Heh, THAT'S when you you know you've jumped the shark!
Posted on 03/26/2012 5:02:45 PM PDT by shortstop
I didn’t shoot Trayvon Martin.
And neither did the nation, the police or the criminal justice system.
It wasn’t his hoodie or the gun law or what it means to be black in America.
It was two guys in a Florida subdivision. One of them was a 17-year-old who seems to have been innocent. The other was a 28-year-old who seems to have been belligerent.
How it went down, we don’t yet know. One guy had a bloody head, the other guy had a bullet hole. One was a mostly model citizen, the other was a mostly model student.
And now the president says we need national soul searching. Al Sharpton says we need justice. Any number of protests say we need dialogue. The Million Hoodie marchers say we need racial respect.
What I think we need is less exploitation.
We need less twisting of tragedy into political advantage. We need less grandstanding and fewer crocodile tears.
Because this is about a dead young man. It’s about grieving a life needlessly lost. And it’s about justice in that matter. It’s about finding out whether or not the law was broken and if it was, if the lawbreaker is going to be held accountable.
That’s what it’s about.
It’s not about anything else.
No matter what the president says, no matter what the protestors chant, no matter what the race baiters wish.
Unfortunately, this tragedy has been co-opted by people with political axes to grind. The death of this young man has been twisted to advance the agendas of politicians, civil-rights activists, occupiers, and cop haters.
And that is all illegitimate.
That is all an exploitation.
It is completely illogical to extrapolate the events of that night to make statements about either American law enforcement or race relations. To project the supposed actions of one man onto an entire nation is to abandon common sense and fairness.
Similarly, to designate Trayvon Martin as a representative of all young black men, or of all young black men who wear hoodies, is unfair to his memory and a fundamental distortion.
Some of what is being said is simply inane. The platitudes of political correctness, looked at with the light of honesty, become manipulations and pretentions.
Like the president’s statement that his son would look like Trayvon Martin.
That was intended to be a coded statement about race, an identification with a racial upset that is, possibly not coincidentally, beneficial to the president’s re-election prospects. It essentially translates to, “I am black, too.”
Otherwise, the assertion that his son would look like Trayvon Martin is the equivalent of the old racist claim that all black people look alike. Because, actually, if the Obamas had a son, it is unlikely that he truly would look very much like Trayvon Martin. The Obamas are taller and their daughters are thinner, with facial features nothing like those of Trayvon Martin.
In point of fact, if the first family did have a son, he would probably look nothing like Trayvon Martin.
The only similarity between the young men would be their approximate skin color.
And it is unfortunate when the president of the United States makes skin color a significant identifier or issue.
Some activists have turned this into an attack on the police. They have talked about arrest rates for black people, racial profiling, alleged sentencing differences, supposed disrespect for minority youth by the police. It has been a long and angry litany. And those arguments, pressed by anti-police activists for decades, may or may not have validity.
But they have nothing to do with Trayvon Martin. They are completely extraneous to this tragedy.
There is also an aspect of the response to this homicide that is about the race of the attacker, not the race of the victim.
Unfortunately, there are a great many black 17-year-old lads who are gunned down each year. Worse, black children even younger are murdered on a regular basis. Almost every big city has sad tales of black toddlers and infants killed violently. Little kids out playing, or supposedly safe within the walls of their own homes, are killed by random or purposeful violence.
And yet I don’t recall a national outcry over them.
Yes, there may be a candlelight vigil, and somebody will usually say something for the news cameras, but absolutely nothing like the current national outrage has happened.
In the vast majority of those cases, the killer was black. Black on black crime in which 17-year-olds lose their lives is sadly commonplace.
It’s not the race of the victim that has caused the current upset – it is the race of the gunman. That conclusion is unavoidable.
So, too, is the conclusion that this tragedy is being exploited. Trayvon Martin’s death is being used.
And that’s not right.
Yes, we should watch this case and follow the evidence and the decision of officials. But, no, we should not turn it into another opportunity for racial polarization.
> “Didn’t you know that according to the MSM all students in inner city schools are Honor Students.”
In 1987 Thomas Wolfe wrote a good novel about the way the killing of another “honor student” was exploited (The Bonfire of the Vanities).
Why do you call him Cpt Zimmerman?
This was from an article about it:
George Bush had his three-fingered W salute that supporters flashed when greeting him at presidential campaign events in 2000. And now, if a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. "Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama's nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility for our future," says Rick Husong, owner of The Loyalty Inc. Husong tells me that he got the idea after seeing the famous Obama-Progress poster by artist Shepherd Fairey. "We wanted to get involved some way," he says. So, the agency came up with their own a symbol of hope and progress that also plays off Obama's name. "We thought, 'Let's try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,' " says Husong. Much thought went into the relatively simple idea. "You interlace your hands in a circle, the interlacing being a symbol of different types of people coming together and the circle a symbol of unity," he says. Their design, unlike Fairey's, is free, and Husong is urging people to download it and print it on posters and T-shirts. "We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to take the world by storm."
HAHAHA! I GUESS EVEN MOONBATS HAVE THEIR LIMITS!
Don’t bother asking. Read the last few pages of his posts, you will see what I mean.
LOL!!
AND MORE...
Instead the officer reported he found women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that he described as a “burglary tool,” according to a Miami-Dade Schools Police report obtained by The Miami Herald. Word of the incident came as the family’s lawyer acknowledged that the boy was suspended in February for getting caught with an empty bag with traces of marijuana, which he called “irrelevant” and an attempt to demonize a victim.
Trayvon’s backpack contained 12 pieces of jewelry, in addition to a watch and a large flathead screwdriver, according to the report, which described silver wedding bands and earrings with diamonds.
Trayvon was asked if the jewelry belonged to his family or a girlfriend.
“Martin replied it’s not mine. A friend gave it to me,” he responded, according to the report. Trayvon declined to name the friend.
Trayvon was not disciplined because of the discovery, but was instead suspended for graffiti, according to the report. School police impounded the jewelry and sent photos of the items to detectives at Miami-Dade police for further investigation.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/26/2714778/thousands-expected-at-trayvon.html#storylink=cpy
Numerous articles have states that Zimmerman had the rank of captain I the Neighborhood Watch.
“George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch crime captain who shot dead 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, originally told police in a written statement that Martin knocked him down...”
http://gma.yahoo.com/trayvon-martin-shooter-told-cops-teenager-went-gun-030349812—abc-news.html
Thanks for your positive note. I am hung up on what exactly caused these failures, blind spot or not, and I don’t have much time or rather opportunities left to try again.
Thinking about it and taking photos, as I do every day, I remembered the phrase “ships that don’t come in”, and had to find its source, which of course was a country song so titled by Joe Diffie. It’s on YouTube, check it out. Lyrics on cowboylyrics.com A lot of folk wisdom in it.
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/diffie-joe/ships-that-dont-come-in-3999.html
Heh, THAT'S when you you know you've jumped the shark!
It’s the crisis that is not to be wasted.
Expect London style race riots.
I went to get my hair cut today. They had on local radio.
They had adds on organizing the “Justice for Travon” rallies to be held here.
They will gather the crowds and whip them into a frenzy.
The facts of the case won’t matter one whit.
That is exactly where I determined that Bob Lonsberry is an idiot and stopped reading.
” You KNOW you are overboard creepy when you propose something to cult-of-personality worshipers like Obama’s followers, and even THEY think it is too weird to touch! “
Yeah....that is a “get a clue!” moment : )
Indeed.
If you can't appreciate the pure beauty of the violin after hearing this, something's wrong with your ears.
Or you can get raw with these strings.
How about this gamechanger from America's Got Talent (which they SHOULD have won).
And finally, this, dedicated to the one and only rdb2, whose eyes are growing dim.
Either way, the violin is sweet yet LETHAL.
Do it!
Is the Right doing it? I haven't noticed much. In fact, the Right right here, at first, when all the details were not known as they are today, was pretty divided between Zimmerman and Martin support. If the case which is several weeks old as of now was properly reported from the start, it wouldn't become such a cause celebre for the left. Imagine a headline as it should have been:
The bag had marijuana residue. He’s a dealer. His customers are on twitter. He had also been caught with women’s jewelry and a screwdriver. That smacks of burglary...the very thing Zimmerman was on patrol to prevent.
His father said that he “committed a crime” on school property, and the report I read said they found marijuana residue.
Also, the kid tweeted about beating up the bus driver.
Maybe he wasn’t public enemy number one, but it appears he was in fact a kid who would easily resort to violence and who used drugs. Bad combination.
We don’t know that he’s the Trayvon who tweeted.
These are the same sort of school officials who imagine school teachers are too stupid to tell the difference between Bayer Aspirin and hard narcotics.
Regarding "EMPTY BAGS', they are empty or they are not. It was described as "empty'. This was supposedly in his book bag.
That story would have been out there far sooner ~ in fact, at the same time as Zimmerman's father said he, George, never got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon.
NAW!
Same problem ~ different dad.
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