{"id":389336,"date":"2018-12-16T08:53:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T07:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/george-h-w-bush-another-eulogy\/"},"modified":"2018-12-16T08:53:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T07:53:07","slug":"george-h-w-bush-another-eulogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/george-h-w-bush-another-eulogy\/","title":{"rendered":"George H. W. Bush: Another Eulogy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Source Library of Congress | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


Jon Meacham <\/i>inspired<\/i><\/a> this piece.<\/i><\/p>\n

The story was almost over even before it had fully begun. When Keith Jackson, a black eighteen-year-old from Anacostia<\/a>, heard where the men wanted to do the deal, he grew skeptical. \u201cWhere the fuck is the White House?\u201d he asked<\/a>. Yet the buyers persisted<\/a>. They got<\/a> Jackson to Lafayette Park<\/a> on September 1, 1989, purchasing<\/a> three ounces of the drug off him for $2,400. \u201cThis is crack cocaine,\u201d President Bush told<\/a> the nation evenings later, flashing the bag the teen sold, \u201cseized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only the bag was part of a set-up. Presidential aides, vacationing at Bush\u2019s Kennebunkport compound, dreamed up<\/a> the plan. Buying crack near the White House would show how bad the drug problem was, would justify Bush\u2019s escalating Drug War. But DEA agents failed to find dealers lurking in Lafayette Park. So they focused on Jackson some distance from downtown.<\/p>\n

Ensnaring the young man was not easy. \u201cWe had to manipulate him to get him down there,\u201d one agent admitted<\/a>. Jackson was soon deemed guilty\u2014hearing the verdict, he wept so violently \u201cfederal marshals subdued<\/a> him with a straitjacket\u201d\u2014and serving a ten-year prison term. President Bush was unmoved. He felt no weight of responsibility for the teen\u2019s fate. And he never wept, as far as we know. But the story, Bush\u2019s and ours, would go on by God\u2019s…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Source Library of Congress | CC BY 2.0 Jon Meacham inspired this piece. The story was almost over even before it had fully begun. When Keith Jackson, a black eighteen-year-old from Anacostia, heard where the men wanted to do the deal, he grew skeptical. \u201cWhere the fuck is the White House?\u201d he asked. Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-389336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}