Attorney for McKinney is spinning a story that Talton and McKinney were acquaintances and the gun discharged during an embrace…accidentally.
Nothing good happens after two o’clock in the morning. We’ve all heard that saying. Recently, Janese Jackson Talton, 29, was shot around closing time at Cliff’s Bar in the Homewood area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She did not die as a result of breaking any laws. She did not die because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She did not die because she was not minding her own business. In fact, the opposite is true.
Police are reporting that Janese Talton was found lying dead on the sidewalk because she simply said “No” to “Chuck.” And meant it.
Chuck could be any man with low self-esteem, a dangerously low tolerance for rejection, and a secret smoldering but intense hate for the woman who refuses to let him have his way. No matter his age, Chuck is emotionally a boy.
In the case of Janese Jackson Talton, her Chuck was 41-year-old Charles McKinney. After Talton rejected Charles McKinney’s sexual advances inside Cliff’s Bar, McKinney followed the mother of three and sister of Pennsylvania State Rep. Ed Gainey outside and shot her at close range in the chest.
According to The Root, Damon Young, an acquaintance of Talton’s brother, shared in a post: “Janese Jackson-Talton is dead because a man was interested in her. And then killed her when that interest wasn’t reciprocated. But she could have been any woman he happened to be interested in that night. The only thing separating her from the women who made it home alive Friday is chance.”
Chances are, most women have encountered Chuck at least a handful of times over the course of a lifetime.
No luck with Chuck…
Most first encounters with Chuck occur during a young woman’s teenage years. Walking home from school or going to the neighborhood store, she may pass a guy along the way who might say: “Hey, baby, can I talk to you?” or “Say, baby, can I get your number?”
As soon as the young girl responds, “No, thank you,” the polite rebuff is followed by a rude, lightning fast, sometimes hair-raising: “I didn’t wanna talk to you no way, bitch!” In less than one hot minute, she grows from “Baby” to “Bitch.” When those with small minds and big angry emotions get uber creative, they may strike back with one of the other favorites. “Ugly Bitch!” “Ugly Hoe!”
As the young woman matures, she may encounter Chuck on a sunny day at the ATM. Chuck may stand a little too close, looking over her shoulder. But because he is larger than she is, while she feels violated, she pulls her purse close and says nothing. Accepting that he has invaded her space, she hopes she can escape with just his breath on her neck and not his hands.
Another woman was out with a girlfriend at a bar. A man sat to the left and her friend to the right of her. She said she could not enjoy her drink for this man’s incessant interruptions when she’d told him she did not have time to talk to him because she was trying to talk to her friend. After the third tap on the shoulder, the woman, who has a temper of her own, lifted her foot and kicked the man so hard, he tumbled from his bar stool.
The incident did not end there.
Chuck happens…
Since the woman could not enjoy her drink with her friend, she told the barkeep that she was taking her drink to her car. When the woman and her friend drove away from the bar, they noticed the man and his friend following them. So the woman called the police and reported the stalking. She even drove to the police station, saying that the men were still pursuing them. When the police, failing to take her seriously, responded “Chuck-like,” the woman informed them that she would be driving to the Country Kitchen (a restaurant similar to Denny’s) to eat, promising that if something happened to her, she would sue the city. By the time the friends arrived at the restaurant in her neighborhood, Chuck had pulled up as well.
That’s sickening. But here’s the upchuck. The police, who were males and now on the scene, continued to downplay the seriousness of Chuck following the women. From the 140th block of one street to better than the 240th block of another? But when the woman, who punted Chuck from his seat like a football, asked the police to ask Chuck where he lived and why he was at the Country Kitchen, when Chuck responded that he was not there to eat, the police shut the chuck up and told Chuck he didn’t have to go home but he most definitely had to leave the premises.
For any woman encountering a Chuck, she has known for a lifetime that whether she survives another day has nothing to do with the length of her skirt, or the sweetness of her voice when rejecting Chuck, or the appropriateness of her location when Chuck snuck up on her, or the time of day or night. Since the beginning of time, in a world filled with misogynist, narcissistic, and lawless Chucks, whether she lives to see another day has always been a crap shoot. No matter how confident she seems, she knows her strength is no match for his strength and that her life is never really her own. Even in the presence of men vowing to serve and protect.
***
Describe your encounter with “Chuck”? If you used to be “Chuck,” what ultimately changed your angry misogynist ways?
