Tucker Carlson, you should be hanging your head in shame - The Daily Caller Enters the Trayvon Martin Fray

There doesn't seem to be an end to the tragedy of the Jayvon Martin story.  Two parents buried their child.  Something that shouldn't happen ever, under any circumstances.  Lets start with what we do know.

Zimmerman was out in his community doing a neighborhood watch.  Zimmerman calls the cops about a kid wearing a hoodie that looks suspicious to him, like he is on drugs or something (how he can tell that from driving by him is beyond me).  The 911 operator tells him that there is no need to keep following him.  Zimmerman doesn't listen and continues to follow him.

911 gets multiple calls about a fight outside that ends with a gun shot being heard. One caller sees Martin on top of Zimmerman punching him.  People are hearing cries for help.  Two other witnesses say that Zimmerman had his hand on his back after shooting him and made no attempts to help him.  People see a kid lying on the ground and suspect that the kid is dead.  The police arrive.   Zimmerman has cuts and is bleeding.  His injuries are treated in a police car.  No medical treatment that required hospitalization was given.  Zimmerman is then handcuffed and brought to the police station.  He gives a statement saying that Trayvon came up from behind when he was going back to his car after looking at the street sign to get the name of the street.  Trayvon punched him, after falling to the ground Trayvon gets on top of him and is banging his head into the ground.  He started yelling for help, no one came out to help him, he pulled his weapon and shot and killed Trayvon.  Zimmerman is Hispanic (which is not a race by way) and Trayvon is black.

That is what we know for sure.  From this little information this has turned into a three-ring circus.  Zimmerman has been labeled a racist when the proof of that is scant at best.  In walks the likes of Al Sharpton who has a history of riling up racial strife without knowing all the facts.  Remember the Duke Lacrosse players and Tawana Brawely?  Only two examples of his not having all the facts before shooting off his big mouth.  I remember the Brawley case.  I grew up just outside of New York City in a Connecticut suburb.  I was young, but I remember what he did to that city with the false claims and outright lies.

Then we have the journalists and talking heads that have taken a word that cannot be made out from the 911 call and have insisted he used the word "coon" which has racial overtones. CNN decided to go the extra mile and cleaned up the tape.  It seems like the word he really used was punk.   The pictures being released of both people have been purposely misleading.  They wanted to paint a narrative that Zimmerman was some wild-eyed racist intent on killing an innocent young boy simply because he was black.  No proof of that exists.

The president decides to open his mouth and he too further inserts race into the issue by saying his son would look like Trayvon.  We have seen marches, looting, horrible displays of "mourning" done across the country.  It is hard to turn on a cable news channel without it being about this story.  Some being worse than others.  But what I can tell you is from the hits I have had on my several blog posts, this is the story that people want to hear.

We then have the really idiotic left that has tried to blame this shooting on republicans.  It wasn't being politicized enough I guess.

I know that I have been called a racist more in the past three years than I have in the previous years of my life combined.  I get sick of it.  Especially since how I live my life and the people in it are not taken into account before the charge is leveled.  I am not alone on the right of this feeling.  We are all sick of it.

We are standing here watching Jesse Jackson, who doesn't even seem to have a grasp of the basic facts of the case when he said that Trayvon was shot in the back of the head, using this death to talk about voter registration.  Trayvon has been compared to Emmit Till, even though there is no comparison between the two deaths.  We see an agenda and we don't like it.

So instead of asking the left to come up with real evidence of Zimmerman's racism, we decide to handle it by attacking a dead 17-year-old boy.  An intrepid blogger goes digging around on Facebook and twitter.  Finds some tweets that lead one to believe that the kid and his friends smoked pot and a possible fight with a bus driver.  Alleged pictures of tattoos have surfaced.  His school records were leaked to the media.  Apparently Trayvon has been suspended 3 times during his high school career.  Once for tardiness.  Once for spray painting graffiti, and this last time for having a baggie that had traces of pot in it.  The juvenile authorities in Florida have confirmed this boy had no arrest record.  While I certainly don't condone a 17-year-old kid smoking pot, all in all there is no evidence that the kid is all that different from many others around the country.    If this is all of it, he is much better than many as well.

I smoked pot when I was younger.  I also got suspended for spray painting some very poorly chosen words about a teacher who gave me a B on school property.  My parents had to pay to clean it up.  And believe me, they weren't going to hire a professional to do it.  I had to do it.  It took me a couple of hours if I remember correctly.  I learned my lesson.  I never did it again and realized that a B wasn't so bad.  I have never been, nor will I ever be a gangbanger or a drug dealer.

So this kid has probably smoked pot.  He may or may not have had some jewelry in his backpack.  No one can prove that story to be true.  He has been late to school enough times that he has to serve a suspension.  He had may or may not have had tattoos, that would have been covered by the hoodie by the way. He may or may not have taken a "swing" at a bus driver; no proof of this happening exists.  Is that a drug dealing gangbanger make?  That is just as much as stretch as calling George Zimmerman a racist.  Don't "gangbangers" carry guns?  Isn't that the point of calling them bangers?

So in walks the Daily Caller and what do they decide to do?  They print the tweets.  They too have decided that they should be playing defense attorney for George Zimmerman.  They too have decided to put the dead kid on trial in the court of public opinion.  All the while complaining about the likes of Jackson and Sharpton doing the same to Zimmerman.  Hypocrites much?

There is so much we don't know about this case.  What type of scrapes and cuts did Trayvon have besides the fatal shot.  Did he have any defensive wounds that would put Zimmerman's version of the events into question?  What angle did the bullet hit Trayvon?  Did Zimmerman have  blood on his shirt?  Where was the body in relation to the car?   It would seem likely to be close by if his version of the story is true.  We don't know what the coroner's report says.  As far as I know it has not been released.  It just came out yesterday that the original police officer who questioned Zimmerman recommended that charges be pressed and wanted to arrest him that night.  The district attorney decided that they needed to wait.  Apparently not even the information that the police department wasn't doing its job as initially reported was correct.

But some on the right have decided to tear this young man's life apart and turn him into the villain.  I have seen people call him a gangbanging thug who got what he deserved.  Yeah, they said that.  Others believe because he had gold teeth (another thing I am not sure is true or not) proves he was a criminal.

What is so disturbing about the treatment of the dead boy in this case, this is how rape victims are sometimes treated.  Zimmerman may be charged with murder or manslaughter, a grand jury has been convened.  He already has a defense attorney.  Tucker Carlson shouldn't be playing that role.  He also shouldn't be making it harder for Zimmerman to get a fair trial. He certainly should not be turning what could very well be an innocent young, dead kid into a victim for the second time.  Shame on you Tucker.  You are a parent, you should know better.

Geraldo and the Hoodie - Is what he is saying all that crazy?

“I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies, I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”
“When you see a kid walking down the street, particularly a dark-skinned kid like my son Cruz, who I constantly yelled at when he was going out wearing a damn hoodie or those pants around his ankles,..It’s those crime scene surveillance tapes. Every time you see someone sticking up a 7-Eleven, the kid’s wearing a hoodie. Every time you see a mugging on a surveillance camera or they get the old lady in the alcove, it’s a kid wearing a hoodie. You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a gangsta — you’re going to be a gangsta wannabe? Well, people are going to perceive you as a menace,”

On the surface yes it is.  But if you really think about what he is saying it isn't all that crazy.  We judge people on how the dress all the time.  Take this lady for instance:

She is quoted as saying she wants to be treated with a little bit of respect after her local nightclub banned her because of her outfits.  The nightclub owners/employees judged her on this outfit.  I sure as heck did.  You dress like that you are going to draw a certain amount of attention and people will assume that you are looking for sex.  Now, if that is true or not isn't the point.  The point is she is dressing in a way that will suggest to other people that she is out on the town looking for someone to spend the night with.

Would you go to a job interview at one of the big banks in shorts and flip-flops?  Not if you really wanted the job you wouldn't.  I had a job that had a very strict dress code.  One that I personally felt was right out of the 1950's.  If you really were to follow the letter of the code all women had to wear hose/socks of some kind.  Who wants to wear pantyhose in the middle of the DC summer heat?  Not me.  So what I did was always wear long skirts so you couldn't tell that I didn't have hose on.  They didn't say anything about the long skirts, but you were told to dress more appropriately (in a not so subtle way) if you wore a short skirt with no hose on.  The men had to wear ties except one Friday a month; casual day.  But even on casual day they couldn't really wear any shirt they wanted to.  You couldn't have anything that couldn't be tucked in.  Those were the rules.  If you showed up for a job interview in a way that didn't comport with that dress style I can guarantee you that your chances of getting the job dropped considerably.  Fair?  Maybe not, but true.

Crime stats are what they are.  You can dislike them but that doesn't make them less true.  If you live in a major urban area, you will hear about gang violence.  It isn't even just relegated to urban areas anymore.  Where I live there is a town not all that far away that has gang issues.  There is a task force in place that every once in a while makes the papers that has some major arrest or breakthrough.  It is far enough away from my home, that I honestly don't pay all that much attention to it.  But, if I lived closer, I would pay attention.  There is a mall in that city that I sometimes go to.  When I do, I park as close to the mall as I can.  I don't ever stop to grab something to eat there.  I go into the store I need to go to, buy my stuff, and leave.  It is a safety issue to me.  I have never seen any crime take place there, but I have heard that the crime rate around the mall is higher.  It may not be, but my perception is that I could end up being a crime victim there, so I only go when I have to go.  They have since opened another location of the store I went to there, and I have not been back to that mall since.  It makes sense to me.

If you watch movies or tv shows that sometimes glorify gang life, you will see a certain type of dress.  Not all that different from having a dress code at work.  You see images of gangsta rappers and the way the dress is very similar.  You listen to the lyrics of the music and you will hear a glorification of violence, misogyny, and drug use.

Now, I normally dismiss anything that Geraldo says out of hand, as I think he is generally an exploitive ass.   As I write this I have a hoodie on because I was cold earlier.  Do I look at a person in a hoodie as criminal first?  No. But that doesn't mean if I were walking alone at night and someone with a hoodie covering up his face wouldn't make me a pause for a split second I would be lying, it would.  It wouldn't matter to me what color they are, it was the fact that I can't see their face that would make me nervous.

We judge people on how they dress all time.  We do it daily.  Fair or not, it is the truth.  Does that mean that you should be treated like a criminal or a tramp?  No.  But don't be surprised when there will be people who will treat this way.  There is an old adage: Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.  Your appearance does matter.  You will be judged on it.

‘There is nothing more painful to me at this stage of my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jesse Jackson to the New York Times 12/12/93

It isn't about being racist.  It is having an understanding of crime statistics.  Which makes Mr. Jackson's involvement in stirring the pot that much more hypocritical.  But I don't expect anything different from a man who has made a living out of playing victim.