Article by Brad Slager in "Townhall":
Three days. That was how long it took for ESPN reporter and NBA biographer Chris Martin Palmer to go from a vocal supporter of the violent mobs across the country to a terrorized potential victim criticizing the ‘’animals’’ who were committing the same violence. What happened in that short time span? Palmer found himself on the receiving end of the very violence he had been cheering on.
The orchestrated riots which have sprung up across dozens of major cities have disgusted most citizens, but these violent rioters have been encouraged by a disturbingly high number of limousine liberals who want to be portrayed as properly woke in this climate. How do you explain the dichotomy of Hollywood elites who just a week or so ago were pleading for people to remain ensconced in our homes in the name of public safety, to now being a group who crowdsources money to bail out the rioters who have been arrested?
Last weekend people going to church were going to kill grandma, but now when hordes destroy cities the celebrities will foot the bill so they can be freed to exact more rampage in the downtown area. Two weeks ago I was a monster if I walked on the beach, but cement-headed thugs who torch the Waffle House are heroes today. These unhinged basement-dwellers who are torching the business district are being enabled by the likes of Chris Martin Palmer–until they stray too close.
It was last Thursday when a picture was sent on social media of a structure fully engulfed in flames, a multi-floored complex with its skeletal framework fully ablaze. Palmer saw this image and saw fit to respond on his Twitter account (since deleted) in this fashion:
Chris Martin Palmer’s support of the black protest is perfectly fine, and even opposition to the police is understandable. The cheering for rampant destruction, however, the encouragement of illegal and anarchistic behavior, is rather problematic. What is being accomplished and the purpose to this destruction are questions never effectively addressed. And as we soon learned, Palmer’s enthusiasm for this carnage is limited.
It turns out as he called for burning things down he does not in fact mean burn it “all’’. His own dwelling and property were to be exempted from his call for widespread fires and looting. Imagine this.
“They just attacked our sister community down the street,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s a gated community and they tried to climb the gates. They had to beat them back. Then destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building. Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.”
Now what changed, Chris? Just days earlier you pushed for overtaking private property and having it all destroyed, but once this scourge actually threatened your private property it became a problem. Those heroic ‘’protestors’’ you encouraged prior have suddenly become “animals.” Curious the way this transformation took place in the harsh light of proximity. There was also another change that suddenly washed over Chris—his antipathy towards law enforcement seems to have become altered in the wake of his personal experience.
“Welp. They're gone,” he said in an update. “Security called the cops and they swarmed. Some scattered, others were arrested. (You hate to see it.) Tense moments. There's graffiti everywhere. We live in a beautiful, safe community and have pride. These people had no pride and weren't protesters.”
Those hated cops were sure turned to in quick fashion. And those noble demonstrators from days earlier transformed, no longer worthy of the title of protestors, all because Chris had his own personal affairs threatened. This underscores the problem with these elites and their support of these disruptors; they see no problem whatsoever when the damage and violence is being committed from the safe distance of television. Sure, cheer it on, as long as it is other people who have to incur the damaging effects.
Palmer is oblivious that he is clapping for the hardship visited upon the very people he gives lip service support to in order to sound supportive. That building he wanted to see reduced to ash? It was a Minneapolis low-income housing complex, nearly 200 units set to open this year for residents to have affordable housing in the area. Now it has been denied to the very people Palmer supposedly supports. Residents in the area now struggle to get food and other goods, as many businesses are no longer operational.
“Tear up your own shit,” he said. “Don't come to where we live at and tear our neighborhood up. We care about our community. If you don't care about yours I don't give a shit.”
This is a fundamental intolerance that is metastasizing in the country, and it is one being fostered by the cultural elites. They want this social discord, they encourage the disruption to the fabric of the nation. Palmer is not the cause himself, but he is emblematic of this venom we have to deal with. He decries when his neighborhood is threatened by thuggery, but he was perfectly comfortable prodding others to enact this violence in other areas.
“Don’t come to where we live”, was his directive, but he was perfectly comfortable watching other communities burn. It is a poisonous lack of empathy, a willingness to foist suffering onto others from a distance in order to promote a political end. As long as they remain unscathed then anyone else’s suffering is collateral damage and an acceptable end.
What Palmer does not realize is that in this hypocritical stance it has been exposed that he, and the other cultural elites fueling these uprisings, are the ones who are the real animals.
https://townhall.com/columnists/bradslager/2020/06/01/espn-reporter-who-cheered-violence-suddenly-upset-when-his-neighborhood-was-threatened-n2569830