The Wages of Glib

The Amanda Knox trial has been decried as a "witch hunt", largely because of its show-boating, race-baiting prosecutor and his blatant nifongery.*

At least he had a genuinely reprehensible crime to prosecute. Another less lurid witch hunt may have lost its prey as well today, as David Starkey was cleared by British regulators of charges of racism, incurred when "hundreds" of exquisitely conditioned BBC viewers reacted with despair--despite the fact that Starkey was clearly speaking for himself and his fellow news-chat co-panelists reacted with the proper intellectual hysterics--to an impolite but undeniable assertion: that London's rioting white chavs have adopted black culture as their own.

In its headline the Telegraph did the right thing by placing the child-like charge in its proper context--between a pair of mocking quotation marks--and Mr. Starkey stands by his remarks. Progress, then.

*I suggest "nifong" be adopted as a verb for such cases as these.