This past week, New York radio DJ Todd Pettengill, who hosts a fairly benign morning show on WPLJ-FM (17th-rated radio station according to recent Arbitron ratings) decided it was time to go on a rant on a recent murder in New Jersey.
This past June, a young man named Brendan Tevlin was shot and killed inside his SUV in West Orange, NJ on June 25, 2014. By all accounts, Mr. Tevlin was an outstanding young man and a model citizen.
His death is a tragedy.
But here's where it gets interesting.
It came to light on August 21 that one of the killers, Ali Muhammad Brown, had his reasons for doing it:
The man accused of gunning down a Livingston teenager in his car earlier this summer told investigators the murder was an act of retribution for U.S. military action against Muslims in the Middle East.
According to court documents filed Wednesday in Washington state, where he is accused of killing three other men, Ali Muhammad Brown said he considered it his mission to murder 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as an act of “vengeance” for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.
“All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life,” he told detectives, according to the documents.
He apparently also killed a couple of people in Seattle. Brown has been in custody since July 18. He is being held on $5M bail and may be extradited to Washington, where he could face the death penalty.
So - case closed, right?
Not so fast.
This is where Mr. Pettengill comes in. On September 10, he took to the air on his radio show, which is generally filled with the usual twaddle (celebrity gossip, unfunny prank phone calls and terrible pop music) and went on an 8-minute rant about the case and why isn't Obama doing anything about it and why isn't the media talking about it and OMG YOU GUYS DOMESTIC TERRORISM IS HERE ON OUR SHORES.
Pettengil criticized President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for not referencing the case in recent addresses and downplaying the level of threat radical Islamists currently living in America could pose.
He also chided the media for not bringing the story to the national stage, and focusing instead on other protests such as those in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a police officer last month.
“If there was ever a reason to riot in the streets in the name of humanity it would for this case. But has that happened? No. And I’m not suggesting that it should,” he said.
Before I continue, I must note one thing. Ali Muhammad Brown is in jail.
Is George Zimmerman in jail? No, he is not.
Is Darren Wilson in jail? No, he is not.
Is John Crawford's killer in jail? No, he is not.
I wonder what those three gentlemen have in common.
But Mr. DJ decided to fan the flames here and now he's got White America worked up! He has parlayed his cause into a hashtag and a Facebook group and everything. White people are AWAKE and they are MAD AS HELL!
Something something AL SHARPTON!
Even Honorary White Person Michelle Malkin vomited up some words about it!
I predict a bright future for Mr. Pettengill after Glenn Beck retires.
To close this out, here's a thought exercise:
If Mr. Pettengill had done a similar rant about Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin on his very large NYC radio megaphone, does anyone here think he'd still be employed or would the usual suspects be calling for his goddamn liberal head and screaming that WPLJ should have its broadcasting license taken away?
Or as the late Mr. Tevlin was fond of saying, "Good Vibes & Easy Living" - well, for the white people, anyway.
EDIT: Mr. Pettengill appeared on Fox & Friends (the JV version starring Tucker "The Fucker" Carlson) this morning. They were all too happy to help out, I bet. Here's an article called "Was New Jersey teen's murder an act of domestic terrorism?" It's just a rhetorical question, I'm sure.