Furthermore, I'm kinda bemused by PJ's and Whacker's surprise and outrage that race baiters are picking such a low-hanging fruit. (Not to mention PJ's spurious comparison to the fabricated Tawana Brawley case.) Of course the peddlers of black victimhood will come out of the woodwork. Of course they will overstate their case and make ridiculous claims. It's as silly and divisive as the never-ending rightwing fixation on the Black Panthers at the voting site, a minor incident that still gets played for applause three years later. (Note that black Americans do not have a monopoly on playing the racial outrage card.)
But does any of this invalidate the creepiness and weirdness of this case? Nope. You two seem to believe that if idiots take up a cause, the cause is automatically spurious and invalid.
Anyway. The race stuff is a distraction. The issue that needs to be addressed is the appropriate use of force. Note the complete lack of national outrage over a similar case in Wisconsin. The difference? Our shooter was in his own home, and had no idea why someone was crouched in his enclosed porch. Did he instigate it? Nope. Did he seek a confrontation? Nope. Did he have grounds to be afraid for his personal safety and property? Yep. So no outrage. Sure, there's talk about re-examining the Castle Doctrine, but there has not been the same racially-tinged shouting and madness over our incident that there is with the Florida case.
Seriously, armed man seeks out confrontation with unarmed man and kills him in public. And nobody gets arrested. It doesn't pass the smell test.
-edit-
An American conservative makes a good case for why this is yet another issue which the GOP, Limbaugh, the NRO and the rest of the conservative media complex would be wise to avoid politicizing:
Republicans have no reason to intervene in this fight. Seventy-five percent of the public thinks Zimmerman should be charged with something. Second-degree manslaughter certainly sounds pretty good to me. This wouldn't be "scapegoating," as conservative talk show hosts are already nattering, it's just common sense. Zimmerman wouldn't be guilty of anything until tried by a jury, but it's better than being tried in the newspapers. In any case, the idea you can gun somebody down in the middle of the street and just walk away doesn't appeal to me and probably not to the vast majority, either. [...]
[W]hy do Republicans have to get involved in this mess? Wouldn't it be better to utter a few words of regret and move on to something more political? But no, good old Newt can't miss the chance to alienate three-quarters of the American population. What sets him off is President Obama's comment, "If I had a son, he would look just like Trayvon Martin." What's wrong with that? When President Obama went to Israel he said, "If somebody shot rockets at my house where my two daughters were sleeping at night, I'd do everything in my power to stop them." Was that introducing sex and religion into international relations? No, he was just empathizing. That's what Presidents are supposed to do.
But old Newt can't let that pass. Like a big, lazy trout he jumps for the bait. Obama's comment is "disgraceful" and "appalling," "trying to turn this into a racial issue." Good old Rick Santorum isn't far behind, accusing Obama of "introducing divisive rhetoric." So all of a sudden, it's Obama versus the Republicans with three-quarters of the population on Obama's side.
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