Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

goole knows his right wing

i mean even taking away the racial aspect for a second, it's still fucked beyond fucked that some huge dude shot an unarmed 17-year-old kid carrying a bag of skittles

or, deep in the comment weeds, there was an attack earlier this month by two black kids with gasoline on a white kid in kansas city, and "nobody in the liberal media cared", even though the cops a) considered it a hate crime and were b) investigating it! double standards!!

that was nice btw, max, your gawker piece. i don't know what to do with my feelings about this case, but that helped.

His lawyer cannot testify as to events, he can only ask questions. xp

― butvi wouls (Phil D.), Tuesday, March 20, 2012 10:47 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as i understand it, lawyers can and do present theories regarding what happened. they do it directly in summation, and they do it by calling witnesses that will present a certain version of events.

thanks h

[continuing from my xp] i mean, you say that "opening and closing arguments are not testimony", but opening and closing arguments attempt to frame and explain testimony. they provide a narrative that the legal team hopes the jury will accept as the truth.

or, deep in the comment weeds, there was an attack earlier this month by two black kids with gasoline on a white kid in kansas city, and "nobody in the liberal media cared", even though the cops a) considered it a hate crime and were b) investigating it! double standards!!

yow, never heard about this. sounds ghastly.

story promoted heavily on conservative blogs

well, i don't read those, so no wonder. is there any other dimension to it that might make it generically newsworthy, like were the assailants not charged?

goole reads these things so we don't have to

zimmerman's and the police department's racist motives are disturbingly complementary tbh; the police were likely just relieved that zimmerman was not related to any of their officers, that he was non-white was just a bonus

damn max, really love ur piece.

ha i just found that shit now! a case like this i always wonder what the 'other side' thinks. plus it's kind of a case study in information pathways and what have you.

okay i looked at the comments thread and they do like to accuse the reporters of "stirring up racial tensions." not the dude who said "fucking coon," of course. it was max who did it.

great article max

^^

^^

thanks everyone

yeah that was particularly bad ass

some guy set up a twitter account just to tweet at me about how zimmerman is hispanic but it looks like twitter took it down :-(

hey max u suck

Adding to all the love. Max that was prime.

but this is the kind of thing: https://twitter.com/#!/DetroitRight/status/182140941006671872

just keeping your ego in check

meghan mccain tweeting at toure is gonna solve this whole thing

oh wow and i got in a minor twitter fight with this guy.... who proceeded to change his avatar to a picture of me in what i can only assume is meant to be blackface

https://twitter.com/#!/TreborRocker

nice work, max

oh wow and i got in a minor twitter fight with this guy.... who proceeded to change his avatar to a picture of me in what i can only assume is meant to be blackface

https://twitter.com/#!/TreborRocker

― max, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:20 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh my god

Ha. Just came here to post a big textual thumbs up to max's piece. Gonna go spread that love around.

Yeah, max u kick ass! Forgive me if I don't have the fortitude to read the comments, though.

don't worry it's all about serial killers rmde

internet right wing reactions to this remind me of reactions to the DeOnte Rawlings case. mercifully that link doesn't contain the comments, but there were an insane amount of the "if your name was DeOnte you had it coming" variety iirc.

that post headline really undersells the facts, btw; it basically seems like some offduty cops shot a 14 year old boy and then covered it up.

46 911 calls in the last year or since January 1? Repots conflict. Either way, odds are pretty good that Zimmerman made more than a few of those calls INSIDE A GODDAMN GATED COMMUNITY and is too off-center to realize the irony.

(And of course -- great work, Max.)

max, the voice in yr. piece reminds me of a junot diaz short story. intentional?

not really, though i am a fan.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/06/11/070611on_audio_danticat

ha! yeah, i totally see that. this was initially going to be a bit more bloggy "how to" but it needed to be angry instead of sarcastic

46 911 calls in the last year or since January 1? Repots conflict. Either way, odds are pretty good that Zimmerman made more than a few of those calls INSIDE A GODDAMN GATED COMMUNITY and is too off-center to realize the irony.

wondering what % of those calls were irt the troubling presence of black youth

46 911 calls in the last year or since January 1? Repots conflict. Either way, odds are pretty good that Zimmerman made more than a few of those calls INSIDE A GODDAMN GATED COMMUNITY and is too off-center to realize the irony.

on CNN this morning, they were making a big point of the fact (?) that it was 46 calls since 2001; i.e., over an 11-year period. not sure what to believe at this point.

Ha, legislators who wrote stand-your-ground do not want their nice little law sullied by the case:

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/03/stand-your-ground-fathers-trayvon-martins-shooter-should-likely-be-arrested-doesnt-deserve-immunity.html

bizarre speculation even in that article:

Still, there’s a chance Zimmerman could avoid an arrest or a conviction if he were charged because the law gives broad protections to those who claim they had reason to be afraid and to use deadly force.

There’s a chance, for instance, that Zimmerman decided to stop following Trayvon after he was told by a police dispatcher “Okay, we don't need you to do that.” After that, Trayvon could have changed course and confronted Zimmerman.

It’s unclear. Only Zimmerman appears to know.

wtf?

The "stand your ground" law seems deeply and fundamentally misconceived to me. The traditional "duty to retreat" outside of one's own home, which was overturned by this law, is needed exactly to prevent situations like this. It's a cop-out to say, "Oh we didn't mean to cover cases like this" when it's exactly cases like this that made the old precedent necessary.

I think concealed carry itself is the bigger issue, because how you interpret "stand your ground" laws is a very after-the-fact thing, where the fact is often death. I don't think people walking around with a hardon and a handgun are doing elaborate analysis in the moment of whether they have an adequate self-defense justification.

I'm not a fan of concealed carry either.

well really concealed carry or open carry. Any liberal carry law.

Bottom line: you shouldn't be able to walk around with a concealed weapon goading people into taking a swing at you, and when one does you can legally shoot them.

word