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.)

Defrocking the Obamessiah

Defrocking the Obamessiah

While it’s true that “to err is human, to forgive divine,” it’s still shocking, I tell you, when our president admits to making mistakes.

After all, he was sold to the American people as someone different from other pols, a man who not only looked different but thought and acted on a higher plane, a flawless man cast by the media as a virtual messiah who would save us from the evils of George W. Bush, who could do no wrong, who had an unparalleled vision of America’s future.

We have now seen that vision and it is more akin to a nightmare.

Now, I don’t suggest that making errors is grounds for impeachment or anything of the sort. Obama’s impeachable offenses may never come to light. What I am implying relates to the mighty falling, the collapse of an icon. With his flimsy resume’, virtually nothing was known about the man so his handlers were free to create an unreal figure who stood–soared–above the fray, whose mellifluous words captivated millions, whose vague “vision thing” enthralled and bewitched the rabble.

The president’s less-than-divine gaffes and errors, everything from his claim to have visited all 57 states, to his nomination of a tax cheat, Tom Daschle, as HHS Secretary, to picking Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, to his closed-door meetings on Obamacare, to the BP Gulf oil spill, to the Cambridge cop debacle, to closing GITMO, etc. have all been fully documented.

His latest confession of error is noteworthy not because of the admission itself or because he made a mistake. We all make mistakes, even presidents, even, as we have seen over the past 27 months, presidents on pedestals. His concession of an error made five years ago when, in one of his first votes as junior senator from Illinois, he voted against raising the national debt ceiling is less significant than his reasons for that vote. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4145)

Sex, American and Muslim Style

Sex American and Muslim Style

Sex may be the most popular indoor sport in the Western World, but not so much in Muslim countries.

To clarify, that sport may simply be more public in America and Europe. Based on rates of procreation and the 1.2 billion or so Muslims in the world, adherents to the Koran seem to indulge even more than we do or, at least, care not a fig whether or not they make a baby every time they make whoopie, within Koranic constraints, of course.

Good benefactors of the Earth that we are, we’re more responsible in the procreation aspect of sexual activity even as we encourage “doing it.”

Indeed, we’re very keen on that responsibility, so keen that many of our high schools and middle schools teach safe sex and distribute free condoms to all takers no matter their ages so that the cultural and media encouragement don’t overwhelm rational discretion.

Rationality isn’t usually considered a major facet of teen thought yet that age group appears to be the prime focus of primetime media. Witness “Glee” and the countless other gleeful tv shows which feature and promote teenage sexual experimentation and practice.

They would include ABC’s “Family Channel” with its lineup of such shows as “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” In a single episode of the latter gem, ABC managed to incorporate 70 references to sex. Count them: http://bit.ly/eiILFN

On the other hand, Islamic television wouldn’t be caught dead televising such smut.

Muslims are taught they are superior to us infidels in all things. Mayhem, murder, and jihad are perfectly acceptable but sexual discretion and restraint are mandates, for half the population, according to the Koran. It requires intercourse at certain times and promises slews of virgins as rewards for good Muslim men but don’t talk about it–or televise it–at the risk of annoying Allah and losing your head, like adulterous Muslim women.

At the same time, strict Islamists require that females . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3973)

Sex in the News. Part One {R-Rated}

Sex In The News. Part One {R-rated}

“And that’s why birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it.
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

The lyrics of Cole Porter’s 1920’s song, “Let’s Do It,” was a tad risque’ for its time even if its time was the Roaring Twenties when flappers were re-inventing the social structure and staging an early version of women’s liberation.

What the birds and the bees and both educated and uneducated fleas were doing wasn’t just flocking or buzzing or biting together but rather propagating their respective species via sex.

Despite the flappers, that subject–not propagation but recreational sex–had long been taboo in Hollywood and TV where censors always required one participant to have one foot firmly planted on the floor in bedroom scenes and words such as “pregnant” were verbotten.

Lucy and Ricky had to have twin beds because, God forbid, married couples couldn’t be seen sharing a bed. And Lucy wasn’t pregnant, she was having a baby which was more explicit language than was permissible when George Bailey’s wife conceived a child in “It’s a Wonderful Life” ten years earlier.

Mary Bailey was “on the nest.”

We’ve come a long way, baby, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1441)

The Size of Media Matters

“Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

The operative word in that mission statement is, of course, “progressive” which has of late supplanted the words ”leftist” and “liberal” since “progressive” sounds, well, so much more progressive and is definitely more palatable to the gullible American public.

However, calling skunk cabbages roses doesn’t do much to alter their stink.

I took a brief stroll to the dark side, the website of MediaMatters, and noted the anticipated attacks on such conservative devils as Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh as well as articles ripping us fools who believe global warming is a massive, political hoax.

There were no pieces about another dark side, the unrelenting homosexual campaign to “normalize” their lifestyle via indoctrination of kids in their schools and everyone via the media, with the happy help of MM.

That was surprising . . .

ABC, Exemplar of the Media that Once Was

ABC, Exemplar of the Media that Once Was

The Constitutional guaranty of freedom of speech is contained in the First Amendment and is but one of six guarantees spelled out in that amendment. The section relating to free speech is actually limited to 10 words, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”

As with most rights, free speech has limitations and those limits go far beyond the old example of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire, a very reasonable restriction.

However, it’s worth remembering that the First Amendment and, indeed, the Constitution itself relates to the government “abridging” free speech, also called censorship. The non-governmental private sector suffers from no comparable inhibitions when it comes to such abridgement although voluntary censorship is common. That becomes bias, for example, with the media.

If and when government censorship becomes so intertwined with media bias that they are indistinguishable, with a supposedly independent media acting as government surrogates, we then have a state-run media for all intents and purposes.

In large part, that is what America has deteriorated into today, and it’s far from a healthy situation in our former free democratic republic.

That is the precise situation on June 24th, 2009 with the extended inf0mercial being staged by ABC, an allegedly independent media outlet telecasting “news” from within the United States’ executive mansion, the White House, promoting a government plan for “health care reform” while denying any dissent or opposition.

What was that comment Obama made about “transparency?”

Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad couldn’t be . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)