Martin, Zimmerman, and Obama

There is not much to think well of in the case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.  Indeed the affair highlights  things which are seriously wrong with the country – though not in the way the political hacks on television have been saying.  The worst thing this case says  about the state of the country  is that it became a national cause célèbre at all.

It was and should have remained a local police matter of no interest to the public at large. George Zimmerman, a jumpy armed resident of a neighborhood which had been plagued by robberies got into an avoidable confrontation with Trayvon Martin, a young man wandering  through the neighborhood. They fought, and during  the struggle Zimmerman  shot Martin  and killed him. Truthfully or not, Zimmerman  claimed self defense. There were no forensic evidence or witnesses to contradict him decisively. From that point it was the job of the police and local prosecutors to decide if they believed Zimmerman’s story. If they did not believe it, they had to decide if they had evidence to demonstrate its falseness beyond a reasonable doubt. If they thought they had such evidence,  they had to present it in court in such a way as  to convince a jury they were right. That should have been all there was to it. Such cases come up around the country  from time to time, leading to different decisions and verdicts depending on particular circumstances

However, 2012 was an election year, the young man who died was black, and the resident who shot him was not. So things happened differently. A remarkably unscrupulous politician who was up for reelection (one Barack Obama) seized on the case as a political opportunity and made inane and grossly inappropriate and prejudicial comments in order to fire up a block of voters. A perhaps even more unscrupulous  scoundrel Al Sharpton clamped  onto the shooting as a means of getting publicity for himself and fomenting racial discord.  Members of the traditional media obediently jumped in, and the result was to hype  the case into big news with a morality play narrative of an innocent black child gunned down by a vicious white man. (Things were  complicated  a bit when it was discovered  Zimmerman actually was classed  as Hispanic and not white. However clever journalists discovered the new category of “white Hispanic”, one oddly never applied by the same journalists to various pale hued Democratic politicians who label themselves as Hispanics, and blew right past that difficulty.)  From then on the country got months of disgraceful and hypocritical pandering, nonsense, and rabble rousing from journalists and politicians, up to and after the time of the verdict.   It wasn’t worth watching, but it was illuminating.

The point is not to side with Zimmerman or Martin, either of whom could have prevented what happened. The point is the case  should never have been turned into something where the question of members of the public siding with one of the parties arose.