Tag Archive for ‘Zimmerman’

Lynching George Zimmerman

“I only know what I read in the papers.”  Will Rogers was a master ironist, and when he made and repeated this assertion, he seemed to be saying several things.  As a friend of the powerful and famous, he was frequently asked serious political questions, which this modest reply deflected.  But also, by implication, anyone who relied on the press or– as we would now say–the media for news really knew nothing.  Only the people who write, edit, and publish the stories are in a position to know whether or not they are telling the truth, and even the press lords and their lackeys are remarkably indifferent to the facts.

People who only know what they read in the papers or see on television or learn by tweeting are, nonetheless, all too willing to make sweeping judgments.  For weeks, nearly everyone in America knows that George Zimmerman, a paranoid white bigot who obsessively calls 911 to voice his suspicions, brutally murdered  a harmless “little boy” named Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman, whose claim to be a neighborhood watchman is suspect, was explicitly ordered by the police not to follow Martin.  He persisted, and though the harmless child was armed only with a pack of skittles, Zimmerman attacked him and either shot him in cold blood or in the course of a struggle that he initiated.

At least one 911 call includes the sound of someone screaming in panic, and members of Trayvon’s family claim that we are hearing the voice of a young man facing death.

The fact that Zimmerman was not arrested just goes to show how racist the Florida cops still are, and, since Zimmerman pursued the unarmed boy against police orders and accosted him, he cannot claim protection under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” statute.   “He should have called 911 instead of going after Trayvon.”

That is pretty much the story put out by Big Media, but in the mouth of the Revs Jackson and Sharpton and Farrakhan, the shooting of Trayvon Martin is metaphor for black/white relations in America.  When Farrakhan came to Rockford to stir up anger and violence over a case in which police shot a fugitive, he declared that it is open season on black men in America.

Even the President of the United States could not resist sticking his oar in:

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this,” Mr. Obama said. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen.

 “Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Mr. Obama said, his face grim. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”

 “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said, pausing for a moment. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

If we unpack his flabby rhetoric, Mr. Obama is saying, first, that he knows the facts of the case enough to know that a brutal murder has been committed and that, second, his sympathies are engaged because the victim is black.

When on our Friday radio show Paul Youngblood and I tried to raise questions about the official media account of the case, caller after caller angrily demanded why we were defending a murderer.  When we pointed out that nearly everything the callers were saying was incorrect, their response was to say, “You guys are sick.”

The New Black Panthers say they are so convinced of the facts in the case that they are offering a $10,000 bounty for the “capture” of George Zimmerman.

Some white nationalists, it goes without saying, are happy the young man was shot.  His skin color by itself is proof [...]