George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the shooting death of \u201cthe child,\u201d the \u201cyoung boy,\u201d Trayvon Martin.<\/p>\n
As should go without saying, it is of course a tragedy that our world is such that it regularly claims human life.\u00a0 It is particularly tragic when young people, like Martin, lose their lives in circumstances that could have so easily been avoided.<\/p>\n
But Martin was no \u201cchild.\u201d He was not yet a legal adult, but at 17 years of age he could, with a parent\u2019s permission, kill and die for the United States military. And 17 year-olds, particularly when they are six feet tall, intoxicated on drugs, and physically fit, as was Martin, can and do kill and die in the streets of America.<\/p>\n
Yet it isn\u2019t just Zimmerman\u2019s persecutors who are fond of sanitizing Martin\u2019s character.<\/p>\n
Writing for Front Page Magazine, Arnold Ahlert castigates his fellow conservatives for acting badly.<\/p>\n
In \u201cFraming Trayvon,\u201d Ahlert contends that \u201cmany conservatives\u201d have engaged in a \u201cdemonization campaign\u201d against Martin\u2014or \u201cTrayvon,\u201d as Ahnert calls him\u2014that runs \u201cparallel\u201d to that promoted against Zimmerman by such \u201cracial arsonists\u201d as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.\u00a0 Conservatives \u201chave hastily embraced caricatures of Trayvon Martin, painting him as a vicious street thug who deserved his fate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahlert insists that Martin sounded like \u201clittle more than a rambunctious teenager\u201d whose family and friends describe as \u201ca fine young man,\u201d \u201cwarm and funny,\u201d and \u201ca standout athlete with an enormous appetite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where do we begin?<\/p>\n
First, Ahlert is correct that, from day one, the \u201cracial arsonists\u201d did indeed rush to demonize Zimmerman.\u00a0 Yet he fails to so much as hint at the fact that the demonization of Zimmerman demanded the idealization <\/i>of <\/i>Martin.\u00a0 By now, everyone who\u2019s paid any attention to this case is all too familiar with the media\u2019s tireless juxtaposition of Zimmerman\u2019s mug shots alongside the outdated pictures of a prepubescent Martin.<\/p>\n
Had Ahlert mentioned this, it would immediately become clear that it isn\u2019t \u201cconservatives,\u201d but Martin <\/i>who supplied us with a negative caricature of Martin.\u00a0 More accurately, as details emerged since February of 2012, time <\/i>has exploded the idyllic caricature<\/i> of Martin that the \u201canti-racists\u201d have labored to embed in the popular imagination.\u00a0 The Martin who had that fateful encounter with Zimmerman was a far cry from the 6th<\/sup> grader whose photograph was plastered all over the media for months after the shooting.\u00a0 As Ahlert himself admits, at the time of his death, Martin \u201cused foul language, made obscene gestures on camera, probably smoked marijuana, and engaged in other troublesome teenage behavior\u201d\u2014like getting caught with possession of what was likely stolen jewelry, getting repeatedly suspended from school, and attempting to assault a bus driver.<\/p>\n This brings us to a second point.<\/p>\n Neither conservatives nor anyone else has made Martin out to be a vicious <\/i>thug, as Ahlert says.\u00a0 What the record shows is that he was <\/i>a thug of a sort, a thug wannabe, if you will.\u00a0 At the very least, he was thuggish<\/i>, even if he may not have been a full blown thug.<\/p>\n And we know this, not just from his record, but solely from the fact that he unleashed a torrent of violence upon Zimmerman.<\/p>\n No one disputes that Martin threw the first punch.\u00a0 From what has been determined, it was he who threw every other punch after that as well.\u00a0 To be clear, there was no exchange <\/i>of blows between Martin and Zimmerman.\u00a0 Rather, Zimmerman was on his back as Martin repeatedly pounded on him.<\/p>\n And it is not as if Zimmerman was in his face posing an imminent danger to Martin. Had this been the case, then perhaps the latter would have been justified in launching a preemptive punch (even if he would not have been justified in punching his face into the ground after he had succeeded in knocking him down).<\/p>\n Had Martin really feared for his life when he noticed that Zimmerman had been following him, and had he conducted himself in a non-thuggish way, then he would have done what Zimmerman did when he first observed Martin: call the authorities.\u00a0 Martin could\u2019ve ended his phone call with Rachel Jeantel\u2014to whom he referred to Zimmerman as a \u201ccreepy ass cracker\u201d\u2014and called the police.<\/p>\n Instead, he chose to lie in wait for Zimmerman before jumping him.<\/p>\n This is the official account of the events of that fateful evening when Martin\u2019s life ended\u2014an account that the jury in Florida accepted and that no one has been able to contradict.<\/i><\/p>\n Contra Ahlert, to acknowledge these facts is not <\/i>to say that Martin \u201cdeserved\u201d to be killed.\u00a0 Much less has anyone, least of all the \u201cconservatives\u201d who Ahlert lectures, even remotely insinuated that Martin deserved to be killed because of his lifestyle. <\/i><\/p>\n However, to concede the facts is <\/i>to concede both that Martin did indeed act thuggishly and that Zimmerman was just as justified in shooting him as an elderly woman would be justified in shooting an assailant who had her pinned on the ground while striking her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the shooting death of \u201cthe child,\u201d the \u201cyoung boy,\u201d Trayvon Martin. As should go without saying, it is of course a tragedy that our world is such that it regularly claims human life.\u00a0 It is particularly tragic when young people, like Martin, lose their lives in circumstances that could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n