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

did anyone see that sentient shitstain piers morgan interview zimmerman's brother last night?

More often than not these days, I'm bubbling over with white self-hate.

I try to be more constructive in directing my hatred towards pieces of human shit like that awful CNN anchor. But I definitely feel you inasmuch as a lot of our fellow white people are the fucking worst.

http://globalgrind.com/node/829140

I really want to just spam right wing message boards with trayvononahorse.jpg

trayvon in a CANDY SHIRT riding a PONY.

candy, ponies, baby cousins

Well another depressing right-winger link here, EXCEPT

http://www.chicagonewsreport.com/2012/03/trayvon-martin-good-teen-or-gangbanger.html

the lead photo is one of the famed middle finger photos. Only guess what -- no middle finger. Another reminder of how likely it is that a lot of the stuff going around is shopped/fake.

the battle over representation of martin is so weird, people on each side of the issue somehow seeking to prove that THIS (actual, verifiable) picture of trayvon is the REAL trayvon, how he ACTUALLY TRULY was in real life: smiling kid who loves candy and gets kissed on the cheek by his dad vs. aggressive teenage thug wearing grills and acting tough. one is supposed to be real, and the other not real or less real.

like -- aside from the fact that NONE OF IT MATTERS -- how difficult is it to accept that may ALL be trayvon because he was a real, actual, complex person with different relationships and a faceted personality because he was a HUMAN BEING?

but... i guess that is maybe a lot to ask and i should know better

i totally agree elmo, its ridiculous on both sides, but otoh, since the right-wing pretty much initiated this discourse with all of the bullshit "trayvon was a gangster, SEE" finger-pointing, i think its important to kind of balance all that out with a more complete idea of who he was. i mean, yes, we shouldn't have to be involved in this AT ALL, but its not helping to just let the right run with their control of the images.

Totally agree. What shocks me is that there's actually a race to create a FAKE image of what Trayvon was like. That there are people so invested in this that they will actually shop trayvon photos to make him look more thuggish or w/e.

And agree with jon too -- once the right wing starts a media war, you have to fight back. Not unlike what happened with DSK, where the woman kind of had to start putting out her own side of things because otherwise he was controlling the media narrative

yeah i don't mean to imply that both sides in the representation war are equally wrong, because yeah one side is egregiously, virulently wrong

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/03/the-terrible-no-good-very-bad-month-for-the-left.php

In this rightwing post, Trayvon is just another item in the battle versus the left.

Amazed that "Chicago News Report" (sounds very staid and institutional) states that these pics are the ones "the media doesn't want you to see" and how trayvon was no baby faced child as seen in somewhat older photos widely circulated.

So I look at the scandalous pics and he looks exactly like a young black man of about his age. Horrors! These photos PROVE he was a 16 year old, not a 12 year old as the MSM would have you think. Gah!

The CNR site also posts a photo with an arrow pointing at what might be anything, but if you squint real hard looks vaguely like a gun, and screen shot of what is alleged to be Trayvon's MySpace page, with some photos of guns and cars and a header describing these as "Fools's Photos". This PROVES, er, something?

But. We know Trayvon was unarmed, and Zimmerman was armed. Trayvon was shot and killed. Zimmerman was not. Gah! Stupidity! Nasty mean stupidity. Racist stupidity, tyvm.

"i call em april babies cuz they fools" is a lil wayne line, which just goes to show how DANGEROUS this kid really was -- he didn't just listen to allan sherman records like the MSM would have you believe

wow @ "suspicious hand gesture"

I also just wouldn't really trust anything claiming to have been his twitter or myspace account at this point, seeing how motivated people are to blatantly fabricate things about him

do 17 year olds still use myspace

cousin on fb called trayvon martin 'the biggest scam'. sort of want him to clarify but thinking it's a can of worms better left unopened.

See if you can coax him into using "race pimps" then do a shot.

how can trayvon martin be a big scam, he doesn't know about any of this, when he last knew anything he was an ordinary boy on a quiet street being shot for nothing on his way back from the store. there were never and never will be any gains from this situation for trayvon martin.

i think he means the whole circus surrounding him. what exactly he means i have no idea.

why is everyone on twitter talking about toure

every time al sharpton is on tv he gets a million dollars, duh

most of the people protesting are actually just in it for reparations

its because toure and piers morgan got all mad at each other on tv today

would watch

the point in that blog post i posted way above is more pertinent than ever given all the stuff that's happened in the past few days. if trayvon _was_ a "thug," a drug dealer, a tough kid, whatever -- IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. hell, if you chase down a guy who is trying to rob your house, and then shoot him to death, without your ever having been (or well after you felt you were) in immediate danger, then that is murder. who the dead guy was doesn't matter a whit.

horrible horrible horrible people in this world, this country in particular. very depressed about this.

the feds should step in and fire the whole fucking police department in this shit suburb.

they would only do that if it would make sense to build an ikea there

is there already an ikea?

sorry i just realized that lame joke is specific to the bay area

yeah that was cryptic

i know of two places where that has happened. one is east palo alto, where they built an ikea. the other (sort of) is oakland, where they also built an ikea.

well according to the patriarchy thread, an ikea would solve all social ills

Here's the Touré & Piers clip.

piers is a condescending prick, esp in that clip

Totally. smdh @ "calm down."

just a bit of lazy TV journalism let's be cool

I kinda can't keep cool about this, because every time an irrelevant source like George Zimmerman's brother (I mean...what the fuck?!) gets implicit institutional approval, the more legitimate the heinous 'alternative viewpoint' (which is based more on the quantity of garbage 'evidence' than the quality of logic which informs said evidence) becomes in the eyes of those with racist leanings. Ol' Clem said he saw that black feller smokin' reefer, and Fred's cousin says Fred's a right upstandin' pillar of the community, so I think we got all the evidence we need to get out the lynchin' rope. Except the lynchee is already dead, so they seem pretty content this time to take on the entirety of black America.

So are there any more facts about this case that correspond to the actual shooting and not character assassination jpegs?

http://news.yahoo.com/public-opinion-shifts-trayvon-martin-case-063506171.html

stuff like that really makes me feel i am living amongst millions of folks with close to zero moral intelligence

i wonder why anyone would have hopes for our democracy in that context

Just 18 percent said they thought “Zimmerman was attacked” by the teen.

In the WPA poll, 39 percent said they believe Trayvon Martin was “minding his own business” when he was attacked.

just 48 percent of Americans said police should arrest Zimmerman

i cut and pasted those three out of order so maybe the implication isn't fair but it sure seems like there's a sizable chunk of people who think zimmerman was within his rights to shoot trayvon martin even if he wasn't attacked because trayvon ... talked back? might have been casing some houses?

Should                   48%
Should Not             16%
Unsure                   36%

ah that makes more sense

i was reading it as should not: 52%

always important to remember that most americans don't pay that much attention to the news so when it's not something like "planes crashed into the world trade center" opinion polls are gonna be kinda pointless

but yeah the idea that 30% of americans would change their minds on something over a few days cause they watched cnn or something...people just don't get information that fast, it's not even feasible

that 48% figure still used to be 73% though xpost

I can't find the internals of the cnn poll but I wouldn't be surprised if that 73% is a subset of people who consider themselves familiar with the situation, whereas the 48% wasn't

Fuck America. Seriously, if I ever start seriously thinking about having kids, I am out of here.