By Eric Boehlert
It seemed the Martin story simply did not fit the right-wing's preferred narrative about guns and minorities and how white America is allegedly under physical assault from Obama's violent African-American base. Or, as Rush Limbaugh famously put it, "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."
The conservative media have spent the last three years utterly obsessed with the topic of race in America, but only when they can frame that issue dishonestly; only when conservatives can use news events for race baiting purposes. So as the Martin story morphed into a national conversation about race and guns and the law, many conservative media voices remained silent early on. (A silence later replaced by attempts to smear the young victim.)
For a snapshot, TVeyes.com indicates that between March 15 and 25, "Trayvon Martin" was mentioned nearly 500 times on CNN, 350 times on MSNBC, but less than 100 times on Fox News. Through the end of last week, for instance, Fox's late afternoon round table discussion show, The Five, had never discussed the Martin shooting, according to a Nexis review.
Never.
Yesterday I actually heard Sean Hannity admonish people for "rushing to judgement" about the shooter.
ReplyDeleteReally? Hannity just said "You shouldn't rush to judgement, you should wait for all the facts to come in."
It was then that I started watching my back for goatee'd Spock.
Want to see befuddled, look at the battles inside the left-wing media.
ReplyDeleteToure (the man who bashed Herman Cain for representing black predatory sexuality) vs Piers Morgan. Quite a blow up.
Your post frankly, is fairly ignorant.
ReplyDeleteWe have a police report, an eye witness, a medical report and a 911 call which all paint the same picture of events.
Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his vehicle. When the operator told him not to follow Trayvon, he stayed in his car.
Trayvon was cultivating something of a thug image, he'd never really gotten in trouble for anything bigger than pot "residue". He could have had a very bright future ahead of him, but at this point he went and attacked Zimmerman. According to Zimmerman's story and that of the witness -which is backed up by his medical exam- Trayvon went up to his car, asked him if he had a problem, and when Zimmerman said no, Trayvon said "You do now." punched Zimmerman, pulled him out of his car, and slammed his head repeatedly onto the sidewalk.
There's another fact carefully left out of the reports *you* likely watch and pay attention to. Zimmerman is 5'9, tops. Trayvon? 6'3. The picture they've been showing to make him look like a victim is a picture from five years ago, when he was twelve.
A surveillance photo has been released which shows the back of Zimmerman's head bloody from having it slammed into the sidewalk. The gun failed to fire the first shot, which is consistent with a close-range struggle. Zimmerman was literally fighting for his life.
What happened is tragic, without question. Trayvon initially did nothing wrong. Two people reacted poorly that night, and it cost a boy his life, but all the evidence shows Zimmerman was defending himself.
It wasn't about race. You claim it "befuddles" conservative media, and they don't want to cover it because it isn't black on white crime, but frankly, that's a load of horse shit you're spewing and you know it. Oprah wants it to be about race. Spike Lee wants it to be about race. MSNBC and in particular Al Sharpton want it to be about race, but it wasn't.
It was about a small, half white half Hispanic man who wanted to be a hero and was tired of seeing his neighborhood robbed chasing down a teenage boy who up to that point had done nothing wrong and probably just wanted to go home, drink his soda and eat his skittles, but reacted poorly to the little man following him in his car, and as a result of both parties overreacting, was killed.
Instead of politicizing this case, and cheaply and disgustingly trying to use it to attack the end of the political spectrum, you should just acknowledge it as a terrible shame. And then you should feel shame for trying to use this boy's death to attack conservatives. This has nothing to do with politics you asshat.
A medical report has been released to the public? Great, post a link to it.
ReplyDeleteThe 911 call doesn't tell us anything about Zimmerman staying in his car. What it does tell us is that his suspicions were racially motivated.
And are you talking about this eyewitness?
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/03/trayvon-martin-eyewitness-zimmerman-was-uninjured/50543/
Trayvon Eyewitness: Zimmerman Was Uninjured
An eyewitness to Trayvon Martin's killing appeared on Anderson Cooper's AC360 on CNN last night and said that George Zimmerman appeared to walk away from the scuffle uninjured but, "very worried," casting more doubt on Zimmerman's self-defense claim.
Trayvon was wearing a hoodie because it was raining, Anonymous. His "thug image" exists mainly in your imagination. And Zimmerman didn't know his background, which makes it irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteYou apparently share Geraldo Rivera's opinion about "thugs" wearing hoodies. In other words, you've tacitly admitted the racial angle you've tried to deny. It's this angle that has befuddled the conservative media.
It's apparently befuddled you too. You ignored Zimmerman's racial comment--"these assholes always get away"--in your eagerness to defend the killer. What's you excuse for that?
If the case has nothing to do with politics, why has the conservative media reported on it much less than the mainstream media? Is that just a nonpolitical news judgment that coincidentally seems political? Uh-huh, sure.
Meanwhile, DMarks is still raising a minor contretemps from a year ago that no one cares about. Moreover, he's misstating what Touré said. If that's the best evidence that the liberal media is befuddled, it's pathetic.