Extinguishing Trayvon's Bonfire

Extinguishing Trayvon's Bonfire (See “The Trayvon Martin Bonfire,” http://bit.ly/H28Eaf, which drew parallels between the Trayvon Martin killing and Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and “The Whitewashing of Trayvon Martin,” http://bit.ly/IZkzjK, which made the case for, well, Trayvon’s whitewashing.) From the outset, the media coverage of the February 26th, 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida has been skewed, biased, and journalistically disgraceful. The prosecution has demonstrated it is equivalently skewed, biased, and disgraceful. Now that Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with second degree murder, the whole truth is finally seeping out which should dampen the Trayvon fires but I wouldn’t count on that. At the beginning of this racial and legal fiasco, the only surety was that Zimmerman had shot Martin, which he freely admitted. The hype and lies that he was a racist, that he stalked Martin, etc. was just that, hype and lies manufactured by the MSM and exploited by black race hustlers in order to stir up racial unrest. A reputable media would have reported the known facts in the case devoid of editorialized “news” stories designed to paint Zimmerman as a bloodthirsty murderer and Martin as a defenseless youth “hunted down like a rabid dog,” according to Democrat Rep. Frederika Wilson. Instead of objectively reporting the known truth about the case, most of the broadcast, cable, and print media consistently distorted the facts. That distortion was epitomized by the MSM featuring photographs of Zimmerman looking more like a white man when he is actually half-hispanic and depicting Martin as an innocent child when he was actually full grown. In reality, at the time he was killed Martin was anything but a child. He was a strapping, 6 foot, 2 inch 17 year old with a history of school suspensions, drug and gang associations, possession of a burglary tool, and possession of unexplained woman’s jewelry at school. In an unorthodox move, on Friday the shackled Zimmerman courageously waived his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination and took the stand at his bond hearing. He said to the Martin family, “I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not.” The apology was immediately rejected as “self-serving” and “an outrage” by the family attorney, Benjamin Crump, and the prosecution described his testimony as “a media stunt.” Zimmerman was granted bail in the amount of $150,000, a far cry from the million dollars the prosecution sought. More relevantly, Zimmerman never said he was guilty of any crime. Nevertheless, indicative of the state’s intent to convict him of all charges at all costs, the prosecuting attorney then asked him a totally unethical and inappropriate question under cross examination. It’s remarkable that the defendant’s attorneys didn’t strongly object to the misleading question: “After you committed this crime and you spoke to the police, did you ever make that statement to the police? That you were sorry for what you’d done or for their loss?” Equally remarkable is the prosecutor’s apparent obliviousness that no “crime” had yet been established and that Zimmerman is considered innocent under the law until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Now that a cell phone photo has surfaced substantiating Zimmerman’s contention that Martin had slammed his head into the pavement, one would hope the media would be more objectiveis. However, they are still as committed as the state of Florida to exonerating Martin and hanging the defendant. The photo, taken by an eyewitness three minutes after the altercation, graphically shows blood streaming from two deep gashes in the back of his head, wounds that supplement neighbors’ statements that Zimmerman also had a bloody, swollen nose. ABC World News’ Diane Sawyer displayed the picture then proceeded to effectively dismiss it as exculpatory evidence that Zimmerman feared for his life before he shot Martin. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=22073.)