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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (65135)	1/21/2000 8:04:00 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Look, I'm not banging the drum for the Mark Furman defense league here. But I always root for the underdog. The Media declared he was the epitome of evil and he was painted as the true villain in the OJ case. So naturally I gravitate to his defense. Ben Stein wrote a piece in the American Spectator a couple of years ago. He interviewed Furman from Idaho, where he had taken a job as a small town cop, after being run out of LA like a dog. Stein is as squishy as anyone and would have painted the racist label on him if he thought it was deserved. He did not think it was deserved, he thought Furman was given a bad rap. The article painted a positive picture. He had gone there ready to eviscerate him, but he came away liking him. I'm reaching here, that article is old, but I think Stein said Furman was bragging about things that never happened. He was trying to prove to that reporter (who he was sweet on) he was a street savvy, tough cop. That makes him more of a lout than a racist.

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (65135)	1/21/2000 11:07:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

I did not especially follow this, so my recollection may be faulty, but it seems to me that Furman was recorded in the context of helping a scenarist for a movie or television show do background research, and that he used the language somewhat self- consciously as an example of street argot. In addition, he was speaking not of planting evidence specifically on African- American suspects, but of the lack of compunction that many officers felt in planting evidence if they were convinced of the guilt of a suspect, and afraid that the suspect would get off. I believe that it was unclear whether Furman was admitting to such behavior, or speaking "as if" he were a cop rationalizing it. Similarly, the evidence on the use of the "n-word" was introduced specifically to impeach his testimony that he had not used it in the previous several years, and to raise questions about veracity, although doubtless there was an expectation of shock as well. It was not clear from the situation in which he used it what it might or might not say about his own attitudes......But as I say, I may be mistaken......