When you’re dealing with heavily agendized people, you go into those interactions assuming they will be distinctly partial to their interests, but that they will nevertheless allow for their perspectives to be informed by at least a modicum of common sense.

Well, apparently, THAT isn’t true.

The website Mediaite reports on an exchange that took place this past Thursday between CNN’s Carol Costello and Corine Mack, the president of the Charlotte, N.C. chapter of the NAACP, wherein it appears that Ms. Mack is so driven to see realized a narrative favoring Keith Scott, that she is willing to take full leave of her senses to make it happen.

The precise point of contention with respect to the faceoff between Scott and the Charlotte police is whether the victim was holding a book in his hand, as his family has claimed, or if he was, in fact, holding a gun, which has been the contention of police all along.

As it turns out, in the opinion of Ms. Mack, it does not matter if Keith Scott was holding a book OR a gun. In the words of Mack, “I think the most important part is the contrast in him having a book versus a gun. But in my mind and in most of the community’s mind, it really doesn’t matter if he had a gun.”

It doesn’t matter if he had a gun?

As Mack said later in her exchange with Costello, “…I don’t want anyone to walk away from this conversation today thinking that a video showing he had a gun in any way says that he was guilty of anything.”

Except, maybe, of brandishing a firearm during a police encounter and not dropping it after being commanded a mere SEVEN TIMES by police to do so.

Except for that, maybe.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large