So, no big news this weekend, huh? The Zimmerman Trial: Just One More All-or-Nothing Moment for Our Nation's Media
In the past few months, we've witnessed news events where the media quickly turned the story into a binary choice between two options:
Do we want to support the Syrian rebels or the Assad regime? Is Snowden a hero or a traitor? Do we stand with Morsi or with the Egyptian military?
Of course, in all of those examples, both antagonists are deeply flawed, perhaps too flawed to be worthy of official U.S. support, or even public-opinion support. The Syrian rebels have all kinds of Islamist, priest-throat-cutting goons in their ranks, and they're taking on a brutal dictator who's used sarin a few times; Morsi took Egypt in an autocratic, Islamist direction . . . and then the military forces that replaced him started shooting protesters.
Can you find the good guy in this picture? Hint: he's next to Waldo.
Snowden may have done the public a service by exposing an invasive surveillance system that violated privacy rights and perhaps the Fourth Amendment, but he also broke his oath, the law, and is now playing footsie with some of the world's most repressive regimes.
I mentioned this no-white-hats phenomenon to someone and got a "Fifty Shades of Grey" joke in reply, but even that implies some light greys and folks who aren't so bad; think of some of these situations, particularly Syria, as "Varying Shades of Charcoal."
And now we have the George Zimmerman case. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that so many of our fellow citizens are choosing sides on Team Trayvon or Team Zimmerman, and insisting that the only form of "justice" would be the verdict that they prefer.
Why must we pick a side? Why is there this compulsion to declare one side is the "good guy" here? Keep in mind, everything Mark Steyn is saying here is right, that a criminal-justice system, terrified of public opinion, threw a slew of implausible charges against the defendant, while a slew of loud voices in the media and in government tried to shoehorn murky events into a simplistic narrative that inflames racial tensions.
Everyone remembers the president's comment, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" But another bit of faux-insightful blather the president said that day is even more irksome, his declaration, "All of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen."
Er, no, not really. We figure out how something like this happens with a police investigation and trial. It doesn't require "all of us" to investigate, and we certainly won't find useful court-admissible evidence within our souls.
Chances are, you've never even met anyone involved in this case. Chances are, there's absolutely nothing you could have done that would have changed events that night. So no, you don't really have to look into your soul. It's not your fault.
Obama's post-verdict statement offered more of the same:
I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we're doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we're doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that's a job for all of us. That's the way to honor Trayvon Martin.
But even if we look at everything that was said and presented in this trial, and like the jury, we conclude Zimmerman did not commit second-degree murder, and in fact acted in self-defense . . . that doesn't mean we have to lionize him. Being anti-racial-demagoguery doesn't necessarily mean we have to be pro-Zimmerman. Part of Zimmerman's defense was to insist he was not capable of defending himself in a physical altercation. Not merely not that good at fighting, his former trainer said he could barely throw a punch:
Jurors were presented an unflattering assessment of Zimmerman's physical abilities this week: Soft. Unathletic. Days after testimony by a state witness that Zimmerman had been training in mixed-martial-arts, the defense called on Zimmerman's trainer to counter the notion that he was a capable fighter.
"He's just soft, physically soft," said Adam Pollock, of Kokopelli's Gym and Training Center in Longwood.
The trainer said Zimmerman started out at a 0.5 in grappling, advancing only to a 1 or 1.5 out of 10.
The trainer added Zimmerman "didn't know how to effectively punch." That's a rather strange condition for a neighborhood-watch guy, right? If you know that you're likely to lose a physical confrontation, wouldn't you do everything possible to avoid one -- i.e, not follow someone you think is up to no good? If you know that your only recourse if someone tries to harm you is to pull out a gun, wouldn't you try to avoid that confrontation?
A court has ruled Zimmerman's not guilty of intentional murder. He appears to be guilty of bad judgment.
I live in Florida and have a CCL license. I would not have pursued Martin and would have let the cops handle it. On the other hand, and I say this at the risk of offending some readers, had Martin attacked me and I believed he meant to kill me or cause me great bodily harm (I'm in a wheelchair), I would have shot him in a New York minute. Furthermore, I'm disgusted that the Judge did not allow into evidence the fact that Trayvon Martin was
and prone to fighting. Zimmerman was not. This doesn't mean that Martin deserved to die, it just means that Zimmerman was at a distinct disadvantage from the get-go.
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