...about the George Zimmerman decision and the strange jubilation of the rightbloggers. No, it's not strange they'd be pleased -- someone got away with killing an unarmed black kid, what's not for them to like? What's strange is that they don't seem genuinely relieved and happy -- it's like they're still nervous about something. Maybe Judgment Day?
UPDATE. Wow, I knew Daniel Foster of National Review was awful, but not that he was this big of an asshole till now.
Man, that's some foul examples of humanity right there. It's got to be guilt, knowing that all you have and your whole position is built at least partly - and in some cases totally - built on unearned privilege must just turn some folks sour, like too much bad whiskey.
ReplyDeleteJust for me, this is a line in the sand. Like Katrina or Terri Schiavo, this is where wing nuts show just how awful they can be. And a serious middle finger to Radley Balko. Never trust a self-described libertarian. They will trip you on purpose when the zombie horde comes.
The 'wingers claim to be race-blind, and here's their proof. They can't tell the difference between a race riot in Miami and a hockey riot in Vancouver.
ReplyDeleteAlso fuck Roger Simon, and not in the fun way. If the fucker really thinks that treating the family of a teenager who was just shot in the street is disgracing the office of the President, he's just confessed to having no moral values worth sharing.
ReplyDeleteSigh. I have lost my sense of humor about hateful murderous motherfuckers.
ReplyDeleteWhat's strange is that they don't seem genuinely relieved and happy -- it's like they're still nervous about something.
ReplyDeleteI think the lack of a violent response is robbing them of a false sense of superiority. They desperately want to claim a moral high ground, even though they are celebrating the death of a kid. Additionally, I think they are let down by Zimmerman... the "John Wayne" figure who lived out their racist dream of gunning down a black male looks like a pudgy, Mexican guy, not the square-jawed Aryan hero they wished he were.
Umm, just an editor's pencil mark--the DOJ sent down mediators. Although I suspect that meditators would have been about as useful.
ReplyDeleteOh, there's been a violent response--some white lady attacked 73-year-old Lester Chambers (of the Chambers Brothers) for dedicating "People Get Ready" to Trayvon.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, she felt threatened.
Sure, they wanted another L.A. after the Rodney King verdict. They could point to that and say, gee, we told you so, and see, they're a bunch of uncivilized savages, thus proving what all the eugenicists had been saying all along.
ReplyDeleteThey were, apparently, denied the opportunity to be smug about this, and that always bothers them.
Think of what she would have done if he'd dedicated "Time Has Come Today" to him....
ReplyDeleteThey are unhappy because
ReplyDeleteA) Full-scale riots haven't broken out as they expected &/or fervently hoped;
B) They realize that Zimmy getting off w/o so much as a wrist-slap doesn't look so good;
C) They see the long term: Miscegenation has been legal for almost 50 yrs. now, people are OK w/ homos gettin' hitched & that'll destroy marriage & the family; a-fore you know you won't be able to shoot just any hoodie-wearing teen who looks like he don't belong 'round here.
So, "relieved and happy?" No. This one went their way, but there's no guarantee the next Bernie Goetz/Zimmerman-style vigilante will get off. And the wiser-in-comparison among them (haven't visited yet; no idea who's represented) probably realize that it's the last gasp for the Lost Cause & that gasp is going to blow some dog-whistles louder for a while before the final exhalation. Which will just make them all look even uglier.
Just read about the crazy person, but even if she assaulted Lester right after he dedicated the tune it's hard to say if she was racially motivated or a celebrity-fixated loon:
ReplyDeleteThe woman, who police identified as 43-year-old Dinalynn Andrews Potter of Barstow, apparently yelled, "it's all your fault" before shoving 73-year-old Lester Chambers, his family said Sunday.
"She had a crazed look in her eye," said Kurt Kangas, a friend of Chambers who ran to his aid. "I saw the devil there."
A complete stranger yelling "It's all your fault!" & pointing at you is not uncommon in many of our larger cities, y'know. Fortunately it doesn't usually end in violence.
There is an aspect of wanting one's cake and eating it, too, to all this muted celebration. On the one hand, they want to go on being able to express, in dog-whistle fashion, all their contempt for minorities and for the civil rights process that made it impossible for them to openly express their contempt, and on the other, they want the general public to view this as incident isolated from the continuum of racial animosity in this country. It's almost as if they are saying, "there is no racism in this country any more, except what we want to call racism against whites."
ReplyDeleteOf course, we know that this is yet one more dodge, one more feint, and that this death, and this trial are tied inextricably to the history of race in the United States. We haven't come all that far from this:
That is just remarkably embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteI imagine that many of them, deep down, realize how bad the optics of celebrating the death of a kid appear to those not inside the circle jerk. They elevated George Zimmerman to the status of a folk hero, rather than admitting that he was a fuckup, wannabe cop with an inferiority complex, a temper and a gun, and now they have Zimmerman-cooties all over them.
ReplyDeleteThey should have been more circumspect in lionizing Zimmerman (remember last year, when they made a big deal about Zimmerman being a registered Democrat and a Latino?). They didn't have to become so invested in his case, but they couldn't help themselves- they are elated that he was acquitted because it was a victory for unrestrained gun violence and a clear indication that young black males had better watch their backs.
Once the afterglow wears off, they are stuck with the fact that they celebrated the death of a kid at the hands of a fuckup with a hot temper, a history of violence, an inferiority complex, and a gun.
Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring this bit of lunacy to your attention.
ReplyDeleteThe whole trial was just a parade of awfulness, from the photos of a 30-year-old rap star being chain-mailed around, claiming to be what Trayvon "really" looked like, to the fact that the deep African-American accent of one of the prosecution's witnesses was apparently worth a whole day of discussion, to the overarching feeling that, as others have said, it shifted from Zimmerman being put on trial for murder to Trayvon being put on trial for being young, male, and black. Zimmerman's lawyers were living models of the reasons people still love making jokes about lawyers burning in hell. And their client, fat lump of odiousness that he is, was a perfect centerpiece to it all: too scared to listen to the police, too scared to leave the kid alone and not draw his gun, and as it turns out, too scared to even get up on the damn witness stand. May he never have a peaceful sleep for the rest of his life, and may people stare him down and remind him what he did whenever he leaves his house. I imagine even people who pride themselves on being as cynical as possible when it comes to American politics saw something here that dropped their jaws. I hope so, at least.
ReplyDelete"Thank you Florida for electing Jeb Bush in 2016?"
ReplyDeleteDid I miss out on the introduction of the new 2014 Chevy Time Machine?
"Full-scale riots haven't broken out as they expected &/or fervently hoped"
ReplyDeleteThey DEFINITELY hoped for this. If you'd spent any time over at the blog run by The Artist Formerly Known As Confederate Yankee, you would have seen thread after thread in which they self-stimulated by discussing tactics of warfare in an urban environment and gleefully planning which of their guns they'd use to kill them some darkies.
It has been repulsive.
Greg Palast is right. We live in an armed madhouse.
ReplyDeleteRoy, I don't know how you stand reading those sites, week after week, year after year -- but I'm grateful you do so I don't have to. The mind boggles, really. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing vileness started from day one, leaving a trail of slime all the way to "not guilty," and they ain't done yet. Treating him like they do rape victims, they still accuse Trayvon Martin of asking for it -- his dress, his behavior, his problems with "authority", his thug demeanor, etc., in other words, his being a black teenager, that's what really killed him. (They still lie about his height, weight, and anything to make him more manacing. So scary that Geraldo Rivera said the white jurors "would have shot and killed Trayvon Martin a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did.") They still call Zimmerman's statements to the police "testimony" -- despite his refusal to actually testify at trial -- and they still treat Zimmerman's self-serving account as "evidence" proving Trayvon Martin "circled back" and attacked Zimmerman for no reason, cracking his skull into the "weaponized concrete" for almost a minute before. It's Zimmerman who was the victim here, of Trayvon Martin and worse, Al Sharpton.
ReplyDeleteIf these soulless assholes aren't feeling the purest ecstasy maybe it's because every time they open their mouths they realize that deep down, they're just one more creepy-ass cracker with a gun in his pants.
Some were just hoping the riots would prove them right about black people being savages. But real gun nutters like Owens et al want their own "Helter Skelter", where the racial apocalypse allows them to heroically shoot liberals and black people at will, something they've only yet fantasized. Oh well, maybe next time, and, sadly, there will definitely be a next time.
ReplyDeleteYou Are all way too optimistic. As I said elsewhere this is a combination schroedinger's cat and rohrschak blot of a situation. Racisim, as I think montag said upthread, is both eternally irrelevant and proved reasonable in this case to your true believing right winger. Even zimmermans Hispanic features work for them--I've seen trolls use it to try to split an imaginary future black-Hispanic coalition. I've seen them use it to "prove" thre could be no racisim involved. I've seen them use it to prove that they themselves are not racist because they are supporting a dark skinned male.
ReplyDeleteHa! Thanks, typo fixed.
ReplyDeleteWhat is this a picture of?
ReplyDeleteSheriff Lawrence Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price, of Neshoba County, Mississippi, where Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were murdered. I think this is from their arraignment on federal charges for the violation of the civil rights of the three Freedom Riders. At the time, there was no federal statute for murder, hence the charge of civil rights violations.
ReplyDeleteIt's always fun to see how they desperatly throw out arguments, even deeply contradictory ones, in the hopes that just one of them will Work.
ReplyDeleteHere's your next right-wing vigilante:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.policymic.com/articles/54339/black-17-and-shot-dead-in-florida-why-isn-t-jordan-davis-getting-the-attention-travyon-martin-is
Wanna guess why right-wing pundits aren't celebrating him?
Well, as Charlie Pierce has pointed out, it's not about race. It's never about race. And that's only because we Americans are completely unwilling and unprepared to have anything amounting to a serious discussion of race. Not even the deaths of teenagers like Martin or Till can move us in that direction.
ReplyDeleteThe ease with which conservatives managed to turn this into a discussion of Trayvon Martin's moral failings really churns my stomach. The notion that if you're not a shining paragon of humanity, you deserve to get gunned down in the street, is pretty much the bedrock of our states' various stand-your-ground castle-doctrine masculine-murderboner-stroking laws, and it's a notion that a disturbing number of Americans seem prepared to accept.
ReplyDeleteNaturally it's all about giving the finger to those damn lefties for some people. Never mind that a teenager is dead.
ReplyDeleteAs noted below, the comments from the usual goopers in the WaPo blogs exploded with an orgy of enthusiasm after the verdict, filled with boasts about the type of guns they own and anticipating riots.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I haven't been back to see if they've changed their tune...it was too nauseating.
~
From the excellent movie Shoot 'Em Up:
ReplyDelete"Are you just a pussy with a gun in his hand?"
Or the corollaries , with women swapped in and rape. Or gay people and the same. There used to be always this disburting undertone that the victim deserves it. Now? Now it's more deliberate disonant overtones.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to pick out one especially offensive thing in that dungheap, but I keep coming back to Ben Shapiro pretending to give a shit about a dead black teenager in Chicago. I think that it's because he's so dead-set on "proving" that Obama, Sharpton et al. don't really care about black teenagers that they can't get political mileage out of, when he himself is explicitly and deliberately doing that exact same thing at that very moment. Really, all I want is for some sort of quasi-magical spell to be visited upon these people that will give them that moment of clarity as to just how awful they really are. Oh, and I'd like to get video of that moment.
ReplyDeleteWell it's Chicago which makes Obama personally responsible.
ReplyDeleteNational Review, the go to ressource for the next idiot to go honest. and by honest, i mean exactly that: To admit that the cardboard and oatmeal gruel of their prose is a sad camouflage, like an elephant pretending to be a hummingbird, of racist entitlement. And, no, there's no cookie in it for you.
ReplyDelete--which is a shame, really, because it obscures the proper condemnation of people of whom it really IS all the fault of. Terrible sentence but you know what I mean.
ReplyDelete"Never trust a self-described libertarian. They will trip you on purpose when the zombie horde comes."
ReplyDeleteMan is THAT right. (Clever, too. May steal. Or at least post elsewhere with attribution.)
Still, I question everyone's invocation of the brethren's guilt, "they must realize," etc. When have their ravings ever demonstrated the slightest shred of self-awareness, intellectual honesty, or moral decency? If they're melancholy over what would appear to be a clear win for their (benighted) side, it's because they can't play the social/political victim. They WON. Zimmerman got off scot-free.
The wingers are literally never so happy as when they're feeling glum because America doesn't realize how right, special, and sexy they are. And remember: to a man and a woman, the wingnut commentariat is only nominally in favor of this, that, or the other thing. What truly and eternally moves them is resentment at "liberals," for which read: all the kids in high school as smart as they, who WERE getting laid.
Self-pity plus resentment: how ya gonna feel either, when your side wins? It's enough to make you feel sorry for yourself and resent the other side for losing.
Yes, and what they consider to be not-a-shining-paragon is pretty telling.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - I think it's not so much guilt as the realization that they've shown their asses and lots of people aren't applauding.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, I'll help you hijack a Delorean.
ReplyDeleteThis picture made me mad, but Karma redeemed it for me.
ReplyDeleteDespite his acquittal, Rainey was stigmatized by his role in the events.After leaving office in 1968, he was subsequently unable to get
reelected or to work in law enforcement. His later careers included
periods as auto mechanic and as a security guard in Kentucky and Mississippi. He later came to blame the FBI for preventing him from finding and keeping jobs. He suffered from throat cancer and tongue cancer, and died in 2002 at the age of 79.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_A._Rainey
What's strange is that they don't seem genuinely relieved and happy -- it's like they're still nervous about something.
ReplyDeleteI think they realize their insistence that it is good and heroic for Real Americans to be able to blow away a kid in lieu of receiving the ass-kicking they invited doesn't actually reflect well on them.
For example: I got called a "pansy" because I'm "afraid" of allowing people to defend themselves, from one of the people dumb enough to take up this line of argument.
This, in the context of George Zimmerman's defense, which included the contention that Zimmerman was too out of shape to defend himself (from a skinny teen who he stalked, and outweighed by a good 30 pounds at least), and thus is granted the right to shoot a teen in the heart to end a fight he provoked. Seriously: Zimmerman had to sit there in front of expert testimony that he was too weak and pudgy to protect himself from a beanpole high schooler.
I mean, even as someone who is relatively upfront and unselfconscious about his weakness and pudginess, this is not something I would get up and beat my chest about.
"I think the lack of a violent response is robbing them of" ...seeing white cops shooting black rioters on the TV.
ReplyDeleteHow long before this theory gains traction: the only reason there hasn't been rioting is that Those People are too scared of the wingnuts' big throbbing guns, therefore guns really do keep us safe.
ReplyDeleteThey can't say "He's not white!!". "So there."
ReplyDeleteThe LAPD used rubber bullets on some of the protesters, so it can't be said they didn't do their part in trying to make it another L.A. after the Rodney King verdict.
ReplyDeleteI can't get enough ironic distance from this. There's nothing I can say just to glibly set THEM from US. It's a monstrous and ugly thing that makes me want to do nothing but just hug my kid and try and find decent things in the world. Well, that and take a bat to all these fucking sociopaths, knowing full well that's really a large part of the problem.
ReplyDeleteMy basic position is that I think that was a great case for jury nullification and that Zimmerman should have been convicted of manslaughter. Someone starts a confrontation with an unarmed adolescent and ends it with a gunshot is guilty in all but the most extreme circumstances. In this case, there's no reason to believe Martin would have beaten Zimmerman to death. Dumb whit cracker should have minded his own business and then took his beating like a man when he chose to hassle some guy who wasn't doing anything wrong.
ReplyDeleteThat said, either Martin's family failed him miserably or he was an idiot not to heed their advice. And from that side of the looking glass, I think it was much more a class thing than a racist thing. Well-educated blacks with teenage boys typically harp incessantly on how to react if hassled by cops or stupid fucking crackers. Yes sir, no sir, politely explain what you're doing there, and don't forget to say sir, try to get the cop's badge number or get safely away and call 911, then we'll look into civil rights complaints or lawsuits. But under no circumstances get into a violent confrontation or in any way act in such a way as could be conceivably justifiable for the cop or cracker to start one. And it's not like there's not some historical guidance in these matters. Everyone give lip service to Martin Luther King, but no one seems to have heard a word he said.
I think that should be the most important takeaway from the whole thing. Non-violence and appeal to the justice system when violence is thrust upon is is the only reasonable answer. At least for those with children who could very well be the next victims of right wing idiots itching for a race war. For those with no skin in the game, so to speak, bringing a pair of fists to a gun fight may seem to be a noble undertaking.
"This notion that black-on-black crime excuses the exoneration of the guy who shot an unarmed black kid to death was popular among the brethren ('So, as long as black kids are shot by other blacks, it's cool then?'), for reasons that hardly need to be explained."
ReplyDelete1. It's all right for American men to hassle and underpay American women, as long as Saudi women aren't allowed to drive.
2. It's all right for Americans to deny Haitians, but not Cubans, entry into America, as long as Haitians are oppressed by other Haitians but Cubans are oppressed by the Bros. Castro.
3. It's okay to despise poor people with smartphones and iPods for having smartphones and iPods but not cars or insurance policies and it's certainly okay to think employees of WalMart or MacDonalds have no beef as long as there are places in this world where the wages slaves have to literallly live on a dollar a day.*
4. It's all right for cops to get into donnybrooks with citizens, as long as citizens get into donnybrooks with each other.
5. It's okay for banks to steal from homeowners, as long as homeowners are willing to allow them to do it.
6. It's okay for banks to steal from wage-earners as long as they split the proceeds with the boss.
7. It's okay for the meatpacking industry to stay foul beyond description as long as predation continues to exist in the animal kingdom, and
8. It's okay to discriminate against Eskimos as long as the Arctic stays cold.
(Okay, I made the last one up.)
"Hey, as long as there's someone out there even worse, I can do whatever I want to whoever I want.".
ReplyDelete- Battle Hymn of the Republican.
There's a great poem in there somewhere; too bad Goopers have no talent.
ReplyDeleteZimmerman's alternative did involve spending years locked up in a building with a lot of large black men who actually do look the way he imagined Martin to look. What's more, it not like any of them has a serious disincentive to keep them from sticking a shiv in one of Zimmerman's kidneys. So I'm sure he didn't getting called weak and pudgy too much.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I'm sure he's already figured out a way to blame it on black people.
It oughta start like this:
ReplyDelete"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;He is trampling on the vintage rights we so long have abhorred". Tusk!
I think it's as long as there has ever been someone out there that is or was even worse, etc. So, Hitler! Therefore, I'm OK.
ReplyDelete"Man, Attila the Hun, what a an asshole, amiright?"
ReplyDelete- Darkly ressurected Rick Santorum, Emperor for Life, 2129.
"...He is flipping off the workers whose employment's been offshored; His truth is marching on!!"
ReplyDeleteHaahhhaa... perfection.
ReplyDelete"He spends all of his time around horses and he smells." (Makes Santorum sniffy-face.) "That's why I've always made it a point to stand far to the right of him."
ReplyDeleteThank you. {smugs}
ReplyDelete"I have seen Him in the avarice of a hundred circling chumps, they have builded Him an altar in the Simi Valley dumps. ;I can read His selfrighteous sentence by the flaccid dimbulb flare:His day is marching on.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I'm OK.
ReplyDelete... as long as I stick to flirting with fascism, anyway.
Not even! The liberals are the real fascists.
ReplyDeleteHow about heavy petting?
ReplyDeleteOh, they realize the optics, and they don't care. Because these are your "Second Amendment Solutions" people, all the better because they think this gives them free rein to "reclaim" America. One round at a time.
ReplyDelete(I'm sorry, I just personally hate the fact that there are people walking around nowadays who will be convinced that people who look like me are now targets of opportunity.)
Bad thought: I knew what this was a picture of before I saw your description.
ReplyDeleteIn the beauty of the market work was sent across the sea
ReplyDeleteWith Foxconn-nets for their workers and cheap crap for you and me
Workers stamping out our i-pads, if we buy they won't be free
The market crushes on. . .
He has sounded forth the tea that shall never call retreat;
ReplyDeleteHe's sifting out the rights of men, women are merely meat.
Oh, be swift, my Rascal scooter, to answer Him! be jubilant, my foot!
Our God is marching on.
Wait, i can't even rhyme... here in the begin.
ReplyDeleteThat said, either Martin's family failed him miserably or he was an idiot not to heed their advice.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the point you're making in your last two paragraphs. Who was an idiot? Trayvon Martin? Are you saying he should have been deferential and obedient to a stranger who was clearly not a cop and who was following him on a dark night?
Are you saying he should have been deferential and obedient to a stranger who was clearly not a cop and who was following him on a dark night?
ReplyDeleteYea, definitely, would have saved his life. Would you counsel your son to get into a fight with some likely-armed cracker in that situation?
Not blaming the victim. Zimmerman should be in jail. Still, going forward I suspect most parents of black teens will teach the MLK non-violent way more than the angry white liberal send-someone-else's-kid-out-here-to-die-for-my-principles option. Hope so, anyway. To do otherwise is to play into the hand of those who have the near monopoly on violence. Better to document the atrocities. Use the courts, both legal and of public opinion.
I get your point, chuckling, but as someone who has been in a fistfight with cops in peaceful, little Denmark, I think your concern is a little trolling. And weirdly misplaced. And just which liberals sent Martin anywhere? He was a kid walkin' home.
ReplyDeleteSo if your child were a black teenage male visiting the American deep south, would you counsel him to dress provocatively and smack any cop-like cracker upside the head that gave him shit? Probably not. But you don't have any problem sacrificing other people's kids for your principles? Is that what you're saying? This ain't little old Denmark. Don't mean to troll, but I notice a huge difference between the opinions of those who actually have some skin in the game versus those who mean well but don't. Wail against the unjust system and call for it's reform all you want, I'm with you there, but when you start calling for violence and martyrs that are not bloody likely to affect you or your own, well, you know what you sond like? Like one of them. A fucking keyboard commando.
ReplyDeleteNo, and who exactly do you think you're telling this to? i'm not calling for violence against anyone. My point was that if I'm going down a dark street and someone stalks and attacks me, maybe selfdefence isn't a bad option.
ReplyDeleteTo do otherwise is to play into the hand of those who have the near monopoly on violence.
ReplyDeleteWell, but where does it end? Perhaps the truly prudent parent should counsel their son not to walk in white neighborhoods at night, or at all, and to preemptively smile subserviently at every white person they see. A world where black men's movements and behavior are policed like that *is* a world that white racists would like to see, and to make the conversation about black men's behavior *is* playing into their hands.
I don't see any comments here that argue that anyone should go around starting fights without reason; we're just pushing back against the idea that a black man defending himself should be a capital crime.
Don't sweat it, you're on a roll!
ReplyDeleteA roll? Hope it's freshly baked! And glad to see you my beautiful bald one,
ReplyDeleteObservations of expected dress norms, duly noted.
ReplyDeleteWear a hoodie, prepare for the minigun-treatment.
ReplyDeletedress provocatively
ReplyDeleteReally, a hoodie is provocative dress? C'mon, it's called a "hoodie" because it has a hood, not because hoodlums wear them in the 'hood.
Damn, you really are concerned, aren't you?
Look, honestly, I DO get your point. That a lot of supposed lefties (i think you read this as democrats, which is a common form of dyslexia, especially among democrats) have no qualms sending kids to die in idiotic wars. And I couldn't agree more. But this has shit to do with this. Or any cause, great or small.
ReplyDeleteLittle red was SUCH a tramp, the wolf couldn't be expected to take no for an answer! Red is such a provocative color. At least Grandma was there to chop everyone up with an axe and eat the wolf, ears and all... wait... my Grandma MAY have had a sick sense of humor. Guess it's genetic.
ReplyDeleteNigger had it coming, dressed like, uh, that:
ReplyDeleteNo, see HMDK -- and I swear I tried to ignore him -- chuck plainly thinks that "angry liberals" "who have no skin in the game" are a real thing and that you, by proxy or something, are a hypocrite. He, naturally, is simply posing questions, above the fray, pitying us blood-curdlers who send young bucks to die and cheer their martyrdom.
ReplyDeleteThat, or he's still an obtuse douchebag. Ugh.
Well, I'm neither a liberal or a proxy... except for those weirdoes, the bald bastard and that gorgeous guy in the vaultsuit. And that's merely sharing a sense of humor. Chucky Cheese seems to have lost his. Which isn't surprising. What's surpirsing is that he's become completely unmoored.
ReplyDeleteUh, Chuckling, you do relize we still have no idea as to what truly happened between Zimmerman and Martin before the cops arrived, right? We only have Zimmerman's word as to how belligerent Martin was, and call me picky, but I don't think that's good enough. For all we know, Martin was every bit as careful and non-confrontational as you're advocating, and Zimmerman still chose to kill someone who, after all, was an unarmed teenaged boy. There's enough discrepencies in the murdering piece of shit's story that I don't think he deserves any kind of benefit of a doubt here.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I'm sure he's already figured out a way to blame it on black people.
ReplyDeleteUh... chicken and waffles is a delicious dish...
Or robbing them of the opportunity to shoot black people and claim it was because they were engaged in unlawful conduct.
ReplyDelete"George Michael ZImmerman killed poor Trayvon Martin
ReplyDeleteWith a gun that he twirled around his sausage-like fingers..."
It wasn't a white neighborhood. It was his fathers neighborhood. Zimmerman didn't have the right to determine who was entitled to be there or not.
ReplyDeleteSure--if you can find one that starts. A lot of them won't....
ReplyDeleteMagical spells? A moment of clarity? Self-awareness? Shapiro?
ReplyDeleteThis definitely is Magic Kingdom stuff. Video of that moment would require some pretty heavy-duty CGI, because I seriously doubt you're ever gonna see it in real life. The boy's just not got it in him. Hell, he must spend half an hour in front of the mirror each morning practicing Cheney's sneer.
Oh, you forgot to spring for the Flux capacitor option... rookie mistake.
ReplyDeleteI pray that Zimm lives a very long life--at least to 90 or so--a cripple in constant pain and wholly dependent on the underpaid (probably minority) nursing home workers who wipe his ass and spoon feed him his daily gruel.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, just maybe, that would be a bit of justice.
I don't. Because I actually HAVE that shit called compassion.It's my cross to bear.
ReplyDeleteNever let it be said that the LAPD doesn't pitch in and help....
ReplyDeleteAnd, naturally, the chorus:
ReplyDeleteGory, gory, all hail Limbaugh!
Gory, gory, hallowed Ashcroft!
Gory, gory, Cheney Resurrected!
And Blood is Trickling Down!
Unfortunately, I think the thing he's learned from this is that he might be able to get away with it again.
ReplyDeleteThere was a comic book called Preacher back in the late nineties that had a villain whose genitals were bitten off by a dog (yes, it was that kind of comic); in a show of overcompensation, said villain got himself a Dirty Harry-style magnum revolver, and would spend a considerable amount of time looking at himself in the mirror with the gun and saying, over and over, "Doom cock... doom cock... doom cock... doom cock..." That's how I imagine The Ostensibly-No-Longer-Virgin Ben spending his mirror time.
ReplyDeleteEh, probably. But little liberal lacking a compass up there is such an inartful troll. And while I know we shouldn't feed them, I like to tell the truth.
ReplyDeleteZimmerman didn't have the right to determine who was entitled to be there or not.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, and this would be true regardless of the composition of the neighborhood.
Well, but where does it end? Perhaps the truly prudent parent should counsel their son not to walk in white neighborhoods at night, or at all, and to preemptively smile subserviently at every white person they see.
ReplyDeleteNo, although that may be prudent, I don't think it would be wise. As I said above, we have some historical guidance on these matters. From MLK and the civill rights movement to Occupy Wall Street, the pro's counsel the oppressed to non-violently insist on their legal rights and use the courts, including the court of public opinion, to guarantee equal treatment under the law.
But I can't help seeing it as a class thing as well. The more educated classes teach their children not to get into fistfights over personal slights. Significant chunks of lower class cultures, particularly African American ghetto, put a premium on respect and recommend violence as the default reaction to perceived lack of respect. So when I see educated, nominally liberal types, suggesting that ghetto kids, particular young black males, do as they say, not as they teach their own children, I suspect they simply place a lower value on the lives of those young black men than they do their own children. It's way too easy to send someone else's kids off to die for one's beliefs, especially when they probably won't amount to much anyway. Little different, morally, than the warbloggers of the Iraq war or the Dick Cheney's and George Bushes of Vietnam, imo.
use the courts, including the court of public opinion,
ReplyDeleteThe court of public opinion? Seriously? Large sections of that court have been virulently racist toward Trayvon Martin. Since its most powerful jury members are those of the privileged class, the court of public opinion is in many cases not where you want to try your civil rights case.
As for the rest of your post, all I can do is repeat that of course, in practice, it's prudent to counsel children to be cautious and to understand the social realities that affect them based on their race. Still don't see how anyone here has said otherwise; pointing out the injustice of those social realities is very different from encouraging kids to put themselves in dangerous situations just to heighten the contradictions or something. Sure you're not getting this thread confused with one from a less reasonable blog?
I never thought I'd have a good opinion of Kim Kardashian. Thank you, Daniel Foster!
ReplyDelete