The Star Is Old, Busted And Racist

E. Thomas McClanahan is a Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist and he has possibly written the most racist thing I've ever seen in The Star in maybe a decade.

He's the house Conservative at the paper-of-record and his thinking about defining crime by racial standards is not only repugnant but reveals the "professional standards" at The Star are also fading along with their revenue, profit margins and employees.

Take a look:

"What’s missing is the rate at which each ethnic group violates the law. Different groups have different tendencies, and they can vary in unpredictable ways. For example, black males commit a disproportionate number of murders, but most serial murders are committed by white males."

This line is pretty disgusting and it's not even clever enough to make it on a blog. Sadly, I think the dude is serious.

Similarly, this kind of attitude is probably why coverage of diverse communities is so poor at the paper of record.

Really, it's all just a hot mess over there and McClanahan's screed doesn't represent Conservatism or anything remotely akin to logic. It's just another reactionary online post that represents the worst kind of lazy, stereotypical thinking.

In fact, even his smear about white dude serial killers (that I've used before in jest) is actually easily contradicted by the great diversity of serial killers in this town alone.

TKC Advice: Conservative or not, whenever white dudes find themselves wanting to write about the "tendencies of different groups" they should seriously count to ten or go buy a clue.