To ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews‘ fill-in host Michael Smerconish the beating of a white boy by three black boys probably isn’t a hate crime — because the white boy “snitched.”
On the show Tuesday night, Smerconish discussed a Florida school bus beating caught on tape. Three black 15-year-olds rained down punches on a white 13-year-old who apparently told school administrators that the older boys had tried to sell him drugs.
While the host called the beating “horrific,” he didn’t condemn it beyond that point, seemingly content with the explanation that the 13-year-old victim was a snitch.
“But the motivation here seems to have been not race, but that the 13-year-old snitched on one of the 15-year-olds for drugs,” Smerconish said, before contrasting the beating with what he deems to be an actual hate crime, adding, “But there was a hate crime this week that was in the news.”
Smerconish then detailed how someone had vandalized a statue of black baseball player Jackie Robinson, marking it with a swastika and the words “heil” and “n**ger.”
“I’m not a fan of calling something a hate crime,” he said, before later adding, “But this is a clear-cut case. The defacing of the Jackie Robinson statue should be treated differently than a teen who spray paints or tags his name on a subway.”
The host then closed out the show, making no more mention of the brutal beating.
And while the vandalism was clearly driven by racism — and should be condemned — it seems ludicrous to give it more mention than a young boy being beaten to the point of having two black eyes and a broken arm.
