Friday, October 06, 2006

Comment is Free hits a new low.

Mark Ames, editor of the Exile magazine, writes about the trend of school massacres-
another Wisconsin town, Green Bay, was rocked by the arrest of a group of teenagers who were storing up weapons and planning to carry out a Columbine-style massacre....
....Indeed the only hero so far this school year is the Green Bay school snitch, senior Matt Atkinson, who turned the Wisconsin school plotter-nerds in. While many are already questioning how real the plot was, ABC News made Atkinson its "Hero of the Week," and the school principal is talking of setting up a Matt Atkinson scholarship fund.

In slave times, snitches were also well-regarded and rewarded, and received glowing coverage in local slaveholder newspapers. Snitching was one of the few ways a slave could advance socially, and in the eyes of the master. However, then, as now, slave rebellion plots "exposed" by slave snitches were often exaggerated or entirely invented. Slaves were put to death, and the snitches rewarded with freedom and cash.

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