The logical fallacy called a "red herring" is a deliberate attempt to misdirect by changing the subject, familiar to fans of mystery fiction as a plot device where suspicion is cast on an innocent party to distract attention from the guilty. But the technique is not limited to fiction, as shown by BET's hit documentary series American Gangster. First aired in December 2006, the series' second episode dopes out cocaine dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross, who in the 1980s, explains narrator Ving Rhames, "helped make L.A. America's crack capital."
By any measure except ethics, Freeway Ricky was a huge success. Over a seven-year period, he sold, by his own estimate, between 2,000-3,000 kilograms (approximately two to three tons) of cocaine. According to a Department of Justice report, "Ross was an ambitious entrepreneur who thrived in optimal market conditions: the Colombian cocaine glut had reduced cocaine prices, and crack was well-suited for cheap, easy production and simple, ready-to-use distribution." Ricky later told the Los Angeles Times, which reported that he'd built a "curbside operation into the Wal-Mart of cocaine," that his employees numbered bodyguards, lookouts, drivers, bean counters, crack cookers, and garbage men to dispose of incriminating evidence. "You know how some people feel that God put them down here to be a preacher?" Ricky reflected. "I felt that He had put me down to be the cocaine man." One of Ross's awestruck acolytes confirms the Biblical scale of Freeway Ricky's calling. "He was like Moses," Lorenzo Murphy marvels to American Gangster. "He was like Moses in the streets. You know, he opened up the Red Sea for you. You know what I mean?"
In 1989 Moses was indicted on federal drug charges. Pleading guilty, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. However, in exchange for his testimony against corrupt L.A. County deputy sheriffs, Ross's sentence was reduced to 51 months. While serving this stretch, Ross was convicted on state drug charges. Finally released in 1994, Ross soon fell back into his missionary role, and after only six months of freedom was arrested anew trying to sell 100 kilograms of cocaine to an undercover DEA agent. Ricky's defense at trial was entrapment, but the jury didn't buy it. Now, as a three-time loser and given the large quantity of coke involved, Ross received a mandatory life sentence.
Article comments
1 - brad laidman
I think that this show is a good topic, but that you are way off on especially this episode. What happened to Gary Webb is a chilling story and there were bigger fish to fry than Ricky Ross.
Ross' story is just as interesting as any mob tale - are those anti Italian? Are Hitler documentaries anti- German?
Ross may not be someone to lionize, but he's certainly someone to study and learn from just like other capitalists who faced a glass ceiling and got rich anyway - Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, hell even Joe Kennedy.
2 - Alan Kurtz
Brad, on your web site bradlaidman.com you identify yourself as Jewish. How would you feel about a documentary series, spread season after season across Viacom's self-described globe-spanning "multiplatform properties," devoted exclusively to Jewish mobsters such as Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Louis Lepke, Moe Dalitz, et al. Even in jest, the idea is repellent. As would be a similar series devoted exclusively to Italian mobsters or to any other ethnic minority. When gangsters are the most prominent African Americans the media puts forward for us to, as you put it, "study and learn from," our sense of social justice has become profoundly perverted.
3 - brad laidman
i wouldn't have a problem with it - as long as it wasn't the only material presented about jews - not necessarily excusing their actions but many blacks and jews with an entrepreneurial talents succeeded in crime because they weren't allowed in regular business
also the gary webb story is an important one