The kid was guilty as sin

Why the kid should have gone to the chair

Leo McKinstry

15 September 2007

Why Twelve Angry Men is liberal twaddle

Fonda urges the jury to regard every piece of evidence against the defendant as either a mistake by witnesses or nothing more than a coincidence. Throughout the film he struts round the table, continually demanding that his colleagues deny the obvious and accept an innocent explanation for everything the teenager does. ‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’ he says of every alternative scenario he puts forward. His stance, however, is filled with contradictions. He keeps saying he is only interested in the facts, not prejudice, yet he openly admits that he is motivated by his emotive bias in favour of the teenager, whom he treats entirely as a victim rather than a murderer. ‘He’s a wild, angry kid, and that’s all he has ever been. And you know why, because he’s been hit on the head by somebody once a day, every day,’ says Fonda in one of his opening remarks. How does Fonda know that? Was he keeping a check throughout the defendant’s childhood? Of course not. This is nothing more than sentimental eyewash. And for someone who is so keen to challenge prejudice, the white-suited liberal seems pretty keen on it himself. So the evidence of one male witness is discounted simply because he is elderly and disabled. Another witness, a middle-aged woman who testified under oath that she actually saw the murder, is dismissed on the grounds that she might wear glasses because of small indentations on the bridge of her nose. Typically Fonda, so devoted to the word ‘possible’, ignores the possibility that she could be short-sighted but has perfect medium-range vision.

The Fonda hero is meant to be the champion of individual liberty against the scourge of McCarthyite bullying. But towards the end of film he turns into a bully himself, demanding total adherence to his viewpoint. He refuses to accept that some other jurors can still think the teenager is guilty. His conduct can almost be seen as a metaphor for the modern liberal takeover of our justice system. Common sense about crime, like locking up offenders, has to be denied. The protective institutions, which once saw themselves as the guardians of the public, have to be brainwashed into thinking differently. Anything that smacks of robustness had to be smeared as sadistic or reactionary.

The Fonda position is regarded as the height of compassion, but it is nothing of the sort. By letting the guilty walk free and crimes go unpunished, liberal campaigners have inflicted misery on the genuinely innocent. It is one of the bizarre paradoxes of modern liberalism that those who trumpet their concern for the vulnerable should actually be such noisy supporters of criminals, the nastiest and most aggressive people in our society. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson was the perfect example of the doctrine espoused by Twelve Angry Men, with someone who looked like an obvious killer found not guilty because of whispers about racism and a catalogue of spurious challenges over hard evidence. Barry Shreck and Johnny Cochrane, Simpson’s ruthless and cynical lawyers, were the real-life incarnation of Henry Fonda’s architect. Here in Britain the same process is at work. As violent crime soars, and thugs laugh at the justice system, we are all paying the price for Fonda’s morally inverted liberation.

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Scott B.

February 19th, 2008 1:04pm Report this comment

"It is one of the bizarre paradoxes of modern liberalism that those who trumpet their concern for the vulnerable should actually be such noisy supporters of criminals, the nastiest and most aggressive people in our society." Not that paradoxical when you consider that for the bleeding-heart liberal, a ‘victim’ is a social outsider, someone who is discriminated against by mainstream society', and who only liberals are compassionate enough to care for and minister to. When it comes to ordinary decent members of that society being genuinely victimised by a member of the supposed victim-group, then where’s the moral preening to be had in that?

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