In a press conference Saturday afternoon, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon once again emerged from the spider hole where he has been mostly hiding since theallegedstone-cold murder of Michael Brown to assure the people of his state that he is totally on top of things and not simply trying to run out the clock until people stop caring about said alleged murder, or until he can stop being governor, whichever comes first.
So to protect the people and property of Ferguson today, I signed an order declaring a state of emergency and ordering implementation of a curfew in the impacted area of Ferguson. Again, this is not to silence the people of Ferguson or this region or others, but to contain those who are drowning out the voice of the people with their actions. We will not allow a handful of looters to endanger the rest of this community.
With that reassurance, the room full of reporters and mad as hell citizens said, "Okay, sounds great, thanks," and went home jkjk lololol. The moment he stopped flapping his yap, a woman in the room -- who for mysterious reasons we cannot possibly understand was not satisfied with the governor's idea of restoring law and order and tsk-tsking the community for having bad manners -- said, "Excuse me, governor, you need to charge that police with murder.Thatwill bring peace to this community."
And that was the moment all hell pretty much broke loose , and there was yelling and shouting and more anger because, shockingly, the citizens of Ferguson would still like some answers, please, to go with their military-style police presence and curfews and free speech zones. "This is not normal," Nixon said, regarding the unrest. "KILLING OUR CHILDREN IS NORMAL," yelled a guy in the audience. People. So mad all the time!
Hmmm. Maybe if the authorities were as concerned with figuring out what the hell happened a week ago as they've been with chastising the people of Ferguson for having the audacity to be mad about it, and trying to make the media please pretty please stop covering the story, the people of Ferguson might stop being so mad. They might actually believe that the powers that be are equally curious about how exactly an unarmed teenager ended up dead in the street at the hand of a police officer whose story leaves more questions than answers.
Why, it's just crazy enough to work! But as long as the governor is asking people to return to their homes and shut their mouths and just keep waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... for answers, well, we're going to go out on a limb and guess that is not going to endear him to his fellow citizens. Tick tock, governor. Tick tock.
For many years, I've often used Richard Nixon as the scale for how angry I could get at politicians. But on my 1 to Dick Nixon scale, this guy's an eleven.
Whew. For a moment there I thought the state government was not going to be patronizing and tone-deaf.