Since we don’t have a dedicated thread about this, I figured I’d go ahead and make one. What better way to start it than with a nice dose of reality from (believe it or not) a celebrity gossip blog:
Chris Brown went on twitter today to climb on the Trayvon Martin bandwagon by posting a picture of himself in a hoody. Where’s a concerned Hispanic citizen on a mission to take back the streets when we need one? We need El Batman!
Of course if Brown really wanted to be like Trayvon he would have posted a picture of himself when he was 13, since that’s all the media ever does. Like the picture People magazine uses for it’s cover that is always cropped so you don’t see that it was taken in 2008. Or he should have a twitter name like “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA” and post romantic gems like:
“Hahaha Hoe u got USED fa yo loose ass pussy.! Tighten up.! #Literally.”
Don’t get me wrong, my only point is I hate the fucking media for trying to rile everyone up by portraying this kid as some shy, innocent little angel. That’s obviously not a full picture of who he was, but he certainly shouldn’t have been shot for wearing a hoodie. I would have been okay if an English teacher shot him for that grammar however.
The American Journal has compiled a lot of information regarding Trayvon’s personality that the media seem to be hiding including his dealings with drugs, how he perceives race (John James having already mentioned his twitter handle), that he was suspended for 10 days either the day of his death or a few days before, as well as the fact that he was sitting on top of Zimmerman and pummeling him and reached for Zimmerman’s gun (this being Zimmerman’s account of the events). As a matter of his fitness, Trayvon was 6’3" and 150 lbs of muscle and 17 years old (not 12 years old, as the photos that the media are circulating suggest). In brief, here are some details of the case:
I agree with Schiff on the media portrayal, but the rest of that clip he really showed his ass. An unarmed teenager was shot in killed on a public street, and he immediately takes the word of the shooter? As if a person claiming self defense has no reason to lie or embellish his side of the story.
All we really know is that an unarmed man was killed by an armed man on a public street, and that the cops and prosecutors somehow concluded within hours that it was self defense, case closed. That is freaking retarded, I for one don’t believe a fucking word from anybody involved in this case, and I especially don’t believe the state did its due diligence in investigating a possible murder.
It’s a big fail all around and unfortunately I think that Mr. Martin’s race did play a role in the cops lackadaisical approach to the shooting form the moment they arrived on scene.
I’d just like to take the moment to notice that if this happened under private police, it would be the death sentence of the private system. But no one under the state even begins to think of this as an affront to state police.
Perhaps not to the ideal of state police, but people are surely angry about how the state’s police handles crimes such as this (cubfan296 is obviously upset). But good point- just goes to show how odd it is for some to not see protection of property, essentially what police are supposed to do, as a service already available on the market and subject to competition and the profit motive.
Try watching the video again, chief. No sides taken there. All he said was “here’s what this guy said happened, here’s the facts we know so far, and here’s what the media and others are trying to spin.”
Essentially his entire point was kind of like your false claim against him (except his point is actually accurate): An unarmed teenager was shot in killed on a public street, and everyone immediately takes the word of…who exactly? Spike Lee?
…I suppose that would include Trayvon Martin’s mother, who is trying to trademark simple phrases and cash in on her son’s death, too…right?
I suppose if he was a white kid who called himself NO_LIMIT_CRACKA, and took pictures of himself posing like a hoodlum, they would have given him a posthumous Medal of Honor.
Are you blind or deaf? You need to watch the video again. Schiff clearly took the side of the shooter. It wasn’t even close, he was not impartial in the slightest.
Ya, I don’t buy Martin’s mother’s story one bit, or Zimmerman’s family either. Why would anybody take the family members perceptions as fact? They are clearly biased, and what does Martin’s mother trademarking t-shirts have to do with anything?
Do you honestly believe that Martin’s race didn’t play a role in the way the cops handled the homicide? What does his twitter account have to with the fact that he was unarmed, shot and killed, and his shooter was absolved of the homicide within hours?
Stay on point here. The system failed this kid, it is indefensible that a homicide “investigation” was concluded as self defense within hours. The police and the prosecutors failed at their responsibilities, and it’s hard to believe that if this we’re a nice looking white kid that this scenario plays out the same way.
Do you honestly not realize that this is exactly the reaction the government and the media are trying to get out of you? They couldn’t care less what your opinion is either way, you’re just proving to them that you’re their Pavlovian dog; they ring a bell and you drool, mindless hunger with no food in sight.
I could care less about the noise in the media. My reaction is based on perception of facts. An unarmed teenager was shot and killed by an armed man on a public street.
Explain to me how the government - who bungled this situation in the first place - is now trying to convince me that racism was why they bungled it? How is that your argument? I get what the media is doing, anybody with a brain realizes that the media is playing up a racial aspect, but your government conspiracy theory is asinine at best. The government isn’t trying to start a race riot to cover up it’s incompetence. They aren’t trying to convince people that, not only are we incompetent, but we are racist incompetents
Maybe the police were just normally incompetent in this spot, but I doubt it, people are people, and the Sanford police deal with a lot of black crime. My guess is they did what humans do, and they made assumptions that led to a really bad investigation.
You wouldn’t know about it, much less care, if you hadn’t heard about it from the media. You can try to spin that fact however you want, it doesn’t change that you did with your behavioral training exactly what they wanted you to.
Most certainly, if the media hadn’t brought this to my attention, I wouldn’t have known about it, very illuminating insight you got there. You do realize that is the function of media, to bring stories of interest to people, stories that hopefully provoke thought, emotion, and visceral reaction.
Who wanted me to do what exactly? Again, the media’s job is to present a story in order for people to react to it, my response is personal and based on my perceptions. That’s the whole premise behind the media, and me as a consumer of media enjoy this function, it is a two way street. Your describing a function that is open and desired, it is in fact, what you are doing right now, albiet on a much smaller scale. This idea that I’m some sort of mindless dog responding to commands has much merit as you responding to my commands in this thread.
Wait, I’m confused. I thought this happened on the private streets of a gated community? (Not saying Zimmerman was necessarily justified because of this, but I just thought the kid was trespassing or something).
Your reaction is based on your perception of facts, but that doesn’t mean you have enough facts to adequately form a rational objective opinion about this case. Just because the teenager was unarmed does not make him innocent.
Oh I agree that we can’t place an innocent or guilty verdict on Zimmerman’s head based on the evidence so far, and in fact I’m not sure we will ever really know what happened. Only two people really know what happened on that night and one of them is dead.
What I’m upset about, is the way the state has handled the investigation up to this point. I think it’s unfair to both Mr. Martin and his family, and I think it’s going to end up being egregiously unfair to Mr. Zimmerman. How on earth is he going to get a fair trial(assuming the newly appointed prosecutor indicts)? I actually feel a great deal of empathy for Zimmerman, he may very well get a royal screwing out of this deal.
What happened in this case was gross negligence and presupposition leading to a sloppy investigation that lacked any procedural fidelity. This whole thing could have been avoided if the cops had just treated Zimmerman as a suspect. Self defense can’t be assumed, especially in a case were an unarmed man is shot and killed on a public street. Martin wasn’t on Zimmerman’s property nor was he trying to steal his property, Zimmerman should have had a much harder time convincing the state agents of his self defense claims.
It was in a gated community and Zimmerman, by his account, was suspicious of Martin when he didn’t recognize him. From what I can tell, his father’s girlfriend lived in the community and Trayvon and his father were visiting her when he was shot- so Trayvon would not be a familiar face to ZImmerman.
Well, it was only a matter of time before this was blamed on capitalist principles (after citing perceived inadequacies with how the agents of the state went about the case, mind you). Writes Benjamin:
Another related trend contributed to this shooting: our increasingly privatized criminal justice system. The United States is becoming even more enamored with private ownership and decision making around policing, prisons and probation. Private companies champion private “security” services, alongside the private building and managing of prisons.
…
Those reducing this tragedy to racism miss a more accurate and painful picture. Why is a child dead? The rise of “secure,” gated communities, private cops, private roads, private parks, private schools, private playgrounds — private, private, private —exacerbates biased treatment against the young, the colored and the presumably poor.
Turns out that Zimmerman is Hispanic. In a totally racist way, I could tell that he wasn’t your normal honky white guy–no blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyway, his dad is a non-Hispanic white while his mom is a Peruvian immigrant. I don’t know what kind of Peruvian she is–she could be a full-blooded native or a mixture of Japanese, Spaniard and native. As far as his dad, most Zimmerman’s I know are Jewish; so, if it turns out that his dad is Jewish, then Zimmerman definitely doesn’t fit the archetypical White Southerner that he is being potrayed as. Hell, since mom is a Hispanic immigrant, we might as well call him an anchor baby.
