When Philando Castile’s girlfriend and passenger exercised her right to record a police interaction after believing an officer had shot him in the arm, she bravely showed the world what happened to an innocent black man after being pulled over for a broken taillight while the officer continued to point his gun inside the vehicle where Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter sat watching Castile die.
Despite the fact that Reynolds and her small child continued to be held at gunpoint by police, and despite the fact that Reynolds was then ordered out of the vehicle, handcuffed, and forced to sit with her daughter in the back of a police car after watching the man she loved die, Megyn Kelly and her guests over at Fox News managed to deflect the blame from the officer who shot the innocent man and place it firmly on a person of color: Castile’s sobbing, traumatized, terrified girlfriend.
“MEGYN KELLY (HOST): Can I just ask you about the girlfriend? Everyone’s talking about the girlfriend livestreaming the event. We heard the explanation from Mike Tobin, but why wasn’t she, I mean she says he’s dead, and he wasn’t dead at that point. Like I’m not saying 911 could have gotten there, but what the?
MARK EIGLARSH: I am so glad you brought that up…”
Of course he’s glad she “brought that up.” What better way to avoid talking about the real issue than to misplace the blame elsewhere?
Did you cry when you heard Reynolds’s heartbroken screams once she realized her boyfriend had died? Did it choke you up to hear that baby girl try to comfort her grieving mommy when she said, “It’s okay, I’m right here with you?” Were you outraged by the taking of yet another black life in such a careless, irresponsible way by someone sworn to protect and serve that life?
Megyn Kelly and her friends at Fox News, apparently, could only pay some brief lip service to those details before quickly finding a way to blame a woman, a mother, the grieving girlfriend who just watched someone she loved die than why a man following the instructions of an officer was shot to death in front of his girlfriend and a baby.
They spent little time asking why the officer didn’t administer first aid or CPR. They spent no time wondering why that same officer continued to stand at the open window of the vehicle with his firearm pointed at a dead man, a frightened young woman, and a four-year-old in the backseat. They did ponder briefly why a public servant trained to respond to emergency situations did not do anything differently than what he did after shooting an innocent man, but still managed to place the idea in their viewers’s heads that it was Castile’s girlfriend who acted inappropriately.
Instead, the wondered why his screaming, shocked girlfriend didn’t do more to save him.
“MARK EIGLARSH: Look, I don’t know how I’d react under similar circumstances. I’d like to think that livestreaming the event as my loved one is in pain, still alive, is the last thing that I would do. I’m glad we have something on video, but the cop also stood there. It didn’t look like he was rendering aid. Again, I don’t have all the facts, but that troubled me.”
For the full segment, see video below:
Featured image screengrab via Media Matters for America video
