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In a complaint Flanagan had sent to the station after his dismissal, he wrote that his coworkers had racially taunted him by bringing watermelon into the workplace:

The watermelon would appear, then disappear, then appear, then disappear again…only to appear yet again….This was not an innocent incident. The watermelon was placed in a strategic location where it would be visible to newsroom employees entering and exiting the building.

Oh. Hmm. Well, in that case, it’s a wonder he only killed two people. I’m part Irish, and if office coworkers had strategically placed boxes of Lucky Charms cereal where I could see them, I would have had no choice but to go on a killing spree and then post selfies about it.

Because most major news outlets are either ignoring this story or at least paying no attention to its obvious racial angles, there’s something grimly symbolic in the fact that Flanagan’s victims were a reporter and her cameraman. The major media’s tendency over the last couple generations has been to sculpt a racial narrative where whites are always to blame and blacks always have an excuse. According to The Script, Dylann Roof is fully responsible for his crimes, whereas in Flanagan’s case, society is to blame.

Only a self-deluded sourpuss would deny that both Dylann Roof and Vester Flanagan II were motivated to kill people for racial reasons. They said it in their own words, and I trust they weren’t lying. The main difference”€”and it’s a big one”€”is that Dylann Roof’s pale skin forbids him from using the Get Out Of Hate Crime Free card.