Hands Up

Even if the narrative of unarmed black teenager killed by police is entirely too familiar: this time around, there's a special motif of pictures, and it's leading the story in remarkable directions.

When police left Michael Brown's body in a Ferguson street for several hours, witnesses took photos and spread the story to social media, and to the world.

The apparent abandonment of the body added a new outrage to old reasons for outrage.

Media coverage was predictable, and outbursts unrelated to the peaceful protests garnered the usual "if it loots it leads" treatment.

But protestors' hands-up theme created powerful counter-images.

In words and pictures: one eyewitness account of protest and arrest.

In the context of covering the right-wing punditry beat, Roy Edroso—

To see a middle-American cop gun down an unarmed black kid, and then see his colleagues go colonial on his black neighbors while arresting MSM reporters in a vain attempt to conceal it, and then say it's Obama's fault -- that is some bullshit. And it beautifully encapsulates a conservatarian strategy we've been seeing a lot of lately: Stroke the bigots who are mashing down black folks with one hand, while pathetically pressing the other against your brow and weeping crocodile tears for the civil liberties you claim Democrats stole from you.

At Roy's police go colonial link: a very large screenshot (from NBC coverage), that is something to behold.