Liberals treat the New York Times as their Bible and journal of record. So you can imagine just what their reaction might have been when a piece by NY Times’ John Eligon (who is black) said this about Michael Brown, who was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri:
Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.
Seems like a reasonable description, but liberals exploded on Twitter with outrage, calling out their favorite newspaper for printing a supposedly racist article.
Here are just a few examples:
NOT OK NYT MT @mlcalderone
NYT desc. M Brown as “no angel,” D. Wilson is “well-mannered, relatively soft-spoken” http://t.co/7azpDpEng9— Julie Gillis (@TheJulieGillis) August 25, 2014
Innocent until proven not an angel.
— emptywheel (not a bill) (@emptywheel) August 25, 2014
Hi, @NYTimes. You'd never say this about a white kid who liked country music, and that's racist. pic.twitter.com/GJJ0bQSOqO
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) August 25, 2014
https://twitter.com/pterosaur/status/503882195434741760/
Eligon received so much hate mail that he was forced to back down and apologize to the angry internet mob:
“I understand the concerns, and I get it,” Mr. Eligon said. He agreed that “no angel” was not a good choice of words and explained that they were meant to play off the opening anecdote of the article in which Mr. Brown saw an angelic vision. That anecdote “is about as positive as you can get,” Mr. Eligon said, and noted that a better way to segue into the rest of the article might have been to use a phrase like “wasn’t perfect.”
“Hindsight is 20/20. I wish I would have changed that,” he said.
What do you think? Was Michael a street thug who robbed a store? Or was Michael Brown actually an angel, and we should canonize him today? Please leave us a comment and let us know.