Rule of Law
By Stan Welch
The shooting of a teenager in Florida by a member of a neighborhood watch group is the latest political football to be kicked off in America. Trayvon Martin, a seventeen year old angel- thug – crack head – punk- genius – depending on which story you believe was killed by George Zimmerman. That fact is apparently the only one of which we can be certain – Trayvon is dead.
(Editor’s Note – Stan Welch’s column appears weekly in the print and online edition of The Journal. Check it out weekly to see what Stan has on his mind)
Oh, there is one other fact established – the circus is in town in Sanford Florida. Not long after the tragic death of Trayvon, the media descended; and once those cameras showed up, we all knew Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton wouldn’t be far behind. And once again, they didn’t disappoint us.
Wound up with the outrage that he first made famous in the case of Tawana Brawley twenty years ago, Sharpton stormed into town, armed with righteous and racial indignation. You may remember the Brawley case. A young black woman claimed that she had been raped by several white men over the course of several days.
Sharpton beat the drum of racism for months before the story completely unraveled and was proven to be a total fabrication. It seems as if Reverend Al would have learned a little bit about rushing to judgment, but he clearly hasn’t.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t know what happened between Trayvon and Mr. Zimmerman that night either. But that’s the point – no one does, except for Zimmerman. But the media has already convicted him and they have sanctified Trayvon, starting with their insistence of using photos of him when he was a slight twelve year old, instead of the seventeen year old who was shot last week.
If this kid got half the scrutiny Tiger Woods did a couple years ago, we’d know a heck of a lot more about the real Trayvon, whoever he was, and not this innocent little boy the media is portraying.
NBC has recently begun an internal investigation into the way in which the tapes of the 911 call made by Zimmerman were edited to make it appear that he was inferring that Trayvon was suspicious simply because of his race; a tactic clearly intended to support claims that race was the deciding issue, instead of Trayvon’s own behavior.
. Actually, when Zimmerman mentioned Trayvon’s race, he was answering the 911 dispatcher who asked if the subject was white, Hispanic or black.
This is NBC folks. This isn’t that embarrassment to journalism Geraldo Rivera. This is the Today show. And they doctored 911 tapes to whip up controversy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time they threw away journalistic standards in their quest for ratings and their rush to judgment..
Does anybody remember Richard Jewell, the security guard at the 1996 Olympics who was accused of being the bomber in Centennial Park in Atlanta?
Remember the way he was hounded and his name was destroyed? Remember how he was awarded a half million in damages in his suit against – you guessed it – NBC?
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Where does the road paved with bad intentions lead?
But before this becomes just a media bashing, let’s take a look at one other aspect of this event that is even more troubling. The so called new Black Panthers, some of whose members were convicted of voter intimidation in the 2008 elections, have announced a bounty of ten thousand dollars for anyone who can locate George Zimmerman, who wisely went into hiding for the safety of himself and his family.
I guess as a Hispanic man with a Jewish surname, he had an inkling who the scapegoat was going to be. There’s nothing new about that.
But the sickening thing about this bounty is that President Obama, who can get to a microphone faster than he gets to the golf course, has yet to find his way to one to denounce the Black Panthers and explain that in America, we don’t put bounties on people, except for authorized law enforcement agencies. And we don’t put bounties on people who haven’t even been charged with a crime.
Of all the reasons I think this man needs to be defeated in November, this one is the clearest and simplest to understand. He simply doesn’t believe in the rule of law unless it favors the people who support him. And that scares the hell out of me – and it seems to me, it should do the same to you.
Seems to Me . . .
