The State of Florida vs George Zimmerman: The Trial

Barack Obama’s initial banalities on the George Zimmerman trial—sympathy for the loss Trayvon Martin’s parents suffered, respect for the jury process—felt tepid and his observation today that Trayvon Martin could have been Obama 15 years ago felt cliched. Revealingly, to some of Obama’s fans, the pedestrian response was strategic given that Obama’s ventures into race during his presidency, from the flap over a black Harvard professor being arrested outside his home to his observation last year that an Obama son might have resembled Trayvon, have backfired. In the suggestion of the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, given that track record, better the power of his family’s example when they walk across the White House lawn than any risky but more textured contribution to this week’s exposed wounds on race.

Of course, cheerleading about the role model value of a black man in high places has never been a thing that black commentators have embraced for its own sake, at least not when it involves the face of a Republican or even a black Democrat who was insufficiently progressive. And to lower expectations for Obama to the point that saying little is deemed more beneficial than saying much concedes one of the central premises for why a lightly experienced politician five years from a state senate seat was elevated so quickly to the presidency. It is also another instance of a second term where Obama ranges from spectator to occasional sideline critic on the domestic priorities of his own government: on immigration reform and expanded gun background checks, on the renewal of No Child Left Behind, on second tier fights over food stamps and student loans, the formula has been standard partisan ripostes after the fact and an avoidance of any mobilizing strategy that lasts beyond a morning news cycle.

So, in the vacuum Obama leaves, either an Attorney General with a hapless profile who is obscure to most white Americans, or a set of voices who have been punch lines for about a decade, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have been ill-cast as the spokesmen for one view of the Florida verdict—that Martin is not atypical but a specter of myriad ways young black men are devalued—and the very staleness of their advocacy has been easy fodder for critics on the right who are too sanguine about the reality that astonishingly few blacks have confidence in the race neutrality of the legal system.

It is not hard to imagine what Obama might have done this week. He certainly could have lamented the most overlooked aspect of the trial, that Zimmerman and Martin very likely profiled each other, that each saw a threat and affront magnified by the other’s color, and that the ugliness of that kind of mutual recrimination too regularly spills over into every facet of black and white interaction. At the same time, there has been a need this week for the African American community to self-examine the sizable inconsistency between the elevation of a child killed by a white man into a cause célèbre and the national anonymity of, say, Hadiya Pendleton, the black majorette killed by a stray gang bullet a week after performing in Obama’s inaugural parade: couldn’t Obama have made that point more powerfully than, say, a conservative commentator like Rich Lowry, or Zimmerman’s brother on CNN, if the president’s vision of his leadership had only led him to try?

Obama’s admirers say, not illogically, that the black president can’t expend too much capital on race. But it is worth noting that one of the most cherished hopes for an Obama presidency was surely that through his powers of persuasion, ordinary subjects of “race” would be crystallized into a narrative about mutual obligation and community. The blunt truth of Obama’s presidency is that America during his tenure still struggles under the burden of racial assumptions, is poisoned by the most toxic civil discourse since the sixties, and is still a wildly different kind of enterprise for the average black boy or black girl than their white counterparts. One of the bluntest failings of this presidency is how little it has done to break the back of any single one of those stubborn truths.

Oh I guess I am missing something by having Firefly on ignore but then I guess I am not either by the quotes from her I am reading.

Although his life's really finished. I can't imagine when it will be safe for him to ever come out of hiding...so I don't think the world will ever see much of George Zimmerman again. His life is over.

because he is the town hero.....

because he is the town hero.....

Montanians have to be very special people, to proclaim a hero
a man that stalked and murdered an innocent black teen just because he was black..

Although his life's really finished. I can't imagine when it will be safe for him to ever come out of hiding...
so I don't think the world will ever see much of George Zimmerman again. His life is over.

I am thinking more along the lines of a cushy job in a small Montana town provided by a benefactor,
and that Zimmerman will never be able to pay for a drink down
at the saloon, because he is the town hero.....

Since the "kid" was young , why didn't he just run like hell?

Lord as unhappy and as outright shock over Obama and the Obama administration behaviors of late both over the NSA massive spying and the Zimmerman nonsense I still sadly question if the republicans would be any better.

Montanians have to be very special people, to proclaim a hero a man that stalked and murdered an innocent black teen just because he was black..

firefly wrote:He's just lucky it wasn't Zimmerman who spotted him in that park...

because if Zimmy spotted him,
then he 'd have called 911 and then [horrors!!!] FOLLOWED Bill and the kittens,
and if Bill beat Zimmy 's head against the cement,
then Zimmy 'd have shot Bill (unless Bill shot him first, with Bill's .357 revolver)

Oh I guess I am missing something by having Firefly on ignore
but then I guess I am not either by the quotes from her I am reading.

Oh one must wonder how Firefly who had expressed wishes
to do everything but boil alive people with illegal pictures can
defend Trayvon who by reports was found to have a numbers of
under age naked pictures of girls on his cell phone. Shame shame
on that sweet young man who the news media is still showing
pictures of as a 13-14 years old. [CHILD PORN on Travon 's cell fone????]

I guess the color of his skin and being anti-self defense is enough in this case
to out weigh Firefly desire to lock up every teenage boy in the nation
that had talked his girlfriend into sending him such pictures
or who have male friends who had shared such pictures of their girlfriends with him.

Montanians have to be very special people, to proclaim a hero a man that stalked and murdered an innocent black teen just because he was black..

Yeah, I can see that. I 'd contribute to it.

[CHILD PORN on Travon 's cell fone????]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/zimmerman-prosecutors-lawsuit_n_3607470.html

Kruidbos testified last month in a pre-trial hearing that he found photos on Martin's phone that included pictures of a pile of jewelry on a bed, underage nude females, marijuana plants and a hand holding a semi-automatic pistol.

The world is aghast over Trayvon Martin. The US needs to look at itself
The jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman say they acted in strict accordance with US law. That in itself speaks volumes

Your right to bear arms and use them is so ingrained that you cannot distinguish anymore between self-defense and racist murder.