Quick take: Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Vicky Osterwell

 Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is at the center of a typically 2020's media firestorm based on some rather interesting comments he made at a rally.  The short version is that he accused Democrats of supporting crime as a form of reparations.  Cue outrage.  Yet my first thought was of a book that I think I might assign next semester in my "Forbidden Books" class:  In Defense of Looting, by Vicky Osterwell.  Perhaps you remember it, and perhaps you do not, but the short version is that Osterwell actually does endorse crime-- looting during riots, specifically-- and a legally permissive approach towards it as a form of reparations for police violence against African-Americans.  Osterwell was motivated by the case of Michael Brown, which the Department of Justice determined was a case of self-defense by Officer Wilson (the "hands up, don't shoot" story did not hold up to scrutiny, according to President Obama's DoJ investigation, under Attorney General Eric Holder).  Yet Osterwell, like many others, did not wait for any such frivolities as an investigation.  No, she just called for the right of looting as reparation.  Don't believe me?  Go read the book.  It made a lot of waves.  To be sure, any sensible Democratic politician ran screaming from Osterwell's batshittery, even if debunking the Brown story to a lefty feels like trying to debunk Trump's 2020 lies to a Republican.  Futile, because the lie is too central, too necessary to their world view.  Similarly, Democratic politicians have generally tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and "defund the police," except for the most odious, like "the Squad."

Yet the belief is there.  Being in academia, I actually have to interact with the kinds of people who believe in this lunacy.  I have to interact with Osterwellians, defunders, and the kinds of people who take "the Squad" as seriously as they take their pseudo-policy pronouncements.  Did Tuberville accurately describe Biden?  Harris, who was attacked from the left during the 2020 primaries for the sin of having prosecuted criminals?  Any top Dem?  No.  But Osterwell exists.  People bought that book, read that book, believe in that shit, and I have to deal with some of these people.