PPOD 3/6/18: The Nunberg Trials

It's been over a year since I did a Pet Peeve of the Day, or PPOD, post.  The last time I was so inspired, it was Mitch McConnell who made me do it. This time, it's Sam Nunberg and all who got caught up in the whirlwind that was yesterday.

Nunberg, a former Trump campaign staffer who, according to this opinion piece, was fired not just once but twice by Trump, received a subpoena from Robert Mueller's grand jury, asking for any and all documents of any kind related to Carter Page, Corey Lewandowski,  Donald Trump, Hope Hicks, Keith Schiller, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon. Nunberg might once have been a nothingburger with the campaign, but someone seems to think he's a somethingburger with a plateful of sides.

So he gets a subpoena, and he starts feeling his oats, and before you know it, he's all over the cable networks, calling in a la Trump to show after show, expanding his resistance to the subpoena, expanding his thoughts on whether the president might have done something worthy of Mueller (yes to that one, or maybe not, or maybe maybe), #JoeBidenliterally expanding everything, before our very ears. He ended the night with one last phone call to a reporter for New York magazine.

To say it was a cluster is an understatement. To say it was a media sh*tstorm is not even coming close. In one interview, Nunberg was asked if he had been drinking. Not because the interview would have been stopped, had he been - oh no. It would have only been better if he had been under the influence!

Nunberg may be seeking treatment after he gets acquainted with the grand jury on Friday; he's cooperating, now that he's had some time to think about it, and to consider the advice he received from CNN's Jake Tapper and MSNBC's Maya Wiley.

Stephen Colbert had this take on things. Michael D'Antonio, author of the opinion piece linked above, had this take on things.

Let's get something straight. I am Sam Nunberg. You are Sam Nunberg. In a way, every American who feels disoriented by the bizarre reality of Trump World is Sam Nunberg... 

Comforted by his wealth and power and with apparently little empathy for those he hurt, Trump  has made an art out of denigrating others and promoting himself. Along the way he has collected effective enablers and jettisoned those, like Nunberg, who didn't quite fit the paradigm Trump established. The same dynamic rules the White House, which explains the turmoil there, and it impacts every American who recognized that Trump is at best incompetent and at worse, destructive...

Nunberg deserves our empathy. Yes, he brought some of the pain upon himself. However, he has also been abused and misused. He's a man who reached the end of his ability to cope with Trump. Most of us have an idea of how that feels.  

Dan Rather called had this take on things (a mixed message, to be sure).

As one saw all of this unfold, one didn't know whether to laugh or weep. It was a sad spectacle for journalism but, worse than that, it was a sad sight for the country (that the president would have had a political advisor who) gives every appearance of being one of those people who score in the high 90s on the Dumb Test.

That's where I'm going to leave it.  A journalist calling it a "sad spectacle for journalism" while making himself a sad spectacle by insulting a man who clearly - clearly - was out of his element, and who was taken advantage of by the media, who acted as if they simply couldn't help themselves.

And that's why this is my Pet Peeve of the Day.

My Middle Aged White Lady Perspective: Juries Do Their Best

No indictment for Officer Darren Wilson, but a huge indictment of our justice system?  It might have been the right decision, or it could have been the worst decision in recent memory?  So many questions, still, after the announcement that there was no probable cause to charge Wilson with any of five different crimes in the death of Michael Brown.

My middle-aged white lady perspective is that when you get into an altercation with a police officer, such as the one that was described by Wilson and witnesses, you stop being merely 'an unarmed teenager' and start being a criminal. And should such an altercation occur, and the suspect were to flee, I would expect the officer to pursue and arrest the perpetrator. The district attorney, who would have the clear intent of obtaining an indictment against the person who assaulted the officer, would present evidence to the grand jury, and if it got that far, a jury trial could occur.

I've been on juries three times, never a grand jury.

One was an attempted murder with related felony charges. I was a kid, only in my twenties. The families of the victim and the alleged perpetrator were going at each other, shooting comments back and forth during jury selection. They were staring and glaring at us as we sat during voir dire, mumbling comments about us, and continuing their snarking back and forth at each other.

After several admonitions from the judge, which fell on deaf ears, the spectators were removed; there was a physical altercation outside as everyone left. When we were excused for the lunch break, we were harassed in the hallway by the perpetrator's family, more comments and dirty looks, and we were escorted down the hall by the court attendants. The people harassing us were all black. Most of us were white. We all were scared.

We came back after lunch to find out that that the two sides had settled during the break and that our services were not needed.  On our way out after being excused, the two families were going at it, and we were hurried out of the way again by the court attendants.  Once we were outside, we all expressed gratitude that we didn't have to see it through, although emboldened by not having to, we all were very confident that we could have done it.

My second criminal trial was a felony DWI case. The DA did a horrible job presenting his evidence; the defense attorney did a good job presenting his, and we found the gentleman not guilty.  After being excused, we were harassed in the hall outside the court room.

By the DA. Who told us we were idiots because clearly this guy was a drunk and we should have locked him up because he was a threat to humanity. And while that might have been the case, the evidence did not show that and we told the DA that.  He ended up being shoved down the hallway, still growling at us, by others from his office.

We did what we were supposed to do as trial jurors, and decided the case based on the evidence presented, even though we all suspected that he was a repeat offender (hence the felony charge) and there was a good chance he had been drinking that night. In the interest of full disclosure, after the trial, the defense attorney bought us all a drink.

The third one was a civil trial involving a fender bender in the parking lot of an ice cream parlor, much less glamorous, but again, based on the evidence presented, the six of us made our decision and assigned blame to both parties proportionally.

In Missouri v. Darren Wilson,  the grand jury was not presented a case where the clear goal was to obtain an indictment; to me it was more of an investigative effort. They heard evidence from not only witnesses, investigators and the alleged perpetrator, Officer Wilson himself, but they also saw media reports and personal video and audio recordings. This was not a trial, and it was not intended to be one. Some seem to think that was the point, and so from that perspective, the justice system failed. I disagree.

I haven't read everything yet -- it's all online, including Wilson's incredible statement that he "felt like a five year old holding onto Hulk Hogan" during the altercation with Brown in the police car. That shocked me - I mean, doesn't that sound more like something a middle-aged white lady would say, rather than a comment from a cop?

There are 24 volumes of grand jury testimony alone, as well as another 24 documents labeled Reports and Forensic Evidence, and 30 Law Enforcement Interviews. There are many conflicting statements, conflicting between Witness A and Witness B, as well as conflicting between Witness A and Witness A -- the same witness making different statements at different times. And there are many statements that conflict with the forensic evidence from the crime scene itself.

Ultimately, that is why I think the grand jury did what they did.  Asked to make a decision as to whether Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, based on all the evidence presented, they said no.

It doesn't make them racist.

It doesn't mean they're glad Michael Brown is dead.

No one is, including this middle-aged white lady.