What Charlie Pierce said.
Well I certainly don’t feel calm and measured, and it’s not because my kids “could have been Trayvon.” No, they could not have. My kids are white. They lived in the suburbs. They could wear their pants anyway they liked. They could have worn hoodies to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and nobody would have looked askance at them, let alone blown them away with a handgun. (As I recall, I once wore a black hoodie to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.) The worst threat to my children’s lives in the big wide world was that some suburban matron who couldn’t see over the steering wheel would run them down in the family SUV. They didn’t have to worry about running into some trigger-happy, half-mad wannabe on the way home from the convenience store. And that’s what keeps me from being calm and measured.
I am sick to death of people who celebrate “the family” making excuses about why other people’s children are expendable. I am sick to death of politicians who are more concerned about protecting zygotes than about the teenagers on whom they seek to balance their budgets and advance their careers. (Barney Frank’s line about conservatives’s believing that life “begins at conception and ends at birth” was not entirely a joke, although it’s always been treated as one.) I am sick to death of opportunistic yahoos who can look at this country’s unhealthy attachment to firearms and declare that the actions of George Zimmerman, while unfortunate, were pretty much what the Founders had in mind. I am sick to death of the steady drip-drip-drip of all the topical anesthetics we mix up whenever something like this happens. Had Emmett Till been killed in 2012, there’d be at least three people sitting in the CNN Green Room right now — and probably 15 of them sitting offstage at Fox — waiting to explain how unfortunate it was that the lad so transgressed against local custom that circumstances dictated that he be beaten to a pulp and tossed into the river tied to a cotton-gin fan. I am sick to death about how we can argue about anything simply to argue about it, and then move along to the next argument, as though anything at all has been settled.
I’m as sick to death about this Neo-Nazi mentally that has brewed like a stinkin stew of death for anyone female, without blue eyes, blond hair, and who doesn’t carry a bible and a gun where ever they go in today’s America. Maybe that’s an important aspect of having a black president that’s been overlooked: at least now it’s very clear to the world how far this country HASN’T come in the last 50-60 years.
And just today we hear Rivera weighing in that blacks and Hispanics ought not wear hoodies. Yep, that’s gonna save our kids lives! Right, Geraldo—you moron……….!!!
Geraldo out-Becked Beck! White kids in Hoodies, hold your fire. Black kids shoulda known better.
I’m not sure what Pierce is ranting about. What does he expect of the talking heads on Fox, CNN and, for that matter, MSNBC? These people are paid to chatter. Their points of view vary according to which network happens to employ them. They’re entertainers, for lack of a better word. The only way Trayvon’s family will get justice is if the federal government intervenes directly, or pressures Florida to bring charges against the guy who shot the kid. It’s the same old battle — the feds vs. the “states’ rights” bigots. It was the feds (through Kennedy and Johnson) who ultimately acted on behalf of the victims of racist murderers. Will Obama take action in the Trayvon case (through the Justice Dept.) or will he weasel out on this issue, too?
“He said, she said” Media at its ‘finest.’