Media's continued infatuation with Martin case indicates it has learned nothing

I stated before that I had no plans on revisiting the Trayvon Martin episode unless something “outrageous” forced me to do so. I don’t watch cable news much, but yesterday I happened to catch a glimpse of CNN, and to my utter disgust the “lead” story was—you guessed it—the “tragic loss” of Trayvon, and how the country refuses to rest until “justice” is served. To this end, scores of “Justice for Trayvon” vigils are being held all over the country. From what I hear, most of these “vigils” are hardly spontaneous or attracting enough people to fill a corner drug store parking lot, largely drummed-up by people with their own agendas. In the absence of righteous rioting (only a few displays of vandalism and looting), Al Sharpton and the media have turned-up the volume in an effort to drown out the fact that a large majority of the country simply did not see the case the way they do. Black activists and the media seem to think it is OK for some people to go around beating other people up and not expect, at some point, to face the consequences; it apparently surprises them to discover that not everyone shares that perspective. 

During their press conference after the verdict, Zimmerman attorneys Mark O’Mara and Don West chastised the media for playing along with the racial narrative and turning Zimmerman into a “monster.” The case was about self-defense and nothing more. It wasn’t about “racial profiling,” or “stand your ground” or whether Zimmerman as the neighborhood watch captain should or should not have “followed” Martin. This was about whether he had a right to defend himself when he was being beaten by a young thug for 45 seconds before he used lethal force to end it. Martin’s race was only a factor if one considers the reality of demographics and crime.  

Unfortunately, for lack of another “scandal” to run with, the media has chosen not to learn anything from the past and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. I can’t recall any private citizen in recent memory treated with such sustained malice as Zimmerman, even after a trial in which it was clear that he was innocent of murder and of racial profiling, and that he was being beaten by Martin for reasons of malicious intent. As I’ve said before, I am convinced that the fact that Zimmerman is Latino is a factor in the level of this maliciousness by the media. Yet to the media there is still a “national” debate on the racial aspects of the case, in which blacks and not Latinos are the victims.  But it has overreached itself; there is no “national” debate, only one that the media is creating the illusion of. While there is a demographic that feeds on this sort of thing, most people accept the jury’s verdict and want to move on. Martin made his choice in life, and it was the wrong one;  Zimmerman has suffered enough at the hands of blatant hypocrisy. 

One would think that someone with some personal moral authority would say “no more.” Former president Jimmy Carter has earned that moral credibility, and he told an Atlanta NBC affiliate that “I think the jury made the right decision based on the evidence presented, because the prosecution inadvertently set the standard so high that the jury had to be convinced that it was a deliberate act by Zimmerman, that he was not at all defending himself…It’s not a moral question, it was a legal question, and the American law requires that the jury listen to the evidence presented.” Carter chastised the prosecution for bringing forth a case it legally could not win. One could also say it could not win it morally either, for the same reason.

I ask myself where this desire to portray Zimmerman as a “monster” without any effort to understand his perspective is coming from. I was surfing the radio dial yesterday, and I encountered a female voice in an agitated state. I t was someone named Kirsten Powers, supposedly a Democrat, but frequently serves as one of Fox News’ blonde models who is all opinion and no substance (making her a suitable “alternate” voice on the network).  During a  discussion originally concerned with Rolling Stone putting Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover, it somehow devolved into scolding Fox News’ Sean Hannity for giving an interview with Playboy. She is one of those people who doesn’t contribute anything to a conversation but personal bigotry and intolerance, and when you ask them to explain their position, they are flabbergasted that you even have the temerity to expect an answer. 

Hannity, who had interviewed Zimmerman at a time when the media was in full metal jacket mode against him, wanted to know Powers’ opinion about the case, and she surprised him (but not me) by launching into an unreasoning, incoherent ramble that placed the entire blame for the episode on Zimmerman, and accused him of virtually every pathology she could think of, or at least what her lathered-up mind was capable of drawing out at that moment: A ”history” of violence (which as I noted earlier was overblown by the media),  a psychopathic stalker, a “Death Wish” vigilante itching for an excuse to use his gun (according the Reuters story last year, he was originally advised by police to purchase one after a neighborhood dog threatened his wife).  After chastising Powers for making unsubstantiated personal attacks on Zimmerman, Hannity attempted unsuccessfully to bring context into the discussion, such as crime in the neighborhood, Martin’s past criminality and even that the evidence in the trial supported Zimmerman’s story. All this did was reduce Powers into greater fits of nonsensical hysteria. 

You can hate the fact that Zimmerman shot Martin, and in doing so ended his life. I don't think that the thought of shooting anyone entered Zimmerman's mind until he came to the realization that no one would help him, as he told a police officer. His actions were "understandable"; Martin's actions, if one takes the time to dwell on them, are less so--unless, of course, you take into consideration the "culture" that he embraced as his own. Yet it is clear that some people feel this emotion toward Zimmerman: Cold and unyielding hate of a very personal nature. He is not the only person in this country who thought his personal safety was in danger, and used a gun to neutralize the danger and ensure his life. Some people have done so for more “understandable” reasons; others done so for much less reason, such as Daniel Adkins' killer. There has to be a reason for it beyond the facts of the case. Is it that Zimmerman is Latino, and Latinos exist in that hard place between black and white prejudice? I believe so. 

Is this why treating Zimmerman as a human being is unacceptable? Likely surprised by the level of vehemence at the verdict on CNN, which continues to exploit the issue for ratings, four jurors stated that the juror who spoke to an incredulous Anderson Cooper—who was an unabashedly biased exploiter from the start—did not “speak” for them, without illuminating their views further, save that the death of Martin “weighed” on them, but they had to do their duty as prescribed by the law. 

Meanwhile, Juror B37, apparently cowed by the uproar over the suggestion that Zimmerman was a human being, backtracked to say that the she had “no choice” but to acquit Zimmerman because of existing self-defense laws—and that maybe they should be “changed.”  Attorney General Eric Holder is now calling for “changes” in self-defense laws, perhaps to appease those calling for a civil rights charge that Holder knows can’t be sustained in any fair trial.

That’s right. Many people are either so intoxicated with  race hatred toward the Latino Zimmerman, or so in denial about who the real Trayvon Martin was,  that they will allow themselves to agree to change laws that will result in them  being victimized again and again—perhaps even killed—by people like Martin, who care nothing about the norms of civilized society. 

What if Martin had struck Zimmerman one too many times in the head, causing the kind of brain hemorrhaging that killed Luis Ramirez after he was repeatedly kicked in the head? What if Martin had taken Zimmerman’s gun and shot him? What would we be talking about then? Would the line be that a selfless volunteer neighborhood watch captain had been killed by a young gangsta wannabe who had just arrived in the neighborhood after being suspended from school for the third time—and whose criminal behavior and predilection to violence had been purposefully concealed in order to artificially lower school crime rates? Or because Zimmerman is Latino and Martin is black, it would be chalked-up to just another reality of urban culture of no interest to the country at large?

That’s just speculation that no one wants to consider. Zimmerman was the victim of malicious and unsubstantiated gossip from the beginning, especially from people with a grudge or wanted to be “famous,” and all eagerly reported by the media. One “witness” in the initial phase of the case claimed that Zimmerman’s whole family was “racist,” yet she couldn’t recall a single word or action to prove this when asked to provide an example. But when it came to illuminating Martin’s past history of petty crime, delinquency and the gangsta’s infatuation with violence, it simply didn’t compute for the media that sought to turn this into an issue of “racial injustice.” Words like “child” and “unarmed” are still repeatedly used to conceal the truth about Martin—and the dysfunctionality of the “culture” that he chose to be a part of. Had he not chosen that path, neither he nor Zimmerman would ever have met, this incident would never have occurred.