TROUBLE IN CINCY: A 350-pound black man was beaten to death by five white police officers in Cincinnati on Sunday, and the entire incident was caught on tape, in an eerie replay of the Rodney King incident of a decade ago. While the man was reportedly under the influence of drugs at the time and did appear to be resisting arrest, it looked a lot like the cops used excessive force, and it's certainly horrible that a man is dead.
On "Hannity & Colmes" last night, the guest was Cincinnati's right-wing radio host Bill Cunningham, who made several jokes about the man's weight, and opined that he wishes "this sort of thing would happen more often." This extraordinary statement- that white cops should beat black people to death more often- was, of course, left unchallenged by Alan Colmes.
Around the time of the riots that engulfed that city's ghetto after a similar incident in 2001, a federal judge in the area blamed the "trash, profanity and filth'' commonly heard on Cunningham's show for the problems faced by Cincy's blacks and the subsequent riots. The judge who made the comments was named Nathaniel Jones; the name of the man beaten to death the other day? Also Nathaniel Jones. Presumably not the same guy.