GIVIN' 'EM WHAT THEY WANT.

My column this week mentioned some of the many conservatives who blithely assumed the ghettos would be aflame after the Zimmerman verdict because, well, you know [pushes in nose]. At Mother Jones, Lauren Williams noted some of the pre-eminent racial dead-enders on the case:

Bill O'Reilly recently asked guests on his show whether a not-guilty verdict would cause people to "run out and cause trouble," or worse, "damage the fabric of the nation." The Washington Times ran an online poll Wednesday asking readers, "Will there be riots in Florida if George Zimmerman receives a not-guilty verdict by a jury of his peers?" Seventy-four percent said yes. Sean Hannity had Mark Fuhrman (of O.J. Simpson trial fame) on his show this week and asked him the same question. His response, according to Newshounds, a Fox News watchdog site: "I just think it's kind of pathetic that a court of law cannot be in a vacuum of the legal system without the influence of the public threatening to do great bodily harm to people and property. It's really a pathetic statement for our country." Last October, speculation that African Americans would riot from coast to coast if President Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney swept conservative news sites.

David Weigel did a few columns on this, the more recent of which features a Drudge front page pretending "America gripped by second night of fury," and links to similar gibberish from the Daily Mail and Jim fucking Hoft. Weigel's column is called "Who's Disappointed About the Lack of Mass Zimmerman Verdict Riots?" and the answer is pretty clear: Conservative specialists in the old Ooga Booga.

At the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto takes off from Weigel's column -- but goes in a, let us say, counterintuitive direction. His over-reactors are nameless "British newspaper" and "conspiracy website," as well as "the Broward County sheriff and the Sanford police" who "put out a public-service ad in which cops, teenagers and James Jones of basketball's Miami Heat urged viewers: 'Raise Your Voice, Not Your Hands.'" See, the local cops tried to preemptively chill people out  -- that's pretty close to Michelle Malkin crying, "Zimmerman verdict: NOT guilty -- Calls for race riots in 3, 2, 1..." Robert Stacy McCain predicting "If #Zimmerman is acquitted, black people will riot," etc.

Also, Taranto finds one of those real-racists on which conservative commentary thrives: "Today New York's Daily News does its best to inflame the situation, front-paging an editorial that likens Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin to half a dozen decades-old cases," which is, yes you guessed it, "an outrageously racist bit of yellow journalism, imputing guilt to Zimmerman because the color of his skin is similar to that of men who committed horrific crimes decades ago. The News editorial reflects the perverse nostalgia for pervasive racism--and for the moral clarity and righteousness that accompanied it--that is common among liberals today..."

Meanwhile elsewhere in Wingnut World: National Review's alleged cop Jack Dunphy tells us about the Fire This Time in L.A.: "...as I write this Monday night there is a group causing a ruckus on Crenshaw Boulevard, disrupting traffic, vandalizing cars, and briefly storming a Walmart... Except for a few torched trash cans, there were no fires and no widespread looting in L.A. Monday night. But that could change if this keeps up.." Briefly storming a Walmart! Helter skelter! By tomorrow Dunphy will report himself pinned down by price-gun fire, but determined to get word out to civilization about the Trayvon Riots.

And after Jamelle Bouie explains to him that "black-on-black crime" -- the traditional means by which conservatives pretend to care more about black lives than black people, when such a distraction is needed --  just means that black people who commit crimes tend to live near other black people, whom they victimize, Dunphy's colleague Patrick Brennan just keeps repeating his mantras: "it’s disproportionately being committed by blacks... African Americans commit dramatically more crime, especially violent crimes and murders, than whites do... still committing crimes at shockingly disproportionate rates... blacks are much more likely to commit more murders than whites... it becomes apparent that black-on-black crime is a special problem... lots of blacks are committing crimes..."

Brennan and the rest of him know their audience and what keeps 'em coming back.

UPDATE. In comments, synykyl: "Given that young black males are by far the most likely victims of gun violence, shouldn't conservatives be calling for a national campaign to arm them? Conservatives aren't racists, and they believe an armed society is a polite society, so why haven't they jumped on this idea?" Well, you see...