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

sorry to derail but the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit was entirely valid and that poor woman deserved every penny she got.

i will never forget my 10th grade English teacher (white btw) being very troubled about Rodney King's PCP use and calling him a lowlife or something of that nature. i had really liked that teacher up to that point.

xxp

djp otm, likewise in the wm kennedy smith trial, the defense was pretty effective at calling the plaintiff's character & motivations into question because that's what happens in rape trials, lol patriarchy

the other thing to remember about reaction to the OJ trial/verdict is that the whole Rodney King debacle had just happened like 2.5 years prior so everyone pretty much assumed that the court system was going to rofflestomp him with even more gusto than what was done to King

the King verdict had happened years before, but it came up because 10th grade was American lit and race was everything, and all of a sudden i was like, i don't know if you're qualified to teach this class. you fucking moron.

years before my teacher said that, not years before O.J. DJP otm on thaty score.

race & racism obviously influenced reactions to the OJ verdict, but the caylee anthony and rondey king verdicts aroused a good deal of white outrage, too. and i don't remember the reaction to the wm kennedy-smith verdict being as blase as some suggest.

i suspect that most people have a sense that the american criminal justice system is often unfair, sometimes outrageously so. that concern, however, remains a mumbling background issue in many minds (especially white people's minds) until some widely publicized "celebrity case" catches the public imagination. when that happens, the nation watches as a collective, turning the verdict into a public test of america's ability to provide basic justice. if the system seems to fail, public outrage is magnified by the importance attached to the test. something similar happens with close presidential elections and even the outcomes of certain sporting events.

I remember white outrage at the Rodney King verdict transitioning pretty quickly into white outrage at the LA riots

yeah, otm

as a PS to my earlier post: certain cases assume "political" importance, especially where police brutality is concerned. conservatives tend to side with the cops, liberals with the (often accused) victims. this somewhat complicates race as a dividing line.

king and esp oj heightened awareness of the science of jury selection. i haven't followed this case at all - has there been anything on the makeup of the jury?

xpost - i remember my white, upper middle class, gop by default classmates kinda 'getting it' in some way for the first time; a few would parrot the rightwing talking points defending the cops but most realized this was pretty fucked up (probably just my filter at the time but i seem to recall that during the riots even president bush didn't really defend the verdict and they quickly announced doj was gonna get involved), the riots were just 'well yeah' and if anything more interesting/exciting than scary (i can remember a few classmates having a look of panic in their eyes when i mentioned that me and some friends were going to see u2 in atlanta like a block away from where the rioting had happened about a week before, but they tended to get that look of panic for 'going to atlanta' anyway), that could totally just be my perspective though, i was pretty smug - 'see this is why you guys should listen to public enemy, i told you 911 was a joke'.

king and esp oj heightened awareness of the science of jury selection. i haven't followed this case at all - has there been anything on the makeup of the jury?

6 person jury, all women; 5 white, 1 Hispanic, IIRC 4 mothers? There was a CNN article/infographic about them, I'll see if I can find it

Hopefully it is a poster sized info graphic that will take a lot of scrolling to read. Size = impact, amirite graphic designers?

here you go (warning: not an infographic): http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/06/20/who-are-jurors-george-zimmerman

has there been anything on the makeup of the jury?

it's all women, and for that reason i have not been willing to dig too deeply into the chatter on it...

xps that al gore campaign line is craaaaaaaazy

funny enough i just watched 'bastards of the party' last night, amazing doc (re: rodney king riots, briefly)

Fox's Rivera: "I Submit" Jurors "Would Have Shot And Killed Trayvon Martin A Lot Sooner Than George Zimmerman Did"

Most Americans I imagine go their entire lives with little to no exposure to the criminal justice system. It takes stuff like celebrity trials or other salacious spectacles to put the legal system in the spotlight, which is messed up on so many levels, since they are the farthest thing from indicative of how things usually work. And yet they become the basis of commonplace armchair judgement for years to come after the fact.

Other than traffic court, I imagine most go their entire lives with little exposure to the court system, period.

Rivera's such a shitwad

Most people who will have an opinion on the Trayvon verdict probably haven't watched a substantial amount of the actual trial, let alone the whole trial.

yknow i'm always surprised at what a shitty human being geraldo is, you'd think i'd be desensitized to his shittiness by now and yet

you think people still clown him about capone's safe?

or getting hit with a chair

people forget he used to be even more of a sensational whore than he is now

This isn't all that relevant, but Geraldo Rivera is a graduate of my law school, and his big "gift" to the law school was this crappy "cafe" on the ground floor of the main student housing building, which is called Geraldo's -- a sort of institutional-looking room with carpeted walls and a neon, cursive "Geraldo's" sign. It looks sort of like a snack bar from a 90s sitcom. But the thing is, my law school is in the middle of a neighborhood teeming with good cafes and restaurants, so no one ever went there and they stopped running it as a cafe after like two years. So now it's just this sad empty room with a neon "Geraldo's" sign where occasionally a couple of people can be found studying.

omg that's hilarious

Amazing

did the sign have a blinking neon mustache?

man I can't find photos

yeah I can't find a good one either, although fwiw I think I am misremembering carpeted walls and it was actually wood-paneled walls. In any case, it didn't look like a real cafe and the sign was ridiculous.

aha!
https://irs0.4sqi.net/img/general/width960/15529028_0cdmKQSNuwyewlHYQcuzObP_0avGKWOh01eepE1H1y0.jpg

Found one--this is when it was under construction, iobviouslty

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aE_aWSx44U0/UOyNur-dj6I/AAAAAAAAQXY/eQIsVmiK7YQ/s320/19620-C201011-Top-40-OMG-Geraldo-Rivera-Capone.jpg

His autobiography is awesome, especially the part where he talks about his sexual prowess.

if I know BLS had that sign I probably would've gone there

*knew

oh here
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/02/05/nyregion/thecity/05gera_lg.jpg

maybe airport lounge or conference room is a more appropriate comparison, but the sign always made me think of saved by the bell or something like that

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121202154505/memoryalpha/en/images/3/3a/Ten_Forward_(bar).jpg

xp yup, looks like law school. i wonder if there's a standard "law school study lounge" look builders have on file. i was hoping it'd be like the Max, with neon geometric shapes and Ettore Sottsass style animal prints everywhere

defense attorneys are such clowns and meanwhile the prosecution is hitting hard at the end here "isn't it every child's worst nightmare to be followed by a stranger in the dark?"

i really think they're gonna convict for manslaughter. they gotta.

lmao @ Geraldo's

the actual picture of Geraldo's makes it seem much less bleak than I was hoping/expecting

that neon sign with the gifting statement below it is incredibly sorta lol but mostly sad.

jk, it's fucking MEGALOL.

law lounge looks just like everyones except the lighting scheme is like a weirdass starship flyover

it's very era-specific. everything is in the shape of an ellipse

i think i can hear sad lonely saxophone just looking at that fucking sign.

Needs a neon-animated sign of a chair hitting a guy.

10:20 a.m. ET: "Four minutes -- that felt like a long time to you, that we sat here and did nothing for four minutes? You get to think what Trayvon Martin was doing," said O'Mara. "Four minutes to do what? To walk home? Run home? The four minute mile was broken when I was like, 12… I do know you can run a mile in about four minutes if you’re in decent shape."

This is complete and utter horseshit. A "decent shape" mile time is like 6-8 minutes; he's talking about running as fast as top US high school athletes as being in "decent shape".

Rivera had gone forward in time to check out the Daft Punk record when tossing around design ideas.

I do know you can run a mile in about four minutes if you’re in decent shape

you know how athletic those black teens are.