Dennis Dale’s daughter purchased the right for him to post on Slog for a week through our annual holiday auction Strangercrombie, which this year benefited neglected children and the homeless. More info about our charity auction here. The views expressed in Dale’s editorials on Slog are his alone and have not been edited based on ideology.

Monday one of the feral teens involved in the economic-recreational beating death of Seattle’s “Tuba Man” was arrested for something called “unlawful bus conduct.” This is his second arrest after serving a nominal sentence for the killing, committed when he was just fifteen. His first (known) fatality remains a source of considerable pride for the youngster (see below), now 18 and just whiling away the brief period between that and the blessed release that will be his own death or long-term incarceration.

Somewhat reassuringly, the fundamental constant of violent crime—its high correlation to gross stupidity—is here in evidence, suggesting that indecent interval will be brief. His sophistication regarding the criminal justice system hasn’t yet matched his precocity for criminal violence however, and his conspicuous lack of shame regarding the killing (or appreciation for the mercy shown him) suggests that on his block he’s something of a celebrity:

“While he was being searched by Deputy Hill and Deputy Nix, (the teen) bragged to them about being one of the juveniles who killed the Tuba Man,” according to an incident report. “He bragged how his lawyer, John Henry Brown (sic), got him off with only three months for stomping Tuba Man to death and how he would get him off for these charges too,” a deputy wrote in an incident report.

However, John Henry Browne was not the teen’s attorney on the Tuba Man case, in which he received a sentence of 30 to 72 weeks and served all 72. His attorneys were public defenders Daewoo Kim and Hal Palmer, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office.

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171 replies on “…the Darndest Things”

  2. Regardless of how I feel about the content of your posts, Dale seeing them come up always makes me giggle, because I know the comments section will be a GREAT read.

  8. Dennis Dale said:
    When I look at and listen to Michelle Obama I think one thing: Ball-buster. Industrial grade, pummel ’em into fine sand and compress ’em into diamonds caliber ball-buster. I swear when I watch him watching her speak in interviews I can see the trepidation in his mind about what sort of sh*t in search of a fan might spontaneously eject from that ferocious-looking underbite of hers. So anxious he looks almost entirely caucasian.

    At least when he’s president he’ll always have a handy excuse for getting out of the house. Let’s hope he doesn’t nuke somebody just to prove she’s wrong about him being a wimp who lets all the other politicans push him around.

    I imagine Barry enduring one of her fierce tirades and thinking glumly, “should’ve married the white girl.”

    FYI if you’re not allowed to access white supremacist websites from your work, don’t follow that link!

  12. Oh and Dennis, you may have thought you erased your EVER SO EDIFYING post on the role of hip-hop in the French banlieue riots from your blog, but your friend Steve Sailer’s still got a few paragraphs up:

    Hip hop has its roots in African traditions of rhythmic chanting to extol the virtues of one’s self or clan above ones rivals. While this tradition has meandered along beneath the surface of the remarkable progress of African American music and was kept alive as an oral tradition, it would wait to become rap as part of the revolutionary DJ culture to spring up in the creative void left by disco’s exhaustion. Highly inventive DJs innovating the techniques which infuse popular music today, such as extended breaks, sampling, and scratching, and the nascent MCs who would improvise a rap over these extended breaks, would forge pop music’s most powerful genre since rock and roll.

    Having come of age in the post sixties environment, hip hop was politicized early on, with some of its most renowned acts, such as Public Enemy, Nas, and KRS-1 invoking standard political boilerplate and cliche in their lyrics. Yet for all the political freight loaded onto it, rap remains a defiantly narcissistic art form primarily for young men to extol their sexual prowess and physical bravery, not very different from that early tribal chant. Rap is rebellion, no doubt about it. But what it rebels against isn’t a racist culture; what it rebels against is socialization—its stultifying, civilizing nature; what it seeks to replace it with is a clan-based ethos ruled by the physically strongest, cruelest, and most daring.

    It is, above all, a deeply atavistic reaction to modern, egalitarian, democratic society. It shares with fascism its disdain for democratic institutions; though unlike fascism, which would institute ethnic nationalism and central authority in place of democratic or republican rule, rap has no analysis beyond a vague disdain for all that is unfamiliar to the narrow credo of the ‘hood; no designs other than the rule of the streets, race against race, clan against clan. As a political movement, and thankfully it isn’t truly that, it would be something worse than fascism; it would have to be classified as reactionary primitivism.

    What one isn’t allowed to notice is how strikingly similar hip hop culture is to African tribal culture. The tradition of men procreating with various women who are then left to raise the children; the raising up and adulation of strongmen rulers; the clannishness; the recognition of power as a value in its own right and the disdain of weakness; the emphasis on personal ornamentation; the superstition and prejudice against the unfamiliar; the impatience with logical rigor; these are defining values of both hip hop and African culture. They serve to keep Africans uneducated and impoverished both in the mother continent and in America, and they may be doing the same thing in Europe.

    PALEOCONSERVATISM! WOO

  14. I love that the ‘fundamental constant of violent crime’ is a ‘high correlation to gross stupidity.’
    A correlation cannot be a constant by definition. A correlation is an indicator that one event is statistically more or less likely to occur given the occurrence of another event. A constant is a factor that contributes to an event’s occurrence every time.

    If the (utterly inane) point you’re trying to make is that only stupid people commit violent crimes, just come out and say it instead of trying to obscure your meaning with a smattering of faux-statistical proclamations.

  15. Canuck, if he were to get a reacharound that would leave both hands free for typing, which could only make his posts even longer….ugh…

    Dang, planned barrenhood, good research going on in this thread!

  17. “the fundamental constant of violent crime—its high correlation to gross stupidity”

    Oh, look. It’s a Fundamental Attribution Error. How cute.

    You fucking ignorant old nimrod.

  18. But maybe his posts would be a little more fun to read, gus? And I’m having trouble imagining him lasting all that long, so it could help with the brevity challenge as well…?

  21. @12
    Thanks. For some of my first work that stands up well. But the Michelle Obama stuff comes from a comment at thread one of those “hate” sites, during a period where I also spent much time and pixels defending candidate Obama as the sensible alternative to McCain, because of his erstwhile principled stance against the war. That didn’t quite pan out, sadly. Indeed, had McCain won, we would still have an energized anti-war movement.

  22. to add to #21, note that in addition to a deflated anti-war movement, we have a Pentagon-directed foreign policy the mean old man from AZ would be proud of (despite his disingenuous politicking).

  23. Oh, “time and pixels”, is that the Internet Conservative version of “blood and treasure”?

    Anyway, yes, in terms of how often a person can vaguely invoke the terms “tribal” and “primitive” re: black people, you’ve clearly always been a talented individual!

  27. @23
    No need to go searching out and cherry-picking obscure comments from five years ago; all the ammo you need is at my blog. By your definition I am a racist. Fine; if it isn’t enough to renounce violence and promote true legal equality–letting the chips fall where they may regarding resultant disparate outcomes–then I say better a racist than a coward.

  29. See, DD’s opposed to violent crimes because dumb non-white kids commit them. I’m sure he feels differently about white collar crimes (which harm 10s of millions of people), because they’re at least done by smart white men.

    I am starting a Strangercrombie savings account now, and next year in December, I’ll wire the money to someone who can bid on this prize for me (since I’m usually out of country and away from internet when Strangercrombie runs). If I win it, I promise I’ll divide the 10 posts amongst some of the most fun commenters.

  32. As I’ve argued to the “racists” at those “hate” sites, our goal should be reconciling a diverse population to democracy, not, as we are currently doing, reconciling democracy to a diverse population.

    I operate on the outlandish notion that these too are my countrymen. You all publicly revel in the imagined demise of “whiteness” and its general awfulness, and then wonder, po-faced, at the reaction you get.
    As for that reconciliation, I may be naive about its political possibility (no group is likely to surrender its place at the spoils trough on mere principle after all), but I just wish the idea had an effective proponent or two in power.

  33. @27, We don’t even have to go as far as your blog, we only have to go to your last post here on Slog, where the NBA is the apotheosis of the Civil Rights movement, and the WNBA is a joke because women suck at basketball, herp-derp.

  38. Yeah yeah, but… Can we all agree that it’s wrong to stomp somebody to death? And then brag about it?

    Can we all agree that the future for this young man is not looking too bright at this point?

  39. It’s not the policy you espouse in those posts, but the unabashed racism.

    I’ll call that progress, then, in all honesty.

    We don’t even have to go as far as your blog, we only have to go to your last post here on Slog, where the NBA is the apotheosis of the Civil Rights movement, and the WNBA is a joke because women suck at basketball, herp-derp

    Yes! Thank you! I’m not hiding people. Let me have it if you must, but don’t accuse me of being crypto. I am engaged in an experiment in forthrightness. I’ve come to some awful realizations about certain things, but I will not base my world-view on an argument to consequences.

  43. I don’t see any racism in this latest effort (though in my defense, at this stage of the morning I am severely uncaffinated). And I agree with the general gist of the article; that this repeat offending, murderous lowlife is probably going to have a short and unhappy life. And (praise be!), the article is fairly fucking succinct!!!

    So, good work DD.

  46. @24 I’m thinking more of a cocktail instead of a shot this time. I’m going to do 2 parts cranberry vodka to one part cranberry juice with a splash of lime.
    @27 No, you’re a racist by the standards of anybody who isn’t a racist.
    @38: Yes I think we can all agree that this kid is an awful human being full stop.

  47. Dude, Dennis, you whine about being called “crypto” and then 2 sentences later you declare that you’ve come to “some awful realizations about certain things”.

    Here you are wanting all kinds of credit for telling us all THE COLD HARD TRUTHS, but at the same time you lack the simple decency and courage to motherfucking spell out what you’re talking about. Instead you take us on a listless, random, wordy journey to no conclusion. It’s hilarious that you think you’re being honest and brave by whispering in code words under your breath on a liberal blog.

    Allow me one more example, would you?

    Here I am slouching through middle-age; sexually I am hors de combat, as if by some secret but final decree. I lament it but the sentence is just–and just as well (I wouldn’t join any club that’d have me for a member, and I wouldn’t conjoin with anyone who’d have my member); I haven’t earned any better.

    Man… any other middle-aged dude would just get his ass to the doctor and say “I am having some impotence issues, what can we do about this?” You however, post that “sexually I am hors de combat” and go on to whine about society on your stupid blog. For fuck’s sake.

  49. 47: Here you are wanting all kinds of credit for telling us all THE COLD HARD TRUTHS, but at the same time you lack the simple decency and courage to motherfucking spell out what you’re talking about. Instead you take us on a listless, random, wordy journey to no conclusion. It’s hilarious that you think you’re being honest and brave by whispering in code words under your breath on a liberal blog.

    Mmm, this one is tres butch. I’m starting to get turned on.

  50. Dennis, when you make egregious White Male supremacist statements, don’t expect to be treated with respect. Intolerance of intolerance is the only acceptable form of intolerance, given what you have a long history of saying, and a brief history of saying on Slog, Planned Barrenhood’s actions are all class.

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