Comments Elsewhere

Kennedy: I’ll leave it to others to document the double standards, they were evident to me when Tookie’s supporters were calling Schwarzenegger a cold-blooded killer.

He is a cold-blooded killer. Last I checked, executing a death sentence meant killing somebody, and carrying out a deliberate, premeditated killing 24 years in the planning could hardly be described as a crime of passion. Making the words “cold-blooded” and “killer” longer and more Latinate (“the execution of the unquestionably guilty mass murderer and violent gang founder Tookie Williams — after a jury trial and multiple judicial appeals …”) doesn’t change the fact of the matter.

Maybe you were objecting to something else? E.g. the express condemnation of Schwarzenegger without a corresponding condemnation of Tookie? But most people who objected to Tookie’s sentence either thought (1) he wasn’t guilty, or (2) whether or not he was guilty killing him would be unjustified. Those who believe (1) may or may not have been dishonest about the facts of the case (I wouldn’t know; I don’t care whether Tookie was guilty or not and I haven’t studied the case). But what’s that got to do with their opinion of Schwarzenegger? (It’s not a matter of dispute as to whether or not Schwarzenegger authorized the killing.) Those who believe (2) are under no obligation to make sure they denounce any murders that they believe Tookie committed before they denounce Schwarzenegger’s having him killed—since they think that whether Tookie was evil or not is irrelevant to whether or not Schwarzenegger should have him killed. If you mean (3) the attempt by many to portray Tookie as a good person in spite of any crimes he may have committed, since he supposedly turned his life around, then I have no idea whether or not he became a good person or was just trying to save his skin (how would I know?), or whether the people who believe this are being dishonest, but I don’t see what any of this has to do with Schwarzenegger either.

You seem to think there’s some kind of comparative judgment involved here instead of a simple statement to the effect that Schwarzenegger killed somebody when he shouldn’t have. If there is such a comparison, explicit or implicit, where is it?