby relied heavily on Regina Bradley, who teaches African-American literature at Florida State University. Bradley admits her students say “that’s racist” all the time: “They were simply using it to lump discussions of race and race discourse all together. Because they were just saying because we brought up issues of race that was considered to be racist.”
Okay, so apparently the reason these kids say “that’s racist” is that they’re not too bright. But, wait, there’s more. According to Ulaby, Bradley also believes that the students are using the joke to establish up front that they themselves aren’t racist. Good for them!
Hold on, another explanation is that kids simply mimic the stuff they see on TV shows like 30 Rock and South Park.
I don’t want to overanalyze, but it seems as if everyone’s bending over backward to come up with the least obvious explanations for a pretty obvious joke.
For instance, here’s Ulaby again, talking about Hannibal Buress, a comedian and writer for NBC’s 30 Rock, who uses the phrase: “‘That’s racist’ works in comedy, Buress says, because it pushes buttons.” Okay. How does it push buttons? Why does it push buttons?
We’re never told. Instead, we get a NPR tutorial on the persistence of racism. “Scholar [Hahaha!] Regina Bradley says it also works because racism’s often expressed differently than from a generation or two ago,” Ulaby explains. “The segregated neighborhoods and swimming pools of Bradley’s grandparents have yielded to more subtle forms of discrimination. That’s reflected in how ‘that’s racist’ is being used — to shut down conversations or as a joke.”
But what’s the joke? We don’t find out until a 14-year-old-boy says it plainly: “I think I or other people just sort of do it as a way of mocking people who are overly sensitive about race issues.”
Bingo!
NPR could have done the whole story in 30 seconds. But instead it spent more than five minutes trying to grapple with a wonderful yet utterly inconvenient truth for the ostentatiously liberal network: Young people just aren’t as uptight about race as their parents, never mind their grandparents, are. [Young people today receive diversity training in school, church, on TV, and in many afterschool activities. How could they possibly not be “uptight about race”?] And, by the way, the days of segregated swimming pools and neighborhoods haven’t merely “yielded” to “more subtle forms of discrimination”; they’ve yielded to — wait for it — less discrimination. [Less discrimination against blacks, he means, but what about the pervasive discrimination against whites, including segregated “public” swimming pools?]
No, racism hasn’t vanished. [Which kind?] And the legacy of racism has a long half-life. [He’s kidding, right?]
But the simple fact is “that’s racist” is the sort of thing those darn kids today say to make fun of their aging Gen X and baby-boomer parents….
Non sequitur! They’re making fun of racist blacks. But he knew that, right? He can’t possibly be as dim as he appears… right?
By the way: Racist blacks are still using their second-favorite phrase to terrorize whites, often in conjunction with the hoax charge that the whites in question used blacks’ favorite phrase of all.
Jonah, I’ve got a tip for you: The next time you don’t want to talk about race … don’t talk about race.
A tip ‘o the do-rag to James Fulford.
