I've been watching FOX News and reading up on other conservative reactions to the George Zimmerman acquittal, and it's been as much fun as drinking battery acid. Watching the trial and seeing the case the prosecution laid out, it didn't appear that Zimmerman would be convicted of 2nd degree murder, but he still instigated the confrontation which ended up in the taking of a precious young life away from a family. And Juror No. B37, WTF are you talking about?
"I think George Zimmerman is a man whose heart was in the right place, but just got displaced by the vandalism in the neighborhoods and wanting to catch these people so badly that he went above and beyond what he really should have done. But I think his heart was in the right place. It just went terribly wrong..."
...I think he's learned a good lesson."
It wasn't just some life lesson that George Zimmerman needed to learn after the fact that he stalked and killed an innocent, unarmed teenager. And how could you possibly know what was in his heart? Three of the six jurors believed Zimmerman was guilty of some form of murder before they relented.
An initial vote was divided. Three of the jurors first voted Zimmerman was guilty, while three voted he was not guilty, she said. Juror B37 was among those who believed he was not guilty from the start.
I wrote previously that Conservatives really, really hate being called racists and will do everything they possibly can to deny that it even exists anymore. They were even hoping for really violent outburts to occur so that they could claim blacks are the real racists of today. Con talking heads are very smart at lying about facts to justify their claims (See Rich Lowry.)
But listening to them try to deny that race played a major part in this case is making me consider that maybe conservatives really are this ignorant about race relations in America, and maybe that's why there is so much racism still happening everyday in our country. Here's Charles Krauthammer's views on FOX's Special Report:
Krauthammer: For all those that want to make this into a racial incident, and example of racial prejudice, answer this, where was the racial taint in those hours and hours of that trial, where was the bias and what parts of the trial were not fair because the victim was African American?
The "racial taint", as he puts it, was in the actions of George Zimmerman. My f*&king God, he profiled him, followed him, instigated a confrontation and then killed him. The heated reaction all across America is related to the decades of racial abuse African Americans have suffered throughout American history. Prosecutors tried a bad case and didn't put in many things that might have helped, but when there really aren't any witnesses to the event, it was a hard case to make. Also, by looking at crime and prison data, you see that blacks are more likely to be convicted of crimes than whites.
Krauthammer and his cronies refuse to understand why the NY Daily News and others are relating this crime to past hate crimes. Because it's related to racism!
Krauthammer: The way that these demagogues are comparing this incident to Emmit Till, who was lynched in the south a half a century ago, I think is a travesty and it's a desecration of the memory of Emmit Till, who was a victim of real brutal racism in a country that at the time had legalized racism.
I love it when conservatives make racial choices for minorities and say what's real and what's not. And by the way, Trayvon was murdered. How is that not a brutal act equal to a lynching? There are times when racism in America today is more veiled than it was back in the days of Emmit Till, but the bottom line is, a teenage African American boy was killed for just being a teenage African American boy.
Roger Ailes didn't bother to have one liberal on the Special Report All Star panel to discuss the acquittal. It featured Bill Kristol, who is a platinum card-holding Conservative, Mara Liasson, who only talked about how great the Martin family's reaction was to the verdict, and Charles Krauthammer.
Bill O'Reilly has been living on the Zimmerman case these last few weeks and made sure to use only the type of video footage from the protests that would anger his ancient viewership. He's so tainted, he doesn't even mind admitting Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon.
Fair-minded Americans should consider a few things. First, George Zimmerman locked in on Trayvon Martin because of the way Mr. Martin looked. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch person. There had been some burglaries in the area and so Zimmerman focused on Martin, who wasn't doing anything other than walking to his father's house. Zimmerman also made a mistake by not following the advice of the 911 operator to back off. "Talking Points" understands the anger towards George Zimmerman. He initiated the fracas. But you don't convict someone of murder because he shows poor judgment or because he racially profiles.
BIllO was trying to coolly spin his TPM, but it still didn't make any sense. You should most definitely convict someone who racially profiles an innocent person, ignores warnings from real law enforcement to not engage, follows him/her and winds up shooting him/her dead.
Being ignorant on racial matters is not an excuse to deny racism existed in this case, but that's all I can come up with at this time for all their meandering and meaningless dribble about the Zimmerman verdict.
Here's a few other reactions from the right wing establishment.
Fox: New Black Panthers Were 'Spark Behind Zimmerman Investigation'
Gingrich: Pro-Trayvon Protesters Prepared to be a 'Lynch Mob'
Ted Nugent Calls Trayvon Martin 'Dope Smoking, Racist Gangsta Wannabe'.
Tucker Carlson: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton Are 'Hustlers and Pimps'