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From: Jasper
Date: 7/7/03
Time: 9:03:05 AM
Remote User:
Miss Marple,
Not long ago I would have been astounded that everybody didn’t know what you meant by “fuhrman talk.” Recently, though, John has given me some good clues as to why so few people do know what you mean.
No matter what Fuhrman says, people who believe that his critics are irrationally motivated are also convinced that the patterns we see in Fuhrman’s language are all in our heads. They immediately reject pursuing these patterns to a logical conclusion because they have already concluded that the suggestion itself is illogical. They don’t see the patterns because they have never studied them. They take one incident at a time in isolation and not only don’t they put them together, they bridal at the idea that they should be put together or dismiss the idea out of hand BECAUSE OF Fuhrman’s racism.
In other words, Fuhrman has learned how to make his racism work for him. He just denies it and calls up stereotypes of people who accuse him of racism. He can then distance himself from “guilty knowledge” with any unheralded explanation and keep on stepping with no serious threat of being attacked on the merits of what he says or does.
I don’t know where Fuhrman learned that he could get away with putting the same distancing twist of every significant thing he said and did on Bundy, Rockingham, in court and in his interviews and books but it works every time. You can find an “innocent” explanation for every one of them – if you look at them separately. Most people do exactly that and move on to something else.
Maybe he learned it from his days of playing football in high school. When you find a play that works, you keep on running the same play. –Jasper