Ahmed's 'Clock' - You Be The Judge . . .

Superb reporting and analysis from our friends at Save Jersey

by Matt Rooney:

The Internet culture has found its newest folk hero, Save Jerseyans. 14-year-old Texas freshman Ahmed Muhamed even has his own hashtag – #StandwithAhmed – one which the social media-obsessed White House has already embraced.

Cultural liberals also believe they have new validation of their closely-held belief that America is a racist country, so while admitting that all the facts weren’t yet known, the far-left Lost Angeles Times editorial board offered a fairly typical reaction this week:

Regardless, there are enough known details to spur outrage at this young man’s treatment. Ahmed, who was new to the school and had an affinity for gadgets, told reporters he wanted to impress his new teachers with his abilities. So he cobbled together the clock — a power source, circuit board and digital display — in 20 minutes on Sunday night, then took it to school Monday. Ahmed’s engineering teacher complimented him while advising him not to show it to others. But after the clock’s alarm beeped in his school bag during English class, Ahmed showed it to the teacher, who told him it looked like a bomb. No, he said, it was a clock. She took the device, and a short time later the principal and a police officer escorted Ahmed out of another class and into a room where four more officers were waiting. He was interrogated, denied the ability to call his father, then arrested on charges he had brought a “hoax bomb” to school.

Awful, right? Poor kid. Even POTUS agreed He said:

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

And when does HE ever jump to conclusions?

So I wanted to see a picture of this clock for myself, and I was immediately a little suspicious because almost none of the published liberal media narratives setting forth what had happened in Irving, Texas included a photo with the story. A little curious.

Here it is:

Ahmed’s engineering teacher was on-point advising him to keep the clock to himself.

If I saw the new kid at my school, regardless of his ethnic composition, pull this bad boy out in class after it had suddenly started beeping… yeah, I’d be a little scared, too! And I would’ve reported it to a teacher.

That initial reaction doesn’t make me a bigot since it doesn’t have anything to do with what Ahmed look like, and I frankly don’t blame the school for ultimately wanting to contact the authorities and check it out. What if it had been a bomb? And the school didn’t do anything about it? The same news networks that have worked overtime to make the American public terrified of statistically rare mass shootings would be raking Ahmed’s new school’s administration over the coals for failing to act!

Delving a little deeper into this tale on Friday was James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, responding to the popular perception of this story with not only plenty of examples of alleged classroom overreactions when the media and politicians remains silent (hint: those students weren’t named Ahmed), but also added perspective in the form of a revelation pertaining to Ahmed’s dad:

Reading between the lines of the Ahmed Mohamed story, it sounds as though the young man’s father had connections among Muslim activists and knew which buttons to push to call national attention to the case. One can hardly fault him for doing so, for what happened to Ahmed was a genuine outrage even apart from the dubious claims of “Islamophobia” or racism. But is it too much to ask that journalists report the facts and refrain from spinning baseless narratives?

Yes, James, apparently it is.

Without a shred of evidence of bigotry, against what are we standing with Ahmed? School security? What am I missing here?

This story IS sad, Save Jerseyans, but not for the reason the LA Times editorial board would have you believe.

This objectively intelligent young man is growing up in an America where no one feels safe in schools anymore, parents assume their kids never make mistakes and act accordingly, politicians play the race card for personal advancement even in the absence of any evidence of racism, the media lazily (or owing to bias) regurgitates it all as click bait, and news consumers mindlessly latch on to hashtags instead of googling around and engaging in a little critical thinking before jumping to conclusions. Oh and by the way… their president doesn’t do anything to elevate the discussion either.

I suspect Ahmed will get over this, and probably even come across some otherwise-unlikely opportunities as a result of this, unless our culture’s primary drivers insist on turning him into another victim of an incident of non-racism.