XPost: alt.politics.clinton, alt.america, alt.gossip.celebrities   
   XPost: alt.fan.sean-hannity   
      
   KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — What happened to Channon Christian and   
   Christopher Newsom, a young Knoxville couple out on an ordinary   
   Saturday night date, was undeniably brutal. The pair were   
   carjacked, kidnapped, raped and finally murdered during an   
   ordeal of unimaginable terror last January.   
      
   But whether the attack was a racial hate crime worthy of   
   national media attention is another question, one that has now   
   ignited a fierce dispute over the definition of hate crimes and   
   how the mainstream media choose to cover interracial attacks.   
      
   That’s because the murders of Christian and Newsom didn’t fit   
   the familiar contours of a traditional Old South attack, in   
   which whites target blacks and reporters quickly assume the   
   motivation must have been racial.   
      
   Instead, the races were reversed: Christian and Newsom were   
   white; the three men and one woman charged with their murders   
   are black. And the consequent failure of the story to gain much   
   media attention outside of the Knoxville area has galvanized   
   conservative commentators across the country, who insist the   
   case offers clear evidence of liberal bias in the major media.   
      
   They have launched a broad Internet campaign, waged via blogs, e-   
   mails and YouTube videos, to counter what they regard as   
   suppression of a story about an anti-white hate crime.   
      
   “There is a discomfort level [in the national media] with   
   stories that have black assailants and white victims,” said   
   Michelle Malkin, a prominent conservative newspaper columnist   
   and TV commentator who has featured the Knoxville case on her   
   Web site. “If it doesn’t fit some sort of predetermined   
   narrative of how we view taboo subjects like race and crime,   
   there’s a disinclination to cover it.”   
      
   Country-music star Charlie Daniels, who lives 150 miles from   
   Knoxville, contrasted scant coverage of the Christian-Newsom   
   murders with the national media frenzy that erupted last year   
   when a black woman accused three white members of the Duke   
   University lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The white   
   players were cleared in April after the accuser changed her   
   story several times and no evidence corroborated a crime.   
      
   “If this [Knoxville case] had been white on black crime, Al   
   Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on   
   Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees,” Daniels wrote on his Web   
   site.   
      
   Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have jumped on the case   
   as well, drawn to the state where the Ku Klux Klan was founded   
   in 1865. Hate groups have organized rallies in Knoxville and set   
   up Web sites under the victims’ names to spew racial invective.   
      
      
   But it’s not just conservative whites and extremists who have   
   criticized the national silence over the Knoxville case.   
      
   “Black leaders are not eager to take this on because it’s one   
   more thing that would cast a negative light on African   
   Americans,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and nationally   
   syndicated black columnist who has written frequently about the   
   reluctance of black leaders to denounce crimes committed by   
   blacks against whites. “There’s already an ancient stereotype   
   that blacks are more violent and crime-prone anyway.”   
      
   The Rev. Ezra Maize, president of the Knoxville chapter of the   
   NAACP, has been one of the few black leaders to address the case.   
      
   “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable speaking out against this   
   crime because it was African Americans [allegedly] committing a   
   crime against Caucasians,” Maize said. “It’s not a black and   
   white issue. It’s a right and wrong issue. Those who committed   
   this crime were unjust in doing so and they should pay the   
   penalty.”   
      
   The murders of Newsom and Christian have proved so resonant   
   because they play into some of the deepest fears of urban crime   
   harbored by many Americans. By all the accounts of authorities,   
   the couple — Newsom, 23, was a talented carpenter and former   
   high-school baseball star; Christian, 21, was a senior at the   
   University of Tennessee — fell victim to a random carjacking   
   last Jan. 6 in the parking lot of an apartment complex where   
   they had gone to visit friends.   
      
   Authorities say the couple’s assailants, some of them ex-   
   convicts, forced their victims to drive at gunpoint to a   
   clapboard house in one of Knoxville’s roughest neighborhoods,   
   where both victims were first raped and then killed. Newsom’s   
   body, shot and burned, was found dumped beside nearby railroad   
   tracks, while Christian, who was strangled, was found bundled in   
   plastic garbage bags inside the house.   
      
      
   State prosecutors have lodged murder, rape and other charges   
   against brothers Lemaricus Davidson, 25, and Letalvis Cobbins,   
   24; Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18; and George Thomas,   
   24. Their trials are set for next year, and officials have not   
   yet said whether they will seek the death penalty. A fifth   
   suspect was charged in federal court as an accessory.   
      
   Yet as brutal as the crime was, Knoxville authorities have   
   strongly denied that it was racially motivated. And they have   
   sought to correct rumors, eagerly spread by white supremacist   
   Web sites, that the couple had been sexually mutilated before   
   they were killed and their bodies dismembered afterward.   
      
   “There is absolutely no proof of a hate crime,” said John Gill,   
   special counsel to Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols.   
   “It was a terrible crime, a horrendous crime, but race was not a   
   motive. We know from our investigation that the people charged   
   in this case were friends with white people, socialized with   
   white people, dated white people. So not only is there no   
   evidence of any racial animus, there’s evidence to the contrary.”   
      
   Official hate crime or not, most conservative critics say the   
   Knoxville case illustrates what they call the general reluctance   
   of the mainstream media to report black-on-white crimes. As   
   examples, many cite a 1999 incident in North Charleston, S.C.,   
   in which seven black youths attacked two white bicyclists riding   
   through their neighborhood, leaving one permanently disabled; a   
   2000 mass-murder case in Wichita, Kan., in which two black   
   brothers kidnapped and killed four white victims; and an attack   
   last year in Long Beach, Calif., in which 11 black teenagers   
   attacked and severely beat three young white women.   
      
   Only the Long Beach case was charged by local authorities as a   
   hate crime, and none of the stories drew sustained national   
   attention.   
      
   “You’ve seen a lot of people with impeccable credentials making   
   the point that the press does play up white-on-black crime and   
   play down black-on-white crime,” said Glenn Reynolds, a   
   University of Tennessee law professor who publishes political   
   and media commentaries on his widely read Instapundit blog. “I   
   think it’s a fair criticism. And it just empowers the crazies   
   when the mainstream media soft-pedals this stuff.”   
      
      
   In reality, statistics from the FBI and the Justice Department   
   offer a decidedly mixed picture of crime and race in America.   
      
   On the one hand, African Americans bear the brunt of violent   
      
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