One tidbit that I've read a couple of times, in comments from people close to the situation, has me fascinated, and I do wish someone would follow up on it.

It's this: that the noose-hanging had nothing to do with the fact of black students daring to sit under this particular tree (a de facto "discrimination" that I've also read has been exaggerated in its uniformity). Rather, the tree was a traditional site for antics and displays regarding the upcoming football opponents, and the upcoming opponents that week were called the "Cowboys"; the nooses were meant and largely received as referring to the hanging of cowboys and rustlers in the old West.

It may be that we'll never know, of course. But if it's true—it means the despicable tactics of racial victim-politics energized this event from the very beginning among the local black population, who would have known the actual story. And still perhaps do, but I imagine it would be very difficult to publicly undercut the now-mythical Cause of the tension.

The one thing Heather is missing is that the Jena Six, rather than being despised outcasts, were the best football players in a football-crazy small town. Mychal Bell, for instance, made All-State in 2006, a year in which he was convicted four times in the juvenile justice system (including two crimes of violence, one of which was punching a 17-year-old girl in the face). But four convictions didn't keep him off the football field, on which he scored 18 touchdowns.

The juvenile records of the other football players haven't been unsealed yet, but by all accounts, they are pretty lurid too. A local minister said the Jena Six were notorious for their "reign of terror" around town, but had been protected by coaches who needed them on the field.

The point of the overcharging with attempted murder (although not a ridiculous overcharge—stomping somebody on the head and neck is the way the Army teaches soldiers how to kill in unarmed combat training) was to get these kids out of the juvenile justice system that had so clearly failed to dissuade them from committing crimes.

Ultimately, this is much less a story about the Emmett Till era come back to life and much more a modern story about the OJ Simpson era in which celebrities, which the Jena Six were in little Jena, are allowed to run amok until they finally go too far.