When Is a Crisis Not a Crisis?

by capper

First, I would like to thank Jay for inviting me to be the 151st member of Team folkbum.

After the Juneteenth Day beating of Pat Kasthurirangaian, many people decried the senseless violence, and rightfully so. But then the right wing bloggers continued to decry the act, day after day. Then they decried those that they felt didn't decry the incident stridently enough.

Now that Summerfest has wrapped up its 40th year, the crime report is out. MSJ reports that 450 people were arrested with a total of 628 charges. While most of the charges are related to underage drinking or possession of a controlled substance, there were also arrests for battery, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing an officer. Surely, there would be lamentations about the wild crowds, especially since crime was up by one and half times as that of last year.

But there were no cries for justice, no calls to close Summerfest, not even some gnashing of teeth or hair pulling. Instead, the only comments that the right had about this crisis that was Summerfest was that Ludicrus would be appearing, causing chaos throughout the city (Sorry, Charlie, never happened) or that Roger Waters wouldn't change his anti-war, anti-establishment attitude for them. One talk show host commiserated with a Waukesha County man on how unfair the police were for giving his underage daughter a citation for possession of alchohol. One would think that at the very least, seeing that 65% of the scofflaws were from outside of Milwaukee County, that they would call for a wall to be built around the county to keep these thugs out.