Life in Obama's America: D.C Metro Murder Undermines Liberal Talking Points

If Obama had a son he would look like Jasper Spires.

The brutal killing of Kevin Sutherland in the Washington, D.C., subway on July 4, does much to undermine popular leftist tropes, in this case, race, crime, guns and drugs, just as the murder of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco challenges liberal immigration policies. Sutherland was beaten and stabbed to death on a Metro train by a drug addled African-American teenager in the middle of the day in front of about a dozen other stunned passengers.

Sutherland’s killer, 18 year old Jasper Spires, shares many characteristics with more famous and lionized Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, except that while the latter two were shot to death by armed men in the midst of physical assaults, Spires took full advantage of his unarmed victim (and other passengers) to complete his crime and survive, and is now in custody. The mainstream media and leftist politicians have mostly downplayed the incident, since Spires cannot be caricatured as a victim of white racism. Indeed, the problem for the media is that in almost every respect, this encounter shows the utter inanity and hypocrisy of many of their favored talking points and positions.

How did the press react?

In an unusual move, the Washington Post’s July 10 edition moved the Petula Dvorak Metro column (she’s the paper’s reliably leftist suburban mom) to page one. Dvorak never misses a chance to excoriate gun owners or 2d Amendment advocates, “reporting” recently from a Virginia “death bazaar” (gun show) as if she were a foreign correspondent, openly scornful of vendors and attendees. In the July 10 column she ridiculed people who said that they would have intervened during the attack, and especially those that pointed out how useful a gun might have been in the situation, calling them “cowboys.” Her incisive analysis: that an armed passenger might have hit others with stray bullets or caused a hostage situation. How either result could have occurred, with all the terrified passengers crowed in one end of the car, while Spires stabbed and beat Sutherland to death in the other, she didn’t make clear, but maybe she thinks bullets have minds of their own and can go backwards? Or that a gun-wielding passenger would have held Spires hostage? Of course, she never considers that a passenger just producing a gun might have ended the incident peacefully and without any casualties.