CNN, media guilty of hate crime in Zimmerman affair

I suppose there was a time when CNN used to be “good” at reporting the news. I mean, isn’t 24 hours a day enough time to provide “in-depth” reporting on the issues of the day? Perhaps that was somewhat true when it was the only 24-hour news program in existence, but now it has to compete for ratings with not just its competitors who pass on ideological bombast as “news,” but hundreds of other channels seeking to “entertain” the masses. Perhaps that is why CNN has become little more than a forum for overpaid airheads to show-up for a few minutes to disseminate a few airhead opinions, stuffing the screen with video and graphics for “substance.”

And once more, anytime George Zimmerman does as so much to offend as to sneeze in public, he is back in the” news.”  This time it is after one of those people by his very existence is offensive, who had a “problem” with him in the past decided to engage in a little roadway harassment, and then took a shot at Zimmerman, who was injured. CNN, of course, treats every claim against Zimmerman, unsubstantiated by facts or not, as if it is the “top story”—or in cases like this, utterly fails to examine its own responsibility in creating an atmosphere which has turned him into a “fair target” for anyone with a “grudge” against him. It has become almost impossible for him to live a "normal" life; it would have been different if he was white, because all those "moral" paladins in the media would have been thinking "What if that was me?" that night.

Or anyone who “looks” like him. This “grudge” might have something to do with the fact that Zimmerman is Hispanic. “Immigration” is for many a code word to cover a plethora racist stereotypes, and the enmity for Hispanics for many in black community (competition “their” low-end jobs, etc.) only needs an excuse to be exposed.   It should be absolutely appalling how media like CNN invested itself in support of Trayvon Martin, a just short of adulthood young thug and career criminal in the making who quite possibly had a life already being pointed in the direction of a gun--although far more likely than not one being held by one of his “brothers.” Spare me the hypocritically self-righteous “unarmed innocent child” bovine scatology. 

Equally appalling is the way CNN (and MSNBC)  divested Zimmerman of any shred of humanity regardless of the preponderance of the evidence that showed that he did act in self-defense, and that Martin’s past activities and predilections showed him to be quite capable of what he was accused of. This was someone, after all, who had previously assaulted a gym teacher and a school bus driver. But all we ever saw was a picture of a fresh-faced “child”—not the man who was displaying his gangsta “cred.”

Instead, for over a year Zimmerman had been “convicted” of murdering an “unarmed child” by the media, instead of someone who had just been turned out of his own mother’s house after yet another act of criminal behavior that should have landed him in jail to learn a lesson, instead of being shipped 200 miles away into a neighborhood where no one knew him and where young black “transients” had committed a number of home invasions and thefts in the past year. Instead, it was Zimmerman who was turned into an inhuman beast without ever once stopping to question how this played into the atmosphere of prejudice and hate that the media already incited against Hispanics—and allowing whites to hypocritically occupy the racial “high ground,” while blacks were permitted to ignore the dysfunction in their own community.

I can vouch for the way this played out on the street level, having already experienced it in an incident I wrote about last January. I had just finished work in Seattle and was walking to a bus stop when a surly black male giving me the evil eye road past me in the opposite direction on a bicycle. I didn’t think much of it, until a few minutes later he road-up behind and threatened me with violence on my person if I “followed” him again. What the hell was he talking about? I asked him this question, upon which he got off his bike and advanced on me menacingly. I walked a little faster, and when he realized that he was leaving his bike far behind, this thug returned to it again and road up to me again, threatening me once more with violence if I “followed” him.

As I pointed out in that post, this insanity was a direct result of the media’s demonizing of a Hispanic when that was the only “image” of a Hispanic that CNN ever bothered to show.  Another incident I experienced was when I walked into a Kent Safeway store, and over the intercom I heard “Skittles Alert.” I also noted that this particular store seemed to employ every race and ethnicity save Hispanic; you only have to practice discrimination and racism against one group to be guilty of it. 

So what does this all mean? News organizations like CNN, either consciously or unconsciously, fuel discrimination and stereotyping of Hispanics. Where are the spokespersons for Hispanics on CNN, who after all are the largest “minority” group in the U.S.? I’m not talking about white Cuban/Texas assholes like Sen. Ted Cruz; I talking about the ones who are permitted—like the omnipresent black commentators who constantly complain about black “problems” and usually whitewash what the problems are—to accuse the media and society of using the Zimmerman case and such issues as immigration to rationalize an atmosphere of hate.

The interesting thing is that I feel keenly about racism against Hispanics because I am usually mistaken for one; people frequently speak Spanish to me as if it is supposed to be my native tongue. Because of the false assumptions that many—if not most—people have about me, that I am an uneducated “alien” from an “alien” culture with natively criminal tendencies, I feel as if I am in a particularly strong position to talk about the ignorance of this variety of racism, which some stupidly refer to as an “ethnic” problem. 

Media like CNN put out Zimmerman out as the “face” of Hispanic America in order to allow both blacks and whites of a certain persuasion to use as a dartboard for their bigotry and hate. No one is asking the Hispanic community how they feel about this. Since there are no Hispanic spokespersons on CNN or any one at all who has the pulse of the community, both black and white commentator seem to feel free to make racist insinuations about them as if those are to be assumed to be true. There is no one allowed on CNN to debunk them or offer another opinion. 

The media, especially CNN, is thus guilty of hate crimes against Hispanics. CNN (or the local newspaper, the Seattle Times), disseminate stories that inspire hate, and it is thus no different than the usual hate group propaganda by your average every day neo-Nazi or “Patriot” organization. Because of media like CNN, it is open season on Hispanics; bigots both white and black are being allowed to vent their racism toward Hispanics through Zimmerman, aided by the blatantly false narrative offered in the Martin incident. Now people have an excuse—as demonstrated by my own experience—to attack anyone who “looks” Hispanic, and feel it is “justified.”