Via: Illinois Review
By John F. Di Leo –
An innocent girl, a volleyball player innocently sitting in a park with friends, was gunned down in gang crossfire in Chicago. Killed by mistake at age 15 – just for being in a public place in a dangerous city – the girl’s mourning family would have been alone in their grief, no more than a statistic to the rest of America, if it weren’t for the fact that she had performed as a majorette in the president’s inaugural celebration a week before.
So the story went national. Chicago’s 500-plus killings in 2012 alone, plus the countless thousands of attempted murders and violent assaults that accompanied them, are barely noticed by the press, but now the problem of Chicago violence has a face, the face of an innocent 15-year-old girl. The first lady of the United States announced that she would attend the funeral, then other Chicago-based members of the administration joined her delegation. Schools chief Arne Duncan and advisor Valerie Jarrett announced that they would accompany Michelle Obama in this demonstration of the administration’s concern.
One might think from such a presence that the administration was finally going to get serious about the problems of violent crime in our inner cities; that impression was certainly the administration’s intent. Sadly, however, such an impression would be mistaken. It was just a photo op, nothing more.
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