Morning Joe devoted a half an hour to discussion of the Trayvon Martin case. This story both grieves and outrages me.
Joe Scarborough on Trayvon Martin:
If anybody watching this show — either live or on the Internet — doesn’t believe that if an African-American shot a 17-year-old white boy walking through a neighborhood carrying ice tea and Skittles…if they do not believe that an arraignment would be scheduled by the next morning for the African-American shooter and that the white boy’s family would be called immediately…that an office would actually drive to the white boy’s home and sit down with the parents on the couch and console them because they have lost a 17-year-old son. If you don’t believe that this case and the handling of this case by the people in Florida has nothing to do with race, you are living in a fantasy world.”
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-20/trayvon-martin-teen-shot-stereotypes/53677634/1
Comments
I am leaving a reply to Joe Scarborugh’s comments today about Trayvon Martin. I am a Democrat who will vote for Obama in November. Most of the time if not all of the time I am yelling at Joe’s comments, however I watch the show every morning. I have said to myself that Morning Joe has not talked about the Trayvon Martin shooting. Today I saw you and heard you. Thank you for showing your heart about this case to people that should acknowledge and understand that racism on so many levels resulted in a kid’s death and attempted cover up. Curious to see what the other stations are doing I turned to FOX (something that is painful to do) and have not heard any reporting of this incident. As I expected CNN has devoted time to the story. You are standing apart from your Republican colleagues who are not going to say anything because they are only concerned with viewers or listeners for their shows or politicians concerned about upsetting their base.
George Zimmerman will probably be indicted. If you listen to the tape, you hear him say “fucking coon” while he’s chasing him down, along with “these assholes always get away”. He’s carrying a gun in a neighborhood as a self-appointed watchman. He’s warned by the cops to leave the kid alone, yet he continues after the “coon” with the Skittles.
Can you spell “hate crime”? I’m not a big fan of adding penalties for what people think (i.e. hate) but you still need to call this what it is, a racially motivated crime being characterized by the perpetrator as an innocuous incident of self defense.