http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bloody_pix_could_be_zim_ace_in_hole_WcceZ5d51K70JLhtRavPAM
Posted on 04/29/2012 6:05:45 AM PDT by marktwain
Almost from the beginning, there were two aspects of the “George Zimmerman as racist assassin” story that made little sense. First, who calls the police, then murders a total stranger in cold blood knowing that the cops are minutes away? Panic seemed likelier than malice. Second, how does a 28-year-old man with a desk job catch a fleeing 17-year-old high school athlete, anyway?
I say “almost,” because like most Americans, I responded to the Trayvon Martin tragedy as President Obama did — in sorrow, and with pity for the immense dignity of the young man’s parents. They and their son deserve justice. Not vengeance, justice.
I also believed, as I’ve written, that “untrained individuals like Zimmerman have no business packing heat, nor confronting strangers they deem suspicious. Trouble didn’t come to George Zimmerman; he went looking for it. At minimum, he acted like a damn fool.”
However, I was also leery of journalists and TV personalities like Al Sharpton and his MSNBC colleagues setting up as prosecutor, judge and jury. Even if you didn’t know about Sharpton’s previous misadventures — he became famous due to his outrageous conduct during the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax — the network’s permitting him to report about a public event in which he’d enrolled as an active participant violated every known rule of journalistic ethics.
But truly, I had no idea. What began as a local tragedy has been supersized into a ratings-driven national TV melodrama, a racially and politically charged piece of infotainment pitting good against evil. A festival of bad reporting, speculation and mind-reading from the outset, the Zimmerman-Martin affair has turned into a classic example of what University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls a “consensual hallucination.”
That is, people have so much emotion invested in the story, that regardless of how much the facts change, their conclusions rarely do. With group identity at stake, skepticism’s in short supply. It’s become like a national Rorschach test. Comment lines to newspaper stories and blog posts regarding the case are a sight to see. Responding to a New York Times photo of Zimmerman on the witness stand, readers speculated that he’d artificially darkened his skin to curry favor with African-American jurors.
More’s the pity, because apart from its most basic elements, i.e., that George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin during a struggle after phoning Sanford, Fla., police to report a suspicious character, very little about the tragedy as initially reported has survived closer scrutiny. Remember when Zimmerman was depicted as a 250-lb. brute assaulting a child half his size? The real George Zimmerman turns out to be a smallish fellow some five or six inches shorter than the wiry young man he confronted.
I have seen how rabid the “consensual hallucination” group is on this case . . . no matter what is said they still refer to Trayvon as a child who was hunted down and murdered. They want a race riot.
Race riots sell news!
Yeah, why would anyone call the police to come to a location and then stand there and murder someone knowing they were on the way?
In the same way, why raise the bond on a guy when he turned himself in voluntarily in the first place?
“untrained individuals like Zimmerman have no business packing heat, nor confronting strangers they deem suspicious. Trouble didn’t come to George Zimmerman; he went looking for it. At minimum, he acted like a damn fool.”
A lie from start to finish. (And by the way anyone packing heat has RESPONSIBILITY. Period.)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bloody_pix_could_be_zim_ace_in_hole_WcceZ5d51K70JLhtRavPAM
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:22:38 AM by ETL
Or parade him around the courtroom just after announcing he turned himself in, and he will be released on bond, in handcuffs chained directly to ankle chains?
So, what trouble did George Zimmerman find?
The author lost me at this point: “the immense dignity of the young man’s parents.”
What dignity? Trademarking your punk son’s name so that you can make money off of his death is not dignity. Nor is running around playing the bereaved parent of a departed saint when you knew full well that your son was a gangsta wannabe who didn’t simply run with the wrong crowd — he was the wrong crowd.
Dignity has integrity. Snoop Dog Martin’s parents have neither.
I think the DNC has been polling this story since it broke and does not like the direction it has taken in public opinion, and will now try to extracate themselves from it. Kinda hard to do, though, when your own President has jumped into the fray. So under the bus goes Sharpton.
I sure hope you’re right. We cannot survive under mob rule — which is precisely what Barack Obama has in store for us should he be reelected.
GZ DID follow TM, but broke it off. I see no evidence that GZ followed TM to point of contact or confrontation. I see no evidence this was at any point his intention. He followed and watched him to a point where his concerns caused him to call 911.
Oh, I don't see this as a retreat in their overall war, just a retreat in this particular battle.
I firmly believe that Martin ducked off behind one of the houses off the sidewalk the runs down the middle rear of the condos and waited for GZ to run past. He had every opportunity to get home, safe and sound, call the police or his parents and GZ would have never seen where he went.
But he stayed, hidden, and when GZ returned, walking back to his truck to meet police, Martin ambushed him at the T-intersection of the sidewalks.
So depending on how far the curtilage extends on these houses, it can be argued that Martin was trespassing and did not have a legal right to be where he was.
I hated to see the cuffs, but I think that cuffing is SOP.
They would, but Obama wants even more to get reelected. The way to do that is only have a small race riot, then stand on the podium and tell the rioters to back down. He will forcefully tell the blacks to back down because he has their votes no matter what and can tell them whatever he wants. But at the same time he will mention how Trayvon was targeted because of his hoodie, etc. That will be key to picking up the white guilt vote. He needs to get the votes of the same stupid white voters who voted for him the first time and large race riots do not help him do that.
I firmly believe that Martin ducked off behind one of the houses off the sidewalk the runs down the middle rear of the condos and waited for GZ to run past. He had every opportunity to get home, safe and sound, call the police or his parents and GZ would have never seen where he went.
But he stayed, hidden, and when GZ returned, walking back to his truck to meet police, Martin ambushed him at the T-intersection of the sidewalks.
So depending on how far the curtilage extends on these houses, it can be argued that Martin was trespassing and did not have a legal right to be where he was.
The author is confused. He wants us to think he's objective.
When you lose Gene Lyons,...
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