The Smearing of Trayvon Martin

[swag]

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/03/27/the-smearing-of-trayvon-martin/

by David Dayen

It was inevitable that conservatives would view the tragic death of a 17 year-old black kid as a political game where they were “losing” and had to come up with something to get back the upper hand. Thus we have a spate of revolting counter-attacks on the character of a dead teenager, as if any of them would warrant shooting him in cold blood.

First, they sent out an alleged photo of Martin in a requisite “scary black teen” pose, which turned out not to actually BE Trayvon Martin, but I guess they all look alike. As Dave Weigel points out, wingers are STILL sending around the photo. Then, the Sanford Police Department leaked a report that Martin was suspended from school because of trace amounts of marijuana found in his book bag, which in Sanford they usually settle by having a vigilante shoot and kill the offender, right? Finally, the Daily Caller decided to post Martin’s tweets for no discernible reason. The tweets depict your basic 17 year-old talking about girls. I know that when I go and get myself murdered, I want to have a bunch of people picking around my Twitter feed to figure out why I deserved it.

No more serious but at least marginally relevant to the case at hand, the lawyer for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who shot and killed Martin, claims that Martin started the fight and was beating Zimmerman’s head against the concrete, when… I guess Zimmerman managed to get up, pull out his gun and shoot the assailant? None of this makes sense either, and the Orlando Sentinel had a particularly abominable story about this that simultaneously attributes Zimmerman’s story to the police, then says it’s vague and unknowable, then says there are witnesses, and then says there aren’t.

. . .

[niyad]

1. lying seems to be the reichwing's stock in trade. I do wish that people would stop referring to

zimmerman as a neighborhood watch captain, since that title seems to have existed solely in his mind. certainly the hoa is not confirming, and he certainly was not behaving in the usual manner of such a "captain"