A journalist by trade, Nicholas Stix is as prolific as he is courageous a writer.\u00a0 For years, he has waged a relentless campaign to draw his readers\u2019 attention to a phenomenon that, however ubiquitous, neither the \u201cmainstream\u201d nor the \u201cconservative\u201d media dare to touch: black-on-white violence.\u00a0 Many writers claim to write on behalf of truth and justice.\u00a0 All too few of them actually do so.\u00a0 Stix is one of these few.<\/p>\n
Given my obvious admiration for this veteran beacon of truth, one can imagine my surprise and disappointment upon discovering that Stix recently accused me of being among those of his \u201csons\u201d who have \u201cripped off [his] work.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cWhile Reading about the Knoxville Horror, Journalist Finds Son He Didn\u2019t Know He Had,\u201d Stix remarks: \u201cI just discovered a new son, and his name is Jack Kerwick!\u201d<\/p>\n
On July 3, I published an article in Front Page Magazine <\/i>entitled, \u201cPaula Deen and the Fundamental Transformation of America.\u201d\u00a0 The objective of the piece was to draw out the glaring contrast between, on the one hand, the media\u2019s obsession with Deen\u2019s use of \u201cthe N-word\u201d decades ago and, on the other, its indifference toward black-on-white cruelty.\u00a0 As an illustration of the latter, I selected the grisly ordeal of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young white couple from Tennessee who were carjacked, abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered by four black men and one black woman in Knoxville back in 2007.<\/p>\n
And to show that this wasn\u2019t just an event that was six years old, but a saga that continues to the present, I segued into a description of the circumstances in which the victims spent their remaining hours by way of mentioning that even while the brouhaha over Deen is all of the rage, one of the victimizers, George Thomas, had just been retried and convicted once more.<\/p>\n
Admirably, gallantly, Stix had been writing about this topic from the time that it first occurred.\u00a0 Yet because of this, and because I, admittedly, and carelessly, misspelled the name of the Knoxville Sentinel <\/i>reporter, Jamie Satterfield (I wrote Su<\/i>tterfield), to whom I alluded in my piece, Stix\u2019s verdict is that I \u201cripped\u201d him \u201coff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKerwick and his defenders would surely respond that it was an innocent mistake, but that won\u2019t wash.\u00a0 He makes the same mistake twice, and never gets her name right.\u201d\u00a0 Stix confidently declares: \u201cNobody familiar with Jamie Satterfield\u2019s work would do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of both the Orwellian concept of theft that Stix employs here, as well as the shoddiness of his reasoning, more will be said shortly.\u00a0 First, though, it should be noted that Stix is correct about one thing: I am not \u201cfamiliar with Jamie Satterfield\u2019s work [.]\u201d I thought to even glance at the name attached to the Knoxville-Sentinel\u2019s <\/i>article from which I quoted only because, well, I was quoting from it.\u00a0 <\/i>Stix, however, in a feat that would make a college freshman in a basic logic course blush, reasons from my carelessness to the conclusion that I \u201cripped\u201d him \u201coff.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a vintage example of what logicians from the time of Aristotle have called \u201cfalse dichotomy\u201d: Either Jack is familiar with Satterfield\u2019s work or all that he knows of the Knoxville case he stole from Stix. He is unfamiliar with Satterfield\u2019s work. Therefore, he stole from Stix.<\/p>\n
So much for Stix\u2019s reasoning here.<\/p>\n
But what exactly can it mean to be \u201cripped off\u201d in this context?\u00a0 Notice, Stix never accuses either me or any of his other \u201csons\u201d\u2014his not so affectionate term for those of us who also seek to bring the national scandal of media silence on black-on-white violence to more people\u2019s attention\u2014of plagiarism.\u00a0 <\/i>There is a very good reason for this: Stix has zero grounds upon which to root such a charge.<\/p>\n
Upon googling the names of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, no fewer than 136,000 <\/i>results are listed.\u00a0 And the very first result is a link to the Knoxville-Sentinel\u2019s <\/i>archive on this case.\u00a0 The second result is a link to a Wikipedia <\/i>entry on the latter.\u00a0 To his eternal credit, Michael Savage, the third most listened to nationally syndicated radio talk show host in the country, a man with probably 10 to 12 million listeners, has talked about the fate of Christian and Newsom since 2007.<\/p>\n
In other words, this story has been in the public domain since the time that it first broke\u2014and Stix was not <\/i>the person to have first broken it.\u00a0 It is preposterous to imply that any <\/i>discussion of this case that doesn\u2019t give a tip of the hat to Stix is disreputable.<\/p>\n
As for my own piece, there isn\u2019t a single argument, turn of phrase, idea, or detail in it that can in any way be construed as having been lifted from Stix\u2019s work.\u00a0 It merely recapitulates the bare bones of the \u201cKnoxville Horror,\u201d as Stix quite appropriately refers to it (Now, had I not credited him as having coined this<\/i> term, then I would indeed be guilty of \u201cripping\u201d him \u201coff.\u201d).\u00a0 To lend authority to my summation, I turned to the Knoxville-Sentinel <\/i>archive and quoted Satterfield, the local reporter who, I discovered, had been all over this story, as well as the medical examiner who she in turn quoted.<\/p>\n
Perhaps more than most, writers, including yours truly, take themselves entirely too seriously. Yet as the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton said, seriousness \u201cis no virtue.\u201d Being that it is \u201cthe easiest things to do,\u201d it is more of a vice, for it is nothing other than \u201ca natural trend or lapse into taking one\u2019s-self gravely [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Stix should keep up his good work. While he is at it, he should brush up on his Chesterton.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A journalist by trade, Nicholas Stix is as prolific as he is courageous a writer.\u00a0 For years, he has waged a relentless campaign to draw his readers\u2019 attention to a phenomenon that, however ubiquitous, neither the \u201cmainstream\u201d nor the \u201cconservative\u201d media dare to touch: black-on-white violence.\u00a0 Many writers claim to write on behalf of truth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n