OneSTDV has a great take on the Martin case.
We know of Steve Sailer’s argument that the media is always on the lookout for the Great White Defendant – with the word ‘defendant’ being a stand-in for the word ‘shark’. The part of the media that controls narratives really wants to get its hands on the perfect white villain because it makes for a satisfying news story. With a black defendant, there are outs. Not so with a white defendant. No excuses – the white criminal individual is, tautologically, purely diabolical. Society didn’t make him do it, and the police didn’t set him up.*
Blogger One adds a corollary to Sailer’s argument:
I don’t find this media circus surprising though, with Trayvon being another in a long list of Great Black Victims (GBV). Parallel to Thomas Wolfe’s Great White Defendant, an archetype promulgated in media by shows like Law and Order and CSI, the GBV is a personal reflection of the supposed insidiousness of racist white society.
I’d like to tease out the corollary a bit further.
I think Joe Biden summed it up but in a completely different context. Of then-candidate Obama, Biden said something about the future president being a “clean and articulate” black man. And what is Trayvon Martin if not a sweet, smiling face to put forward to the media to gather sympathy from a critical mass of white narrative shapers? The kid was carrying Skittles and iced tea. Save for a school suspension, he was clean – no criminal hang-ups that might possibly justify Zimmerman’s instinct. Basically, Martin is “the other” but not too much of “the other” to keep white media narrative shapers from being scared away by biases similar to the ones that motivated the (stupid) George Zimmerman.
The point isn’t to say that Trayvon Martin doesn’t deserve coverage. The point is to figure out why Trayvon Martin and not other young black men who’ve been erroneously killed by police or citizens. As commenter dragnet pointed out here, the reason that Martin’s case is making such a splash is that Martin’s parents hired a sophisticated and connected attorney named Benjamin Crump who is adept at leveraging the media to gain awareness and sympathy for his clients. Given the limited number of media resources and the number of stories “competing” for air space, this question of what makes it through the filter is an important one. What gets told and why? And most importantly, why does it get told with the predetermined conclusion that the scuffle and shooting didn’t take place as Zimmerman says it did or that the police didn’t do a good enough investigation. Why is the white-run media latching on to this particular story without doing any actual journalism?
To flip this back on those with “white savior complex” – where were they when other innocent blacks were gunned down? What, they only speak out when people start donning kitschy articles of clothing or when enough people force certain hashtags to trend on Twitter?
*This sets the stage for a tension that is never discussed and which is the source of a lot of the acrimony and strife surrounding these types of cases. On the one hand, police and citizens – for right or wrong – do have biases against blacks. But on the other hand, the media is primed to exonerate black defendants or punish white ones. “Regular” news-consuming whites are torn in two directions – being the beneficiaries of heavy-handed policing but suffering in the media-produced court of public opinion.
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What maddens me about the Trayvor Martin case is that the MSM have mislead the whole country as to what the evidence strongly suggests actually happened.
When Zimmerman, whose mother is Hispanic and some of whose relatives are black, shot Martin he was pinned to the ground, getting repeatedly punched and beaten up by Trayvor, was bleeding in both his face and back of his head, and was repeated yelling for help. The he shot him. That’s what the eyewitness who ran upstairs to call 911 to get help and then heard the gunshot said. That’s what Zimmerman said. When police got to the scene they did find he was bleeding from his face and back of his head, his back had grass stains and was wet (the grass was wet from rain).
Florida law allows use of potentially deadly force if one reasonably believes he’s about to suffer a physically violent felony.
Further they almost always run pictures when he was a kid of 13, rather than recent ones of him as a 6’2″ football player who’s fit and much taller than Zimmerman, who’s obese. Plus we endless hear about the bag of skittles and cold tea, like that’s relevant.
doug,
what the greeks had in mind about tragedy is a perfect fit for this case. it’s a series of missteps and locked doors. follow one bias and push the ball to a new set of facts. rinse and repeat until a kid is dead. the thing that i guess i’m wanting to push back against is the idea that there is a beginning point and some end point. as you say, a lot of unfortunate things happened in between.
The media narrative: It’s all about how black people can’t walk down the street without being attacked. Well I say, how about all those white people who get attacked all the time just for walking through a black area? No one talks about them. No one cares about them. Hell white people get attacked walking through white areas with regularity. Entire cities will only use cars to get around because walking while white is an invitation to beaten to a blood pulp. White people live under a siege and have to use fast moving armored transports(cars) in any city where more than 25% of the population is black. If there’s a war on anyone, it’s a war on white’s, Asians, and Latinos.
Walking While Black With Skittles … welcome to the new “Dats Raciss!” meme of 2012.
The facts of this case are known, and have been known for weeks, but facts qua facts are, of course, irrelevant to the Left and Blacks. They think the Trayvon case is a dream come true for them – HuffPo has a full Trayvon page/portal, while MSNBC is now basically the Trayvon News Network – and Obama’s weighing in today has inspired them.
This is actually a godsend to whites, the Right, and the GOP, since a lot of young whites who voted for Obama in 2008 for the promise of a “post-racial” America now see that, actually, that means Black-Run America. Moreover, since Zimmerman surely isn’t gonna get the death penalty here, Blacks will run riot a la 1968 soon, which will guarantee Romney’s election.
At which point Blacks, who believe any opposition to Obama or any of his policies is prima facie evidence of “racism,” really will run riot. Fun, fun, fun!
doug1,
Here is TWO witnesses saying what they saw in front of their house:
Cooper: “So you saw Mr. Zimmerman on top of Trayvon Martin?”
Lamilla: “Trayvon, exactly”
Cooper: “When you say on top of, how so?”
Cutcher: “Straddling him”
Cooper: “His legs were straddling him?”
http://patdollard.com/2012/03/anderson-cooper-interviews-witnesses-to-trayvon-martin-shooting/
“By the time police officers arrived, unarmed Trayvon, who had been carrying Skittles and soda, was dead on the ground from a single gunshot.
Another woman said a man in a ‘white top’ was on top of Trayvon.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117219/Trayvon-Martin-shooting-Mother-claims-George-Zimmerman-killed-son-skin-colour.html
Martin weighed 140 pounds. Zimmerman weighs 250 pounds. You do that math. You can be pissed off at how the media has handled the case. But it is not up for the debate that Zimmerman is a PSYCHO. This isnt the Wild West.
SMH,
Too bad Zimmerman was wearing a red shirt, not a white top.
What’s with all the pics of this guy as a kid? Why not show his baby pictures? Was he 17 years old and 6’2″ or not.
Red 03/23/2012 at 3:08 pm
The media narrative: It’s all about how black people can’t walk down the street without being attacked. Well I say, how about all those white people who get attacked all the time just for walking through a black area?
Since when do White folks have to be walking in a black area to be attacked by blacks. They can be in their own homes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117695/Brutal-home-invasion-Oklahoma-couple-ends-65-year-romance-meeting-blind-date.html
Does Tyrone Dale David Woodfork look like he could be Obama’s son?
This Crap cannot continue! The blacks are angry? Guess what? Whites are Just Pissed!
Whites are constantly targeted by black thugs and still are called Racist for noticing the attacks!
The Hell With That! The next one of these urban ape chimpouts and there is gonna be blood!
And its not going to be White blood!
SMH–
Both women didn’t see any part of the altercation before the gunshot. One of them heard what she described as high pitched whining which she assumed had to be coming from Trayvon, whereas we know Zimmerman as a rather high pitched voice. Trayvon’s father heard a 911 recording of the “whinning” and said it wasn’t the voice of his son. She didn’t HEAR sounds of a physical fight, which proves little. Both women saw Zimmerman over Trayvon Martin AFTER they heard the gunshot, which is the first time they went to look. That is after he was dead.
In contrast eyewitness John did see the fighting before the gunshot, did see Trayvon on top of Zimmerman pinning him to the ground, did see him repeatedly punching Zimmerman and did hear Zimmerwan shouting help me, help me, repeatedly directly to John, then ran upstairs and before he got to the phone, heard the gunshot. Then he too saw Zimmerman now over Trayvon.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/seminole_news/022712-man-shot-and-killed-in-neighborhood-altercation#ixzz1phFMGCu4
Also John came forward right away. The police said that the women’s statements weren’t in contradiction to John’s, only their interpretations after the fact were. They only started saying the disagreed that it could have been self defense after the national bruhaha over this was raging. Police say they changed their story.
There would be plenty of reasons for a liberal woman to do that. Being on Trayvon side get’s they lionized. Bolstering of Zimmerman’s defense gets them vilified by the MSM.
Ah, now this is just getting silly…
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-trayvon-martin-case-jesse-jackson-20120323,0,2131299.story
Bunch of race hustlers trying to cash in on the memory of a dead kid. Sick fucks.
I would be surprised if Martin’s parents actually hired Crump or sought him out. I suspect he approached them. For an attorney, this is a case made in heaven.
People need to get over which picture I chose to post. If you read the post, it should be clear to you why I chose that particular picture. Actually, let me just spell it out in case you don’t. THIS IS THE PICTURE THAT IS BEING PRESENTED BY THE MEDIA WHICH FITS THE INNOCENT BLACK VICTIM OF GREAT WHITE DEFENDANT NARRATIVE.
Well it would be better for the story if you did compare and contrast photos. Show the one the media wants for black innocence and then show a recent one.
why? for who? nobody comes to this blog to learn about Trayvon Martin. everyone who visits this blog knows everything about the case and about the media distortion.
write your own fucking blog
I don’t know how you guys do it. I tried to start a blog twice. Picked out a cool WordPress blog name, Then stared at the monitor blankly. Brain empty. Forgot passwords to both blogs. Commenting is so much easier.
PA,
just to be clear, that comment is aimed at a person who emailed me tonight. not anyone in this thread. not rifleman either.
this is the thing about this blog and blogs in general. a lot of you guys (the commenters) are smarter than me (the blogger); what i am, i’m not afraid to admit, is energetic and pretty passionate about putting shit up here. the commenters add valuable insight, call bullshit where it lies, and are really, really good at riffing off of the blogger’s content. but the blogger is just riffing off of something else from another niche of the internet. the commenters generally don’t have as much free time as the blogger so they riff off of what the blogger searched around to riff off of.
You said:
“this is the thing about this blog and blogs in general. a lot of you guys (the commenters) are smarter than me (the blogger)”
I completely disagree with this implicit putdown of yourself. IMO, with all the insightful ideas you come up with, you and Auster are the two bloggers that most impress intellectually. Yea I know, you’re a waiter with a worthless economics degree from Podunk State – but I don’t really care. I’m continually impressed with your work. Seriously.
I agree with the people who are saying George probably should be charged with manslaughter. He did pursue someone with a weapon and society really needs to discourage that behavior. I don’t think he intended to kill Trayvon, though.
@ PA
Agreed, commenting is a lot more fun. It seems to me like blogging would get to be like a job after a while, having to produce original content every day to keep people coming back. Plus, comment moderation, dealing with trolls etc…. screw that.
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