There’s a reason for the expression déjà vu, that feeling that we’ve seen or heard something before. For example, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently said, of the cognitively-diminished Joe Biden, “I never saw that person—not a single time.”
Am I the only one who was reminded of Bubba famously saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anyone to lie, not a single time”?
There are various “tells” that tend to indicate when a lie is being told. I’m reminded of Lady Brocklehurst’s admonition, from James M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton, that one should listen when someone prefaces an answer with “The fact is…”, because “that is usually the beginning of a lie.” I believe that the need to reinforce a denial with a phrase like “not a single time” is one such “tell.”
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That feeling of déjà vu struck me again when I heard the story of Karmelo Anthony, charged with stabbing to death Austin Metcalf on April 2 at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas. As facts about the stabbing emerged, is one of those stories that the Lamestream Media is happy to have sink from view with nary a ripple, in contrast to the kind of “legs” the story would have had were the races of the two 17-year-olds reversed.
Had Metcalf, who was white, stabbed Anthony, who is black, I have no doubt we would still be in the midst of “protests” such as we saw in Ferguson, Missouri, and following the death of George Floyd.
Anthony has admitted to the stabbing, which escalated from a confrontation over Anthony, an athlete from a rival school, being in a tent designated for athletes from Metcalf’s school. Upon being told to vacate the tent, Anthony said, “Touch me and see what happens.” When Metcalf touched him, Anthony drew a knife from his bag and fatally stabbed Metcalf in the chest. What should have been an argument between two rival athletes, or at worst a fistfight (between two young men of the same age and general physique, so there was no clear disparity of force), became a homicide.
Whether it was a murder may hinge of conceptions of self-defense and of premeditation. On the available facts, it seems to me that Anthony’s claims of self-defense don’t hold water because Anthony clearly was not facing a threat of grievous physical harm and so was not justified in introducing lethal force into a non-lethal situation.
It has been posited that Anthony having a knife in his bag constitutes premeditation, given that knives were banned at the event, but I disagree. I happen to believe that a knife is merely a survival tool that is sensible for anyone to carry, for all manner of purposes. I have carried a knife of one type or another ever since my Cub Scout days. I do remember that, after meetings of our Boy Scout troop in NYC, a group of us would “bop down to ‘the Village’ [Greenwich Village]” or Chinatown, and there were blocks where we walked with our Boy Scout knives out and open!
But there is an aspect to this story that, to me, suggests an element of premeditation.
In the confrontation between the two teenage athletes—and, by the way, it was raining and Anthony could have merely been seeking shelter from the rain, in which case Metcalf might very well have left well enough alone—Anthony warned Metcalf, “Touch me and see what happens.”
I set that phrase in italics because it lit up my radar. I couldn’t help but feel that Anthony had been waiting for an opportunity to use that phrase, which was part of one of the most memorable and quotable scenes in the movie Tombstone: “Go ahead! Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens!”
Males, particularly immature males, tend to practice and even rehearse how they will conduct themselves during the Monkey Dance, the subconsciously ritualized game of dominance and submission in which males of all species engage.
And please don’t read anything racial into it being called the Monkey Dance; it’s a contest for status between males regardless of their race, color, creed etc., and whether the “dancers” are the same or different.
I learned the term “Monkey Dance” from Rory Miller, a martial artist and seasoned correctional officer and trainer, who writes about it extensively in Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected.
It’s been going on for millennia, just as it has in the animal kingdom. But now that we humans have TV and movies, it can take the form of wishing to emulate our favorite bad**s movie scene.
Since the Monkey Dance is actually designed to establish dominance and submission without the parties coming to blows, every man wishes to be able to establish his dominance (and make the other man back down) with a line like “Go ahead; Make my day!” or “Do you feel lucky today, Punk?” or something similar, of which the line from Tombstone is but another variant. Here’s another famous scene, where we see the Monkey Dance actually being rehearsed:
I remember a fellow once saying to me, “I’ve stepped over bigger piles of s**t than you just to get to a fight!” I’m sure my reaction was not what he expected. I said, “Holy Cow! I’ll bet you’ve been carrying that line around since junior high school, just waiting for a chance to use it on somebody!” Fortunately for me, it was a Group Monkey Dance, and his own group couldn’t help but chuckle, leaving him to merely curse me and walk away.
I can’t help but suspect that Karmelo Anthony had rehearsed finding an opportunity to “channel” Kurt Russell’s line from Tombstone, but when that line didn’t have the desired effect, Anthony was too immature and cowardly to let it go, or even to let it devolve into mere fisticuffs, instead escalating it into drawing his knife and stabbing his adversary to death. I hope he didn’t rehearse that part, but who knows?
It’s long been stated that participation in sports builds character. This is a case of participation in sports revealing character.
Stu Tarlowe, a septuagenarian, is a raconteur, entrepreneur, chanteur, dilettante, boulevardier, chapeauté and amoureaux de chiens (and he doesn’t even speak French). He has, since 2010, contributed over 160 essays to American Thinker, most of which can be accessed here. He also writes a Substack newsletter, Stu’s Stack o’ Stuff (the name is an homage to Rush Limbaugh), published sporadically, which covers topics not limited to politics (and to which subscriptions are currently free). He is for hire as a columnist, proofreader and copyeditor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
