Our political and media cultures are suffering the effects of too many opinion-havers and too few fact-finders.

From Ideology and Facts Collide at Oberlin College by Daniel McGraw. Old-fashinoned on-the-ground reporting from a local stringer )McGraw)for a legal blog (Legal Insurrection). No mainstream media. They are there for the verdict at best and therefore miss all the context and history of the case.

Goes to one my laments. Compared to thirty years ago when the mainstream media did real reporting, today they provide very little factual substance. Their revenues have collapsed and therefore all they can afford is press release journalism and opinions.

McGraw has a wonderful opening sentence.

Our political and media cultures are suffering the effects of too many opinion-havers and too few fact-finders.

Read the article for the background and a real reporter's reporting. Three Oberlin underage African-American students attempted to steal some wine from Gibson's and then physically assaulted the older store owner when he attempted to detain them after the police had been called. The three were charged and pled guilty.

The action was around Oberlin student's and Oberlin University's attempt to drive the store out of business by boycotting and protesting the store's racism.

The University and the student's positions have all along seemed to be driven by Mandarin Class hubris mixed with ideological zeal and not consonant with the facts. McGraw adds information I have not seen elsewhere.

Within a week of the protests, the local police produced a report which listed the age and race of every person arrested in Gibson’s for shoplifting between January 2011 and November 2016. These are the numbers: 40 arrests, 33 of which were college students; 32 were white (80 percent), six were African American (15 percent), and two were Asian (5 percent). According to the 2010 U.S. Census numbers, those figures are consistent with the town’s racial composition: 73 percent white, 14.8 percent African American, and 4 percent Asian. During the trial, a black former employee and a black current employee both vehemently defended Gibson’s against accusations of racism, either in the family’s treatment of customers or staff.

Given that there appears to be no statistical basis for bias and given that the actual attempted theft and assault had both multiple witnesses and were acknowledged by the perpetrators, the effort to turn this into a claim of social justice appears nugatory.

McGraw concludes with:

During the trial, Gibson’s attorneys repeatedly asked the defendants to admit that Gibson’s isn’t racist, and they refused. Had they done so at the first time of asking, before this ever reached the courtroom, they would have spared everyone, not least themselves, a great deal of unnecessary pain. But they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, despite abundant evidence that they were wrong. And, in court, they were unable to explain why.

Oberlin College’s response to the verdict suggests that they are in no mood to learn anything from this pointless ordeal. They cannot come to terms with what has happened because they remain stubbornly committed to an ideological version of events. Things at Oberlin College will not improve until the administration comes to terms with reality.

The unrelenting arrogance and ignorance of the Mandarin Class keeps putting them in the position where they should acknowledge reality but cannot bring themselves to do so.