The Smithian

February 5th, 2013

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Eighteen years ago today, Trayvon Benjamin Martin was born to Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin. Nearly a year ago, their son was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., who viewed Trayvon as “a real suspicious guy.” Instead, the unarmed teenager was found with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea from 7-Eleven and a bullet hole in his chest from Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec 9 mm PF-9.

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art: by Shepard Fairey

Eighteen years ago today, Trayvon Benjamin Martin was born to Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin. Nearly a year ago, their son was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., who viewed Trayvon as “a real suspicious guy.” Instead, the unarmed teenager was found with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea from 7-Eleven and a bullet hole in his chest from Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec 9 mm PF-9.

more.

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art: by Shepard Fairey

July 19th, 2012

thesmithian

'Zimmerman is free to spread all the manure he wants, of course, because the other person involved in those events is not around to gainsay him, being dead and all, because George Zimmerman put a bullet through him. But the most distasteful thing of all is the ever-more-obvious fact that George Zimmerman is prepping himself already for a lucrative career as a sad-faced martyr to political correctness...He was an unwitting instrument in God's plan, was George Zimmerman, just like St. Teresa, The Little Flower. And, one day, he will have a book to sell. Count on it.' —Charles Pierce, at Esquire

June 27th, 2012

thesmithian

The problem being, in his mind is, which I can’t get into because he’s passed, he perceived you as a threat…He has every right to defend himself, especially when you are reaching into your pocket to grab the cellphone…What do you think his motivation was? The kid had no violent background. No violent tendencies that we can find…What made him snap? He’s not on drugs. Can you fill in that blank? . . . What do you think set him off? Had he been a goon, a bad kid, two thumbs up…No. He does not fit the profile of what occurred, which is another unfortunate thing we got going on here…I want to know, everybody wants to know, what set him off. He’s not on PCP. He’s not on anything. He’s on Skittles.

—Sanford Police detective Christopher Serino, in a February 29 2012 interview with George Zimmerman about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

more, here. actual audio, here. recent news regarding Serino, here. it seems he’s no longer with the investigative unit.

April 19th, 2012

thesmithian

'The parents of Trayvon Martin, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, will not grant George Zimmerman’s request to meet with him in private...'

March 30th, 2012

thesmithian

No matter what he does—rescuing the unemployed, insuring people with pre-existing conditions, getting us out of Iraq, ridding the world of bin Laden—the obscuring hoodie of his uncharacteristic life plunges his actions into a troubling darkness. No matter how familiar his face has become, half the country still cannot recognize him. The deranged “Stand Your Ground Law” that has had the effect of legalizing murder in Florida got on the books before Obama’s election. But since Obama became president, paranoia and hysteria have fueled the opposition to him, and laws making it easier to carry concealed weapons have proliferated throughout the country. Make no mistake about it. Forged in paranoia and hysteria, Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin was no less than a surrogate assassination of our alarming black president.

Lee Siegel, at The Daily Beast.

March 29th, 2012

thesmithian

'If the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into questioning shows what it appears to show, if Zimmerman really was devoid of the injuries that had been so feverishly and eagerly recounted by his defenders, then we have on our hands an absolutely catastrophic failure on the part of the media, and one of the most dramatic, devastating examples in recent memory of the Internet’s power to decide “the facts” long before anyone has a clue what they are.' [more, plus video, at link]

March 28th, 2012

thesmithian

Both the initial police report and various mainstream media outlets have reported that George Zimmerman…had signs of trauma to his nose, blood on the back of his head and nose, and grass and moisture on the back of his red jacket when they arrived on the scene, as a result of being beaten by 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. A video obtained by ABC News proves those assertions to be untrue.

more.

March 27th, 2012

thesmithian

…Chief Lee’s statement that Zimmerman was not arrested for lack of evidence sufficient to challenge his claim that he had not acted in self-defense (“We don’t have anything to dispute his claim of self-defense”) appears to imply that, absent such evidence, a white or otherwise non-black man…claiming self-defense after killing a black man is simply to be taken at his word. It is hard to resist the thought that race matters here, for who believes that, had an adult African American male killed a white teenager under similar circumstances, the police would have taken him at his word and so declined to arrest him?

Robert Gooding-Williams, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, from the Opinion Pages of the New York Times

March 27th, 2012

thesmithian

Ask yourself how we suddenly know that the dead kid had been suspended from high school because he got caught with a bag that might once have contained marijuana. Ask yourself why we know that. We know that because this case is Not About Race. It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Race is the past. Black people can vote. One of them is president. Nothing Is About Race anymore. Just ask Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum…and they’ll tell you that the president “injected” race into the tragedy. It wasn’t there before the president — who is (shhh!) black, you know — put it there. Ask Joe Oliver, this “friend” of the gunman who insists that Zimmerman might have said “fucking goons” and not “fucking coons,” because the latter is an obsolete racial slur and the former is a “term of endearment,” according to Oliver’s daughter. This is enormously believable because, if you’re an armed 28-year old gunslinger in pursuit of what you believe is a dangerous burglar, the first descriptive that would leap to anyone’s mind is a term of endearment used by high-school girls. Yeah, sure. Whatever. As if. And it is enormously believable because This Is Not About Race.

Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire.