On the heels of the George Zimmerman verdict, when this nation deeply needs a tense situation defused and soothing, reassuring words of racial unity, the president and attorney general give us just the opposite.
We desperately need to strive for racial harmony and unity, but our task is exceedingly more difficult when President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder repeatedly invoke race and stir racial tensions.
We are so programmed by our history with race in America that reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin depends largely upon one's individual, even group experience.
If you are African-American, you might react like former Washington, D.C., homicide detective Rod Wheeler. Appearing on Fox News, Wheeler said many blacks look at quarterback Michael Vick, jailed for taking part in an illegal interstate dog-fighting ring, and wonder why Zimmerman gets away with killing a young black man.
In a "How can he possibly top this?" move, Eric Holder's Justice Department "is trolling for email tips on the former neighborhood watch volunteer (George Zimmerman) as it weighs a possible federal civil rights case against him."
What other establishment press outlets besides Fox News will cover this? And if they do, which of them (if any) will note the mountain of exculpatory evidence about Zimmerman? First, excerpts from Fox's report by Jake Gibson, followed by the accumulated evidence that Zimmerman more than likely hasn't a racist bone in his body (HT to a frequent tipster, who saw coverage of this on a Fox show earlier today; bolds are mine throughout this post):
To those of us who pay attention to the news media, it is clear that journalists played a major role in stirring up public outrage over the Trayvon Martin killing by essentially assuming George Zimmerman’s guilt before all the facts of the case were known. But on Tuesday, ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams tried to absolve the media of any wrongdoing in covering the shooting and subsequent trial, claiming that he and other journalists “evolved” in their view of the incident.
On the July 16 edition of his eponymous program, PBS host Charlie Rose asked Abrams to evaluate the media’s coverage of the Zimmerman trial. Abrams made a confession that might have applied to many journalists and many Americans in general:
On Wednesday's NBC Today, a report by correspondent Kerry Sanders featured a series of sound bites of public figures, all of them liberal, reacting to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman. Most of the statements focused on using Martin's death to call for the elimination of Stand Your Ground self-defense laws. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Sanders began the slanted segment by highlighting protests against the verdict: "Four days after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter, the number of rallies in memory of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is growing....In Florida's capitol, dozens of demonstrators peacefully occupied the Governor's office....The Governor wasn't there, but they vow to stay until he gets back."
Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson tied immigration reform to the shooting of Trayvon Martin on Wednesday’s Morning Joe, claiming Republican voters oppose the Senate immigration bill because they believe “immigrants are, you know, people in hoodies.” While the inflammatory line would no doubt be well-received on a liberal network like MSNBC, it seems somewhat unbecoming of a professional political journalist.
Suffice it to say, Carlson was not called out by her fellow panelists for the hyperbolic comment. Carlson also commended Thomas Friedman’s latest op-ed in The New York Times, entitled “If Churchill Could See Us Now,” in which Friedman – who recently held up China as a paragon of greatness, so long as they don’t emulate the “American Dream” – blasted House Republicans for making this country “un-great”:
It’s too bad for some bloggers that the Internet doesn’t come with an eraser. It would certainly come in handy right now to a whole slew of online “journalists” who seized on the calm before the storm on Sunday as proof that the “white” predictions of riots were way overblown.
Take PoliticsUSA, which prides itself on being a source of “real liberal politics.”
To all too many on the left, America has barely budged since the '50s when it comes to civil rights. As far as liberal radio host Thom Hartmann is concerned, America has barely budged since the antebellum era.
Hard to believe anyone, even a hard-core leftist, can spread such drivel, what with a man of color holding the highest office in the land -- one to which he was just comfortably re-elected -- and the Justice Department being run, go figure, by another man of color. What's truly amazing is that both men are actually slaves, at least in the Amerika that Hartmann finds so primitive and backward. (Audio clip after the jump)
As NewsBusters previously reported, Stevie Wonder on Monday told a Quebec City concert audience that he was boycotting Florida and other states with "Stand Your Ground" laws as a result of the George Zimmerman verdict.
Apparently not to be outdone, Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin during a concert in Limerick, Ireland.
It seems even the CBS Late Show audience is tiring of Bill Maher.
On Tuesday, the HBO Real Time host was booed twice for tasteless jokes about the George Zimmerman verdict (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Just when it seemed that the racial tensions couldn't get any worse after George Zimmerman's “not guilty” verdict regarding the charge of the second-degree murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, along comes Nancy Grace, the host of a weeknight news/interview program on the HLN cable news network, who did her best to fan the flames even higher.
Responding to lead defense attorney Mark O'Mara's closing argument on Friday night asking the jury to give Zimmerman his life back, the acerbic host growled: “Give Zimmerman back his life? He’s out on bond driving through Taco Bell every night, having a churro.”
When it comes to racism in the South, the Washington Post is content to presume guilt until innocence is proven.
In his July 16 20-paragraph Style section front-pager "Echoes of the past," Washington Post writer Wil Haygood effectively compared the not-guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial to previous instances where juries in Southern states failed to convict racists accused of murdering black Americans like Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. "A Southern jury -- when it comes to race and the perception that a black person has been wrongly accused or harmed -- operates under the wide whispering shadow of history," Haygood insisted, adding, "[T]here exists a roster of names and cases that has exploded onto the national scene and claimed headlines against the backdrop of race and geography: the Scottsboro Boys, Emmett Till, Isaac Woodward, Medgar Evers, the four girls killed in the Alabama bombing."